Revised NZXT H1 Review – It Exploded…

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NZXT’s H1 ITX case had a bit of a rough start, thanks to investigations by Gamers Nexus revealing the PCIe riser cable that comes included in the case had no isolation in it’s screw holes, had a 12V rail just micrometers from the mounting hole and the screws they used were oversized meaning each insertion and removal would cut into the PCB. After a few insertions and removals the 12V rail was exposed and handily used the metal screw to short to the case body, aka ground.

Now, after some back and forth and some plastic screws, an official recall was made and NZXT replaced the riser cable directly. When they offered me an H1 to review, they were clear in stating it was the model “with the new screws and riser cable”. So, I said yes and here we are. Now I don’t normally review cases, but this one is small and is a bit of a hot item (literally) so I couldn’t resist.

My time with the H1 was… mixed. You’ve probably read the title, yes I will be addressing that in full in a second, but beyond that failure I’m torn on the product as a whole. Let me explain. Small form factor PCs are often a pain to build, to pick parts for, and to keep cool. The H1 promises to resolve all those problems, as it’s not just a case, it’s the chassis, a 140MM AIO and a 650W PSU all pre installed and ready to go. It’s a dual chamber design, so the GPU goes on one side and the motherboard, PSU and cooler on the other. It’s ventilated on 3 sides and the bottom with the fourth being a tempered glass window.

When it comes to picking a GPU, anything up to 2.5 slots thick should fit fine. You’ve got a maximum of 305x128mm or 265x145mm for length and width, basically anything that isn’t a mile long, wide or deep will fit. I couldn’t get this RTX 3080 in as it was a touch long, or this 3060 as while it technically fits when you go to fit the side panel back on all the fans catch on the dust filter. I could fit this triple fan RTX 2070 Super though, so it’s not too hard to find something that will fit.

Everything comes clearly labelled: pull here; remove this; unscrew this first. It’s all laid out nicely and means for the more inexperienced builder, especially someone who’s never touched an ITX case before, you are guided through setting it all up. You feel confident as you are pulling it all apart knowing you are doing it all as intended, but then when you go to actually install some hardware… That pleasant experience comes crashing down.

The first motherboard I tried to use, admittedly one that’s a little unique in it’s design, wouldn’t work as the extremely short PSU cables, specifically the 24 pin, physically wouldn’t reach to where the board, a Gigabyte AB350N-Gaming WiFi, had it’s connector. Even after removing the 24 pin from it’s out-of-the-box routing it still wouldn’t reach. Even the 8 pin CPU power connector wouldn’t reach with it’s factory routing and would require you to cut the cable ties holding it to the frame.

The second board I ended up using, a Biostar X370GTN, did allow me to use the factory cables although specifically for the 24 pin the upper wires on the PSU side connectors were incredibly strained and this is one of the best boards for the 24 pin location I can find! Most recent boards push their 24 pin connectors much closer to the top right screw hole and I think you’d be hard-pressed to force this tiny cable that far. I understand the cables are short to keep as much space inside free, but please NZXT make these a couple centimeters longer.

Then there is installing a motherboard. This should be an easy process and to their credit it’s not too bad. You’ve got good access from both sides and the front meaning you can slide the board in and drop it into the I/O shield that faces down. I’d like to see an extra centimeter between the top standoffs and the PSU as I was scraping the board at the top trying to get it’s connectors through the holes in the I/O shield, although it’s not impossible to do as is.

There is one thing that does make installing a board more difficult than it needs to be, and that is that all four standoffs and screws almost perfectly line up with the frame rails meaning no matter what size screwdriver you have you are never square on with the threads making it painfully easy to cross thread them. You have to be incredibly careful to get the threads started correctly before then applying force to actually tighten it down. If the frame was a centimeter wider you’d have clear line of sight to those screws and the process would be so much simpler.

Attention to detail is something that takes a product from average to extraordinary, and it’s clear that for some things NZXT did well like including such clear instructions stuck right to the place it’s relevant to. Sadly, the thought clearly stopped there, as each of those little stickers are both difficult to remove and leave glue residue behind which is especially obvious on the tempered glass front panel. These should all have a tab on one corner to let you peel them cleanly off, and use a different adhesive that won’t leave gummy residue behind when removed. It’s that sort of attention to detail that makes a product stand out, and it’s a shame it wasn’t thought of here.

Happily, something they clearly did think about was thermals as I crammed not only an RTX 2070 Super in here, but also a Ryzen 3900X, and stress tested both. The 3900X, in a CPU specific workload like rendering in Blender, peaked at around 85°c which while that is a good 5-10°c hotter than my usual test bench setup, is still plenty cool enough to keep the chip running at full boost and that’s under 100% load. Even while playing Cyberpunk the CPU sat at around 70°c and the GPU boosted as hard as it could up to just shy of 80°c which is pretty normal behaviour. It can be a touch noisy, more so than a more standard form factor chassis, but it’s hardly unbearable.

Now, I think it’s time to explain the title. The H1 you see here isn’t my first, that one is down here and the reason I have two is thanks to this guy, the NZXT S650 power supply that comes pre-installed in the H1. While the system was switched off, but still connected to power, display and peripherals, two capacitors quite literally exploded inside here. They honestly sounded like a gunshot next to my ear. Luckily, I think since the system was powered down when the parts failed, as far as I can tell all of the components that were connected at the time all seem to be working fine. I’ve had the PSU apart, you can see on the back side the two SMD caps that have dismantled themselves, plus on the other side a through hole resistor that’s cracked and burnt.

Before anyone gets any ideas, the OEM for this unit is Seasonic, you can see their logos inside so this isn’t likely to be a fault of NZXT’s. Unfortunately, my knowledge of electronics and ability to dismantle this without further damaging anything are limited so I can’t give you an expert opinion on whether or not this is a design fault or not. But, seeing as a number of people, including people I know directly, have had H1s either currently or pre-recall and I haven’t seen any reports of this issue; I’m willing to offer the benefit of doubt that this is nothing more than a random component failure that can and does happen. If you have an H1 and experience similar issues, I would love to hear from you in the comments or on our Discord, but for the time being that’s that.

So, the H1. Is this a case worth buying? Is it worth the risk? For me, I don’t really swing for ITX builds, but if I had to build an ITX system, it’s far from the worst. Beyond the motherboard/24 pin compatibility, you can fit most GPUs in, it comes with a 650W PSU and a 140mm AIO pre-installed and fits a reasonable selection of RAM modules. Anything too tall will hit the cooler, but most standard sized DIMMs should do fine. You can even fit a couple of 2.5” drives up top if you want. Thermals are managed fairly well with the AIO’s fan drawing air over the motherboard then out through the radiator and the GPU has a filter all to itself.

The build experience isn’t perfect, but to their credit it’s far from the worst and at least they made everything clearly labelled. I would like to see a touch more space at the bottom as my DisplayPort cable had a pretty tight bend in it from curling out from under the case, but for most things it’s serviceable. Yes, my first unit’s PSU blew up, and I think I’d have a different tone if it killed my hardware than I do now, but from what I can tell this is an isolated issue to this PSU, not a chronic issue with its design.

On the whole, while it could be better, it definitely could be worse and so I can’t say that I’d stop anyone from buying one. Offering a well suited PSU and cooler as part of the bundle takes a lot of the stress of building a small form factor system away and while I think it under delivers on its promise of a “hassle free experience”, with a few tweaks I can see it being a great option.