NZXT Guardian 921

TESTING

For those of you wanting know how this thing holds up to some abuse, this is definitely the right place. To test the chassis, I installed all of my components into it. Here are the components I used for this:

• ASUS P35 SE/EPU Motherboard
• Q6600
• Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme CPU Cooler
• XFX GTX280
• Corsair 550HX PSU
• Western Digital 640GB
• Hitachi Deskstar 250GB

Everything Installed

From this picture you can see the that everything fits, and there is still plenty of room for expansion. Notice the two 120mm fans one at the bottom right, and the exhaust at the top left, however not shown here, the other fan is on the side panel that closes the case off. I've got two hard drives insatalled, and with the loading and unloading facing out of the case, they each took literally 30 seconds to put them both in. The DVD drive was installed at the top in the bay with the black tool-less insallation pushed to the right. In order to install it, all I had to to was slide it into the bay, push the black thing to the right, and lock it by pushing the black button that sticks out down.

The Entire system put together, up and running!

The picture above showcases this case surrounded by absolutely no light. As shown above, the lights are impressively bright, and light up a significant portion of my basement. The illuminated blue rectangle at the top left of the case is the temperature displaying LCD.

The LCD Temperature Read-Out

This nifty little screen shows you the temperature of the CPU, HDD, and the temperature of the case depending on where you place the temperature monitor. The readings are in celsius, and are very accurate. This screen is located at the top of the case on the front panel, just above where the reset and power buttons are.

CONCLUSION

Moving to this chassis from an Antec 900, I believe this case has stood up to the NZXT brand name. Offering features like the LCD temperature read-out, and some decent cable management, NZXT did a great overall job with this one. When installing my components, the only tool I needed was a phillips screw driver, and that was only used to tighten the screws on the motherboard and power supply. Every other aspect of the installation such as hard drive installation, PCI ports, and even the DVD drive installation was 100% tool free. Well, that is if you don't count your hands as tools.

Having good air flow in a case is a must for gamers, however, that is something this product is lacking. With only 3 fans, it's got plenty of room for expansion, and even some higher powered fans. Although it has a minimal amount of fans, this sucker is quiet! The loudest noise coming from the inside is the fan on my GTX280, which is folding so I always keep the fans going at 65%.

Cable management is another must have in cases made for gamers, and this case was able to provide several instances. The first being on the side of the power supply that is closest to the motherboard side of the case, there is a somewhat small hole there to there to guide your cables directly from the power supply to the back of the motherboard tray. This hole was a lot smaller than it could have been, and was a little tight getting all of my cables through. Next, near the very bottom of the case, just below where the motherboard ends and in the middle of the case, there is a tiny hole for small cables to come through. On the backside of that hole, there was barely any room to get the sound connectors to fit through so I could pull them to the other side, and it took some creativity to get them through.

Pros:

+  Looks really good, especially in the dark
+  Decent cable management features
+  Solid Construction
+  Very Quiet
+  Plenty of room for larger graphics cards such as the GTX280
+  LCD Temperature Read-Out
+  Tool-less design makes for extremely easy installation
+  E-SATA Port on the front panel

Cons:

-  Airflow
-  Low powered fans
-  The exhaust fan doesn't have LED's
-  Only 3 fans included
-  A bit pricey @ $79.99

This chassis provides looks, quality, and performance all-in-one, and is bound not to disappoint you! The NZXT Guardian 921 case is the perfect case for those wanting to build a budget system, but also want a very good looking case.

Final Score of 8 out of 10 and the Bjorn3D.com seal of approval.