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You're about to get a really intimate inside look of the NZXT Khaos
all aluminum case. It's really big
and it's dark and black and I like it.
So stay tuned. I'll be right back.
Alright, we're looking at the NZXT Khaos and this case has been around for awhile
but I've never seen it. And I've been dying to see it
for a long time, cuz it looks really cool.
I think it's one of my favorite cases as far as aesthetics go.
I think it looks real aggressive. I like the fact that these things
stick out on the top and the bottom.
But I've never gotten to see it, and there was mixed reviews on it,
and I wanted to make my own opinion on it.
So, I called NZXT up. I said, hey, send me over the Khaos.
I want to check it out. And it's finally here.
And I'll tell you what. I've been very impressed with it so far.
It has a lot of really cool features. And it looks even better in person
than it does in real life. So, very impressive.
So take a look at it. I'll tell you what.
Let's start off talking about the construction on it.
2-3 mm Aluminum throughout on this thing.
So top to bottom, head to toe, everything that you're going to see
on this entire case is made of aluminum.
And there's a couple of people that said hey, this case is pretty expensive.
And, I'll tell you what. You know where the money went?
Quality and lots of aluminum. This thing is aluminum head to toe.
Every panel, everything on the inside, and guess what?
Rather than using like, POP rivets, or even regular rivets,
like most case manufacturers do, NZXT didn't do that.
They wanted to go all out. They wanted to make something
that had no expense spared. Top notch, you know,
the best they could come up with. Like, a flagship model, let's say.
And this thing has no POP rivets anywhere.
Everything in here is either held together by screws,
and if not, it's welded on.
Okay? All the PCI expansion slots in the back,
they're all thumb screws, everything in- is thumb screws,
no regular screws.
Oddly enough, there is no tool list design on the hardrive cages
and on the expansion base- the 5 and a quarters.
Which I found odd, but then I kinda thought,
it makes sense. Rather than have a big bunch of goofy buttons,
you know, advanced computer builders know how to use it.
They know how to install a, you know, DVD drive, without a problem.
So why would they need to have a tool list design?
You can use those really cool outline screws.
Or black standardized thumb screws.
Let me show you this thing, because it's -
It's gonna take awhile for me to show you everything.
But, I'm gonna start off with the top,
cuz it's interesting. Now, this thing is pretty heavy.
It is aluminum, but it's still heavy cuz it's thick aluminum all throughout.
So, they did provide you with wheels and a handle.
So, right now, those are rubber coated wheels on the bottom.
So, you'll notice that design borrowed from, I guess from a lot of other case manufacturers,
but very similar to Lee and Lee wheels, which I like, and I think are great.
Now the other thing, is up here on the top is this handle,
which is going to help you pick it up, and roll it around easily,
because if you had to pick it up, well, it would be pretty heavy.
So, I'll start by showing you the power button, the restart button,
and your expansion ports. So, that's power and reset,
this is your eSATA, you get 2 USB 2.0s, your input and output for your audio
headphones and mic, and Firewire header, or, you know, port right there.
And those are all, again, this is all aluminum on the top,
and a very easy click panel.
I'm sorry, did I do something here? Oh, adjustable click panel.
Look at that. Interesting. Okay, so, click panel.
Again, all of this is aluminum. Really cool design up here.
I don't particularly think it's functional. I don't think it does anything,
but it's kinda cool. It looks like it's a heat sink.
Up here at the top, this is a 140mm exhaust fan, coming out of the top.
If there's one thing that you're gonna know about this case, is that it has a lot of fans,
and it has a lot of flow. It's called Khaos for a reason.
Chaotic wind flow, I don't know what it's about, but it's crazy.
And if anybody knows what NZXT stands for, please let me know.
We were just discussing how I have no idea.
Now, take a look at the side.
You're gonna notice, both sides have this grill in the middle, for air cooling. Okay?
And you did see that big 140 at the top.
And you're gonna see air coming in, from both sides, here.
Now, looking at the front again, like we were looking earlier,
you do have those two 120s in the front.
So think about how your air is flowing so far.
You have two intake in here.
You have on both sides these slits, that are gonna suck in cool air.
And you also have the 140 exhausting hot air in the back.
If you look at the complete other side, there's another 120 right here,
underneath the handle. That one's sucking out even more hot air.
Here are your expansion ports.
These are your liquid cooling ports.
And, if you wanna keep coming down here, this is something that's special to this case.
It has two completely separate sections for two different power supplies.
So if you wanna have your regular power supply, it can go right here.
If you wanted to have a second power supply, you could add it right there.
So that's really interesting.
And if you'll notice, all the hardware back here is all thumbscrews.
Every single one of them.
And it's important, because you're going to need to be taking these off,
and I'll show you in a second what you're gonna be doing this.
Let me take off the side panel so I can get to some of the even more
interesting stuff that's on the inside of this case.
There's some crazy stuff in here. Whoops.
There goes one of the thumb screws. Oh! There goes the other thumb screw.
Sorry, alright. So, check out the inside.
This is pretty cool. I'm gonna pop this baby open.
Alright, now, there's that grill again. Now you actually get to see it.
There it is. There she blows. So this is gonna suck in cool air.
Now, this is where it gets interesting. Here's one of the stuff
that makes this case unique. I've never seen it in any other case design,
except for this one. And it's this thing right here.
I guess you can't really see it, but this is a really cool bracket,
and what it does is it's optional. You know, you don't have to use it,
but those are three 120mm fans that you can put in there, there
and then the last one, down here at the bottom.
And pretty much this is where your power supply goes, underneath,
so everything from here up is gonna be video card, video card, video card,
if you have three. And then your motherboard
and CPU cleaner are gonna go all through here.
So, you're gonna have three 120mm fans blowing cool air on them all the time.
So that's what makes this case unique. That's very cool, very interesting.
And I like it a lot.
Especially if you're an air cooling aficionado such as myself,
cuz I switch out stuff all the time, air cooling becomes a pain in the butt sometimes.
I only have one water cooled computer and I have three air cooled computers.
And this is really cool, cuz hey, you can have a lot of air cooling potential
with a system with a case like this.
Now, like I told you before. Down here, if you look at the bottom,
this is where your two PSUs can go.
To add the PSU you have to open the other side of the case to get it in
through the other side. This is kinda like a block off plate.
You pretty much can leave it there, or you can take it off.
There's two screws at the bottom. You take 'em off and then you can either
show off your power supply, or you can hide it.
It's really up to you. If you notice, all of this right here,
is all aluminum. And if you notice some of these marks,
they're all welded. Those are weld marks right there.
So, everything is welded, which is really cool.
This thumb screw right here, on the top part,
is a 3.5'' converter for your 5 1/4'' drive. There are eleven 5 1/4'' drives in total.
Five of which are external, the rest are internal,
and down here at the bottom these two are the cages.
So, inside of these external 5 1/4'' bays or internal 5 1/4'' bays
are 3 1/2'' bays, sorry, racks. Hardrive racks.
And they sit hardrives vertically, four at a time with rubber strips,
and it's all pretty cool. They can be removed,
and each one of them has, of course, that big one fan, in the front,
blowing air through the four hardrives. So, you have eight hardrives in total,
in these two cages, with air being cooled through them,
and your air is gonna come through here, down and out through your exhaust
of your power supply. You're gonna get more air coming in
through this top one, to feed these 120s,
which are gonna blow cool air all over your motherboard,
your CPU, your video cards. And then to exhaust it,
of course, hot air rises up, so you have this big 140 at the top,
and you have this 120 here, to blow all the hot air out of the case,
no problem, which is really, really cool.
All the expansion ports, which are over here,
there's a whole bunch of them. How many are there?
There's 1-2-3-4-5-6-7. The average 7, which is more than enough.
They're all thumb screws, if you look right in there, you're gonna see nothing
but thumb screws. There we go.
Very nice. And, you know what?
The biggest thing about this case, and I can't believe I didn't mention it,
because it's the most obvious thing, is that it's all black on the inside.
And black is great. A- it gives you contrast
against your expensive computer parts, that you paid all this money for,
and it's very important, because it just looks really cool.
And they did it for you. A lot of times if you wanna build a computer,
all your parts come in. You have your case,
you have your power supply, you have your motherboard,
and your memory, and your video cards,
and you're so psyched to get your computer built,
but then you realize, man, computers with black insides
look really good.
And then you gotta spend a couple days doing it.
Then you make a mistake and you touch it when it's wet
and you gotta start all over again. You gotta sand it down.
And I'm not like, you know, making this up, this is personal experience.
I've wanted to shoot myself several times.
You know, it's a pain in the butt.
And if you're spray painting, it's gonna come off.
If you wanna spend hundreds of dollars getting it anodized,
good luck finding someone local who's gonna do it for you,
at an affordable price.
If you wanna power code it, guess what?
All the threads in the little holes, sometimes they get clogged up,
pain in the butt, I mean, this is great because they do it
all for you, and the inside is amazing.
Now, I'm gonna show you a couple more things on this case.
First of all, I want to show you how you can install a motherboard on this.
So, what I'm gonna do now, is I'm gonna unscrew all of these little
thumbscrews that are back here. It took me a while to figure this out.
I was like, why are there so many thumbscrews?
Try to keep these, instead of losing them,
like the last ones.
Alright, one more thumbscrew.
Then I'll flip this puppy around so you guys can see what I'm doing.
Now,
take off the other side panel.
All rubber coated, by the way, very nice. Nice and quiet.
Keep things silent. Now, here's what's kind of interesting.
Watch what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna grab my trusty screw driver,
I'm gonna take out this top screw, right here.
And I'm gonna make sure I got it somewhere safe to hide it.
You're gonna pull this entire panel back, and then it's going to drop forward.
And that is your motherboard tray, and it's not really removable per se,
but what it is, is flip-able. So you can flip it out,
load your motherboard and your CPU cooler, you know, right there,
even your video cards, if you'd like, it's really up to you, if you want.
And then you just flip the whole thing back in. Okay?
And then you just lock it into place. Put the screw back,
and then put the thumbscrews back in the back.
That's very interesting. You don't have to worry about building it from the inside out.
The only thing I will warn you, is I tried to put a big CPU cooler in here
and it didn't fit. So make sure that your CPU cooler will fit.
If you're doing water cooling you won't have a problem.
But, if you have a huge air cooler that comes to here,
when it gets to here it might hit.
So that's the only thing. You know, again, you can always go
the traditional way, but it's very cool that they did something like this.
It's unique. I've never seen anything like it.
A flip out motherboard, so I'm sure it's been done,
but I haven't seen it in my lifetime, anyway. I'm only 26.
I also love these DVD covers, check 'em out.
They're really cool cuz, you know, sometimes you have this beautiful case,
and you put in an ugly DVD drive, and it kinda ruins it.
They gave you these like, little, I don't know what you call it,
these veneers, facades, or whatever. And it pretty much covers.
The buttons work. They're silver.
It's all aluminum and it looks really cool.
And it's built into the case. You don't have to actually add them on,
You just slide your DVD drive behind them.
And it's pretty much automatic. So, it's very, very cool.
Gotta love that about it. Also, check out something else.
Check out the bottom of the case. If you guys wanna know if there's a hole
at the bottom for your PSU, there is. And it's right there.
So if you have a fan that goes down, you're gonna wanna suck in that cool air
for your PSU through there. And if you scroll down,
or you look down here, you can see there's more of this grilled
cooling material, which'll probably keep the whole case,
and you'll also see down here those nice little wheels,
that are very convenient for moving this thing around.
So, very very nice. I mean, check it out.
Look at the nakedness of this case. You have access to just about everything.
Which is really nice, and there's a lot more than that.
If you wanna take off the front panel, you very well can.
Again, there's no rivets in here, no POP rivets,
it's all high quality aluminum. Great, great stuff.
I'm pretty much in love with this case.
And I think more than anything, I like the styling of it.
I really do like the aggressive styling so, NZXT Khaos,
if you have any questions on it, Email me.
I'll see you guys next time. I'm gonna build something with it.
The NZXT Khaos, full power case is available from the retailers listed here:
Or for more information you can type in A406-1110
into any major search engine.
For ComputerTV, I'm Albert.
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