The NZXT S340 Case Review
by E. Fylladitakis on July 13, 2015 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- NZXT
- Case
- ODD-Free
NZXT is a renowned designer of PC cases, offering a wide selection of designs for different tastes and budgets. Even though NZXT has diversified into marketing coolers and PSUs, cases remain the focus of the company, with dozens of designs currently available. Nevertheless, it has been nearly two years since we had a look at any of their newest case designs. In this review, we are going to examine one of their newest products, the S340 in White.
Introduction
The S340 is NZXT’s most recent design and it is taking on a huge bet - to be an entirely metallic case with a price tag of about $80. On paper, the S340 with the MSRP of just $70 has excellent specifications, while it also boasts a metal faceplate and a windowed side panel. It is understood that in order for NZXT to be able to offer all that at such a price, certain sacrifices would have to be made. One of them is the removal of 5.25" bays. "ODD-Free" case designs are becoming more and more common, as the market of optical media is slowly fading and discs are getting closer to meeting the fate of floppy discs and cassettes with each passing day, especially with the price of USB ODD drives being quite low. The lack of ODD support is not the only important thing about the S340 though. We are going to examine NZXT’s latest creation thoroughly in this review.
| NZXT S340 (CA-S340W-W1) | ||
| Motherboard Size | ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX | |
| Drive Bays | External | - |
| Internal | 2 × 3.5" (internal drive cages) 1 x 3.5" (Bottom frame) 2 × 2.5" (System Area) |
|
| Cooling | Front | 2 × 140 mm or 2 × 120 mm (not included) |
| Rear | 1 × 120 mm (120 mm FN V2 fan included) | |
| Top | 1 × 120 mm or 140 mm (120 mm FN V2 fan included) | |
| HDD | - | |
| Bottom | - | |
| Radiator Support | Front | Up to 280mm |
| Rear | Up to 120mm | |
| Top | - | |
| Side | - | |
| Bottom | - | |
| I/O Port | 2× USB 3.0, 2× USB 2.0, 1× Headphone, 1× Mic | |
| Power Supply Size | ATX | |
| Clearances | HSF | 160 mm |
| PSU | - | |
| GPU | 364 mm (<334 mm if a liquid cooling radiator is installed) | |
| Dimensions | 445 mm × 200 mm × 432 mm 17.52 in × 7.87 in × 17.01 in |
|
| Prominent Features | · 90% Steel Construction · Simple Interior Layout · Compact Size · Kraken™ Ready · ODD Free Design |
|
| Price | $81 incl. shipping | |
Packaging & Bundle
NZXT supplies the S340 in a rather plain cardboard box, with the sole artwork being a picture of an amazingly clean system built inside the black version of the case. The packaging provides ample shipping protection, with thick Styrofoam slabs forming a strong protective shell for the lightweight case.
The bundle of the S340 is spartan, with NZXT providing just the absolute necessary for the assembly of the system. Only a basic manual, black screws and a few short black cable ties are provided.
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Impulses - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
People are so eager to ditch ODDs, might as well use USB hubs too instead of front ports! Just being facetious, I know the latter takes up little room, probably just a sacrifice in order to hit their price point.BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
I'm not sure there's a good reason to push along the demise of optical media. Yes, very slow, takes a lot up a lot of space, and is losing relevance over time, but in a desktop system where space isn't typically a major concern there's not as much of a reason to abandon optical drives very quickly. Laptops, on the other hand, benefit from it because the space can be reclaimed to reduce the system's footprint, allocate space for more effective cooling, increase battery capacity or whatever else.Anyway, yes, it's probably a cost related matter that resulted in there being only a couple of USB ports and an external hub would solve the problem, though it'd be a sort of awkward solution to a problem that really shouldn't have existed in the first place.
Impulses - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Oh I agree, I still buy some movies AND music on disc and if I can have it in a bay I'd much rather have that than another external device cluttering my desk...There's already 3 displays, 2 amps (Emotiva for speakers, Asgard 2 for hp) and soon a DAC on my desk, and the external backup HDD occupies the sliver of space next to the case on the file cabinet it sits on.
I actually view half a dozen 3.5" bays (on other cases) as a larger waste of space than one or two 5.25" bays which can also be used for card readers, fan controllers, etc.
3.5" bays also tend to take up a sizeable chunk of internal space and they complicate thermals whereas a 5.25" bay can be designed in vertically or atop the entire rest of the chassis (without increasing it's volume outwards by more than the bay's thickness rather than a few 3.5" bays' length.
Dorek - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
It's very rare that anyone needs to use more than two front-USB devices at once. I would say that situation has basically never happened to me.Steveymoo - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
I thought I was seeing things for a minute there. ATI Radeon? Blast from the distant past!extide - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Yeah they look like Radeon 5800 series cards, I think.ES_Revenge - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Oh c'mon they're not *that* old. I'm guessing you also missed the mobo is P55--LGA1156? :P They probably just have "old" components lying around to do case reviews--it's not like you need a Haswell i7 in there and GTX 980 Tis, just to do a case review.I'm pretty sure I've seen this same components in other case reviews so they must be their go-to stuff for such reviews.
Dorek - Wednesday, July 29, 2015 - link
IMO they *should* be using new components and actually installing full systems in these cases, instead of this weird "fake computer load" thing this guy does. But everyone has mentioned this many times on the (somewhat useless) case reviews this guy does.jann5s - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
why are there ATI radeons inside? feeling nostalgic?extide - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Older high end GPU's work great for testing clearances and cooling capabilities of cases. Performance doesnt matter but size and heat generation are similar to current cards. (Although the reviewer in this article uses simulated loads for thermal testing, not those GPU's)