NZXT Tempest

Installation

My setup is not a power house… per se… but it is definitely a “heat” house! ;)

P4 Extreme Edition coupled with 2 – 7900GTX video cards in SLI will keep you warm and toasty in the winter time. This coupled to an old school Asus P5N-E SLI motherboard (still uses the daughter card to select between single card and SLI… whee!!), and a passive heatsink on the northbridge. It ain’t pretty, but it’s effective!

Motherboard installation was a non event. Period… quit reading looking for something to go wrong… it didn’t.

Video cards fit without issue. Plenty of space on the ends to allow for power cabling, tube routing, whatever your designs may be needing. The case internals left about 3″- 4″past the end of the card, more then enough to organize and cable plan with.

The oval holes came in very handy for taking extra cable slack and giving me a place to shove it (Sheldog… stop laughing…), and the little spaces kept giving me options to route a fan lead here, or a hard drive cable there…. Honestly, this build was one of the least stress filled events I have had in a long time!

If your build has you needing to pull the front bezel, it is attached using plastic clips… but they are not those impossible ones that re-injure the “old sports hernia” and force you to break you bezel trying to remove it. These are solid, high friction, but easily removed with gentle, consistent pressure. The plastic top is removed by undoing 6 retention screws inside the case on the top, and 2 screws that are on the front lip covered by the front bezel. Once those screws are gone, the top lifts away, and the case frame’s bare metal is exposed with minimal effort. Installation of the radiator will require the removal of the top plastics and then 4 screws placed in the center of the lid, with holes between the fans which should correspond to the central mounting holes on the rad. Easy Cheesy! Power supply in the base, a hard drive… no issues to report.

Quite boring and uneventful really… just as it should be!