Solid Block of Ise

I previously mentioned my dissatisfaction with the HX08 that was housing my computer, and yesterday when me and Ash went downtown I decided to buy the NSK-6580 and replace it with. I waltzed into one of the local computer stores, decided that the price was acceptable and bought it.

When lugging the thing home I decided that I would make an attempt at writing a proper review of it. Not that any of the already existing reviews are crap or anything, I just felt like taking a stab at doing this. Also, this is a fairly image-intensive entry, so apologies to any modem-users. Full-size versions of the images in this review is available in my gallery.

Here’s the specs for the thing, borrowed from Antecs webpage about it:

* Quiet and highly efficient 80 PLUS® Certified EarthWatts 430 Watt power supply
- Universal input
- Active PFC and high-efficiency design for superior environmentally-friendly operation
- 80PLUS® Certification means you’ll save money on your power bills
* Advanced cooling system:
- 1 Rear 120mm TriCool™ 3-speed fan
- 2 Front mounts for optional 92mm fans
- 1 Advanced Chassis Air Guide, with mount for optional 80mm fan
- VGA vent
* 9 Drive Bays
- Front Accessible: 4 x 5.25″ (with one 5.25″ to 3.5″ adapter)
- Internal: 5 x 3.5″ removable HDD trays with silicone grommets in a removable HDD cage to isolate drive vibrations
* 7 Expansion Slots
* Front-mounted ports for easy multimedia connections
- 2 x USB 2.0
- 1 x IEEE 1394 (FireWire®, i.Link®)
- Audio In and Out
* 0.8mm cold-rolled steel construction
* Motherboard: Fits micro and standard ATX
* Dimensions:
- 18.3″ (H) x 8.25″ (W) x 18.6″ (D)
- 46.5cm (H) x 21cm (W) x 47.2cm (D)

First impressions are nice. The box containing the case is sturdy, and people passing by would give me a lot of curious glances while carrying the thing home. It’s very glossy, and does a great job at advertising what’s inside. Specs are listed on the box, and overall the packing is top-notch. No complaints here.

When opening it this is what you’re greeted with:

The manual is taped nicely to the wrap of the case, but not too tightly. This is nice, otherwise it would be sloshing around in the box during shipping. The manual itself is of the usual standard, it gives the information needed (in five languages, complete with illustrations) but isn’t overtly detailed. No need to either, anyone who’s built their computer before need only to glance in this thing occasionally. I only browsed through it and after that put it aside to never open it again.

Here’s a shot of the case out of the box, but still in it’s protective wrapping:

And one where I removed it:

Clearly visible here is the back of the case. The fit and finish of this case is excellent, there’s no obvious visual deformations. Visible is the rear (included) 120mm tri-cool fan.

And the front of the case:

I must say, I really like the design of this case. It’s a bit understated and elegant, while remaining focused on functioning. I’ve never like the horribly overblown pre-modded cases that are popular with the younger crowd. I’ve modded a few cases, but always with the priority of adding function, not useless flair.

Again, the packing of the case is excellent. Not overblown, but protecting everything that needs protecting. Visible in the above photo is the protective tape on the top and bottom of the front, very nice. Easily removed without leaving a bunch of sticky gunk.

Here’s a shot of the side-vents and handles. There’s two thumb-screws in the back keeping the side firmly on, and after you’ve unscrewed them the side comes off easily after pulling the handles. The top of the vents is an “air-guide” for the CPU, containing a plastic tube you’ll see pictured below. It can be unscrewed and replaced with an 80mm fan if the inclination is there. The bottom vent is simply just a vent, there’s no holes to attach anything to it.

The quality of these vents are very high. Same goes for the rear fanvent as well as the intakes for the two (optional) front fans. They’re honeycombed and look like they’re cut out the metal rather than stamped. They allow for excellent airflow, which in turn minimizes noise from turbulence.

Here’s a better shot of the rear, with the aforementioned excellent vent. Other than that, it’s a completely normal case. No big surprises. The ATX-plate is completely bog-standard, and is useless to most motherboards who have additional connections. No big deal, most mobos ship with their own back-plate to replace this.

A nice touch was that Antec had taped the little bag of screws and miscellaneous stuff to one of the drivebays. This is nice rather than having it slosh around freely inside the case. The devil is in the details and all that.

Speaking of the insides, here’s a shot of what the case looks like with the side removed:

Nothing too crazy, but it’s a very well-built case. No sharp edges, and everything just breathes quality. This is not an aluminium case either, so it’s rolled steel. The structure is somewhat weaker than my old HX08 (which is a tank, in comparison) and this means that the NSK doesn’t make as good a butt-to-ground adapter as my previous case. In other words, don’t attempt to sit on this thing.

None the less, the engineering is good. The drive cage holds five drives, each attach to a removable sled. Each sled has nice silicone-dampened grommets to reduce the vibration. This is good, since vibrations reverberate to the case and cause resonance, which in turn means noise. Less vibrations, less noise.

Here’s a better show of the drive-cages and me holding on of the removable sleds. Note the silicone grommets mentioned.

Note also that Antec included a nice little bonus hidden inside the 5 1/4″ drive bays. An actual power-chord! Most cases I’ve seen never includes one of these, and even though I already have about fifty of them it’s still nice to see one included.

Speaking of power, the included PSU is one of Antecs own. I have good experiences with them, they’re quiet and actually deliver the power they promise without a bunch of inflated ratings. This one is no exception. It looks rather plain, but as far as I can tell the numbers on it add up to what it claims to be, i.e. a 430 watt PSU that does the job without too many frills. One frill it does have though is generous length of cables. Sure, it can’t compete with my old Enermax, but the cables are easily long enough for anything that goes inside this case. See for yourself:

There’s plenty of outlets as well. I counted to six regular “molex” style plugs and four SATA-plugs split over two leads. More than enough for most people, and giving no problem to fill every drive bay in this case if so inclined. Of course the usual plugs for P4-connectors, PCI Express and such are included. Thankfully though, Antec has not included the useless serverplug that’s never used. This is an ATX 2.0-compatible PSU, which means the motherboard-plug is of the 24-pin persuasion. A nice touch again is however the option for people like me with older equipment to simply unhook the additional four connectors and turning it into an old-style ATX 1.2 with 20 connectors. Very nice, even though it’s a very minor feature for people putting a brand-new computer into this case. It’s also 80 Plus-certified, which supposedly means it’s more power-efficient and won’t waste as much of your precious juice. Antec claims it’ll save you money on your electricity-bill, but I’m not as convinced about that as they are.

Here’s a better closeup of the PSU in question:

The back is a mesh to allow for better ventilation, but like most PSU’s these days there’s only the one fan in it to vent the PSU itself. It’s not expected to vent the rest of the case since that’s the job of the rear fan. The cooling in this case consists of the rear included 120mm fan and two optional 92mm in the front. Those, being optional, are not included and you’ll have to provide them yourself. For most boxes the rear will probably be enough, but I went ahead and put two Zalman 92mm in the front to aid cooling.

The rear tri-cool fan. Tri-cool meaning it takes it’s power from a molex-connector, and has a small switch with three settings for speed. On it’s fastest setting the noise is unbearable, on the slowest it’s virtually silent. 120mm fans are nice, they shovel more air yet are quieter than an 80mm moving the same amount of air.

These are the front intakes. They’re as well-made as the other vents on this case. The drive-bay for the harddrives is easily removed using two thumb-screws, and is very well-made. It slides out on two plastic rails, and this allows you access to attach the fans to these vents.

If you’re dumb like me you assume that you’ll have to remove the front bezel to attach these fans. This rewards you with feeling incredibly dumb when you discover Antec has included eight nice screws to attach the fans from the inside. It also rewards you with a frustrating half-hour trying to get the front back on, which sounds easy but turned out to be incredibly tricky and frustrating. So don’t be stupid like me, and realize that the absurdly long screws marked “9mm Fan Screws” are there for a reason. This is not mentioned in the tiny manual, by the way.

Assembly inside this case was a mostly painless affair. Take your time, do things the right way. There’s no nice slide-out motherboard tray like in my old HX-08, but this is a non-issue really. Installing any motherboard in this case is painless since all the edges are either rolled or smoothed out. You will not get a bunch of cuts and nicks from this case.

Installing harddrives is painless as well. Screw it to the sled with the provided special screws, slide the sled into the rack and it locks nicely into place. This is not the case with CD/DVD-drives, and this brings me to the only really big complaint with this case.

Installing CD/DVD-drives is done the traiditonal way, slide it in and screw it into place. And this is where one annoyance appeared. See, Antec rather rudely assumes that the only use for these drive-bays is a CD/DVD. They’re supposed to be slid into place and attached to one side. You’re not expected to remove the other side of the case.

But see, I had to do that. I have a Zalman rheobus for controlling fanspeed, and I wanted to use this in this case as well. The problem appeared when I tried to screw it in. The problem is that on the opposite side there are no screwholes!

See?

Where a screwhole would’ve been excellent there’s this tiny bit of metal preventing a screw to be used. I found this very annoying, and had to spend an additional twenty minutes modifying this piece of metal so I could attach my Zalman-rheobus. It still doesn’t sit very tight, but at least it’s now attached to the case.

But other than that, assemby is painless. It’s the same process as with any computer and case, and will take an hour or two if you do it properly. At least this case won’t slice you to bits while doing it, like some cheaper cases I’ve encountered over the years. Bang for the buck is very good with this case, it’s excellent value for money. Sure, there are tons of cheap non-name cases out there, some that cost as little as a third of this one - but they will be a long-term pain to use. They will cut your hands to ribbons when installing stuff into it, will have poorly laid out drive-bays and ventilation will be below sub-par. They will have thin sheets of metal that will give very little stability to your system, and if they include a PSU it will be an overrated piece of junk that’ll have problems supplying your computer with power.

The Antec NSK-6580 is not such a case. It’s not the most expensive case out there, but it’s excellent value for money. You could build any computer into this, it’s ventilation is excellent for any machine. There’s place for five harddrives, with plenty of space between them for ventilation. Add two 92mm fans in the front and even the fastest of 10krpm drives will be happy with the cooling. Nice touches include the excellent ventilation and the good quality of components - even the power-button feels like it’s a quality component giving a nice solid feel instead of some flimsy plastic. There’s connectors for front USB, Audio and Firewire. I connected the USB-ports to my motherboard and the Firewire to my Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS while leaving the audio-connectors unplugged. Speaking of audio-connectors, they follow both AC’97 and HD Audio-standards and will most likely plug into any motherboard following those standards.

Definitely recommended.

Pros:

* Excellent value for money.
* Great looks.
* Solid built, nothing sharp here. Hinged sidepanel on one side.
* Easy access using thumbscrews.
* Decent manual detailing everything you need to know.
* Front ports for both USB 2.0 and Firewire, as well as AC’97 and HD Audio audio.
* Rear 120mm fan is included and is quiet.
* Plenty of space for harddrives and hiding cables.
* Sidemounted airduct that can also be replaced with optional 80mm fan.
* Very quiet depending on components put into it.

Cons:

* Difficult to mount anything except CD/DVD drives in the 5 1/4″ drive bays.
* If you remove the front bezel it’s very difficult getting it back in place.

And finally, two shots of my finished product:

No funny comments on the cabling! I got a bit tired towards the end of the build, and later today I’m planning on restructuring them as well as fixing a few things I was too lazy to do yesterday, such as putting the Power-Led the right way.

As for noise this case is a lot quieter. Temperatures are roughly the same for the motherboard and CPU, but harddrives are a whopping ten degrees cooler (29 degrees) than the previous case. This is likely due to being right in the airflow of the two front-mounted 92mm fans. I also removed the fan from my graphics-adapter, which has one of those Zalman passive cooling units on it. Previously it was cooled by an 80mm fan, but that just felt redundant in this case.

Update/Edit: I originally wrote that the PSU had two SATA-plugs. This is wrong, I discovered my error when I sat down the other day and optimized cabling. The PSU actually has four SATA-connectors, split on two leads - i.e. two leads with two SATA-plugs each. My bad.

License

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 Sweden License.