NZXT Tempest 410 Elite: Jack of All Trades

Assembling the NZXT Tempest 410 Elite

While the NZXT Tempest 410 Elite is a reasonable enough size for a mid-tower, the insides felt unusually cramped during assembly, and some of the decisions NZXT's engineers made seemed...unnecessary. From the get go, space was at a bit more of a premium than I've usually seen in other mid-towers I've reviewed.

Getting the motherboard in was relatively easy, but the way NZXT pre-mounts and routes the case's cabling actually gives you a minor obstacle to deal with in the assembly. Strangely enough my cabling to the motherboard (which is really easier to do when it's just the motherboard in the enclosure) wound up looking and feeling a little bit messier than usual. Part of that is due to the strange choice of ports for the front of the enclosure. The two HD audio ports, fine, and two USB 2.0, again, just fine. But opting for a third USB 2.0 and a single USB 3.0 results in having a split USB header and then wasting an entire USB 3.0 port off of the motherboard.

Installing the optical drive, hard drive, and SSD wasn't particularly difficult, but the process for the latter two felt a bit silly. The tool-less clasps for the optical drive worked reasonably well and were fairly firm, and removing the bay shield was very easy. But the HDD and SSD trays are installed from the front by removing the front fans.

Let me explain: NZXT's two 120mm intake fans are mounted in easily removable housings which use contacts with the case to prevent wires running from them when you have to take the housings out. And you will have to, because the drive trays slide in from the front. I'm not saying the system doesn't work because it does work just fine, and the drives are easy enough to install (although our HDD felt ever so slightly too fat and needed a little coaxing to lock into the cage), but it feels like a case of misplaced priorities (no pun intended).

Why? Because clearance between our ZOTAC GeForce GTX 580 and the drive behind it was very narrow. I was able to make it work, and in the interests of fairness this is how I tested the enclosure. Yet like I told BitFenix when I reviewed the Shinobi, this kind of drive orientation creates exactly these kinds of clearance issues and is generally worse for routing cabling than having the drive cage rotated ninety degrees with the cabling already behind the motherboard tray. The money that was spent on making the front fans work in their housings the way they do would've been much better spent rotating the entire drive cage.

Installing the power supply and cabling everything wasn't too difficult, although at this point I will say I'm not completely sold on the clearance above the motherboard for a 240mm radiator. It'll work, but it'll be a very tight fit. The cabling for the two front fans is also confusing: both fans are routed through a single connector, which probably seems sensible but in theory actually winds up being counterintuitive in practice since no other case I've seen works like that. It's a nitpick, but I'll admit that I stopped and scratched my head for a second about it.