NZXT M59 Mini Review

[Ulti]

NZXT M59 Mini Review

Introduction

Finally got my new cooler so I can upload some pictures of the NZXT M59 case I recently got. (About 1 week old now) Wish I had a decent camera earlier though instead of a phone camera so now the new shots are quite good quality whereas some of my older shots are not so good quality.

I bought the case at Scan for £42.54 on the Today Only offers. It's only £43.44 at the moment.

I put my order through at roughly 10pm or so on 07/12/09 and it was delivered at almost 2pm on 09/12/09. Superb delivery by Scan as usual.

The case arrived simply in it's box, obviously.



The "front" side shows a full on view of the NZXT M59 with the blue LED around the power on, the green LED HDD activity around the reset button as well as the blue "night" light above the 5.25" drives. Both sides show the exact same features in a variety of languages. The back shows a side on view of the interior and exterior, showing the full glory of the M59. It only mentions some of the key selling points about the case as well as stating "Designed in Los Angeles, California. Made in China".

Announcing the M59 gaming chassis. M59 delivers optimal airflow with 5 powerful fans with the option to station two fans on the top(rifle bearing side 120mm LED fan and rear 120mm exhaust included), side intake for GPU cooling, a mesh front panel and a bottom mounted PSU draws cooler air from the bottom of the case. The sleek aesthetics are highlighted by an all black interior and smoked clear window along with a 5.25" stealth bay gives a clean, but powerful presence. NZXT enhances the PC building experience with features that help make the installation process as painless as possible with pre-drilled water cooling holes and punched holes in the motherboard allowing for quick CPU bracket removal and immaculate wire routing. Additional advanced features include space for two SSD drives and higher end 10.5" graphics cards along with an ambient night light sitting over the 5.25" drives for constant visibility in dark rooms or at LAN parties.

Features:

Motherboards: ATX, Micro ATX
Drive Bays: 4 External 5.25" Drive Bays, 7 Interal 3.5" HDD Drive Bays, 7 Expansion Slots.
Coolin Fan Options: Front: 1x 120mm, Rear: 1x 120mm (included), Side: 1x 120mm LED (included), Top: 2x 120mm/140mm
Chassis Dimensions (L x W x H): 508 x 190 x 449 mm
Chassis Material: Steel
Chassis Weight: 6.5kg

Others (Copied from NZXT Site):
-Immense Performance: 5 fan capability (side 120mm LED and rear 120mm exhaust included) Included 9-fin rifle bearing NZXT fans rated at 42CFM and 23db
-Night light: A ambient light sits over the 5.25" drives to give visibility in dark rooms or at LAN parties
-Black on Black: Smoked clear window and a black interior gives the best combination of black on black
-Meshed front panel allows for more airflow
-5.25" stealth bay to keep a clean look
-NZXT solid state bracket allows for two SSD drives to be installed
-Wire routing: motherboard punched holes allows for quick CPU bracket removable and optimal wire routing, turned HDD also helps with managing cables
-Pre-drilled water cooling holes on the back plate
-Front mounted USB, audio, and ESATA ports
-Support for external dual radiator at the top of the chassis
-High end graphics card support, the M59 features space that is especially designed to fit longer 10." cards

Unpacking

The case came in the usual polystyrene foam wrapping around the case which was sealed inside a transparent plastic bag.

(Apologies for bad/old photos)



Taking those both off, we can see the case with several layers of plastic stuck to the front panel and side panel.



You can see the cases unique front bezel with the NZXT logo stock on the front. It has a stealth bay at the top, a power button (blue LED around it), a reset button (green LED for hard drive activity), HD 3.5mm headphone jack, mic jack, 2 USB ports as well as an e-Sata port.

On the back of the case you can see the PSU is mounted at the bottom and there are rubber grommets for watercooling. The PCI expansion slots are fully meshed and are simply attached on with a normal screw. Both side panels are attached with plastic coated thumb screws.

Inside the case it comes with 2x 120mm fans already attached, one with blue LEDs attached to the side panel. According to NZXT they're "9-fin rifle bearing NZXT fans rated at 42CFM and 23db". They have a 3 pin connector as well as 4 pin male and female molex connectors. To be honest I'd rather they didn't provide male and female molex connectors. There aren't any filters for the two fans though.

The front panel has wires connecting to the motherboard/power which consists of the usual front panel connectors (on/off, reset button, hdd activity light, power LED), a single USB connector and audio headers as well as a Sata cable.

There is a fan filter at the bottom to filter the intake air for the PSU which is a very good thing as it is almost impossible to clean the insides of a PSU without much effort. There are also four rubber pads for the PSU to sit on to reduce vibration (PSUs are pretty much one of the most silent parts in a pc though).

There's also a brown box and the bracket for installing 2.5" drives (SSDs).



Inside the brown box there are 3 bags of screws; normal case screws, the motherboard stand off screws and extra thumbscrews. There are also 10 HDD rails (5 sets) which allow for practically tool-less installation of 3.5" HDDs. They have a small rubber ring around the metal insert which also reduces the vibration of the HDD. There are also 2 copies of the same NZXT "instruction manual" in different languages.

Installation

Installation was pretty easy, the case was compact yet wasn't too small to work with. When I first installed the system I installed the CPU and cooler outside of the case first then took to install the HDD, optical drive, PSU and then finally the graphics card.

Cable management seemed quite easy due to plenty of holes but then when putting the side panel back on it was a nightmare, there was hardly any space behind the motherboard tray and the side panel although did help a bit by having "cable tie holes" where one could tie their cables to with cable ties and such. However even with the Corsair Modular power supply, where the modular cables are flat (not the 24 pin, 4 pin and 8 pin though), it was still a challenge to put on the side panel.

After I got a new cooler I had to take off the dreaded side panel again to take advantage of the hole for easy installation of a CPU cooler. It was pretty easy to install the Noctua NH-U12P (which I grabbed off eBay without the original fan but lapped for £23 ) and didn't take more than 5 mins. However the side panel took forever to get on again although if I had taken the motherboard out it would mean I would have to take the cables out and therefore the side panel anyway so I guess I can't complain here. The Noctua cooler is stated to be 158mm tall. It fit pretty easily but I doubt there is more than 10mm more space in there.



CHECK OTHER POSTS FOR MORE PICTURES!

One thing I forgot to mention was that the front panel has a foam cover on the inside which I guess helps to filter the air, however I don't think it's removable so not sure if it's actually cleanable. There was one problem I encountered though, when installing the front fan you had to use the really long screws, I didn't have any of them to hand so I attached them with cable ties. Just a heads up for those just incase they have neither.

Temperatures

With my Noctua new cooler (well it's second hand as mentioned earlier), my E5300 overclocked to 3.6ghz on 1.39v (1.36v ish under load) runs at 30 degrees idle to 55 degrees max in this case. With the Alpine 7 Pro, my system ran at 30 degrees idle and 65 degrees load in this case. In my older Casecom case (same 120mm intake, 120mm side intake, 92mm exhaust), with the Alpine 7 Pro, the system ran at 32 degrees idle and 66 degrees load so I guess there isn't much difference in cooling except for 1-2 degrees.

With graphics cards temperature, my HD4770, underclocked to 375/400 runs at 25 degrees in the M59 and 28 degrees in my older case on idle. This is perhaps the 120mm case is intaking air right over the graphics card. At load with Furmark and OCed to 855/1140, the temps are 61 degrees in the M59 and 68 in the older case.

My HDD runs at 29 degrees according to HDDTune in the M59 but 28 degrees in the older case even though I have the same front intake. This could be due to the slightly filtering or perhaps rotation of the HDD drive by 90 degrees but it's nothing to worry about.

Conclusion

For the price I am simply in love with this case, I have had no major problems that I couldn't overcome and I love both the design and features of it.

Advantages:
-Black interior
-Awesome design (in my opinion)
-Can install 160mm height tower coolers
-Quiet system
-Comes with 2 silent fans (can't really test the actual performance though)
-Side window panel
-Bottom mounted PSU
-Air filter for the PSU
-Some form of cable management
-Cheap price
-Screw free HDD installation
-Plenty of space for fans
-Meshed removable/remountable expansion slots
-90 degrees HDD drive bay
-Can support long graphics cards
-Fan on side panel has removable meshed air filter and "push-clip screws"

Disadvantages:
-Cable management is very tight in terms of space
-Could have had more USB ports in the front possibly (not that I need more than 2)
-Stealth bay is pretty useless to me
-No floppy port (might be important to some people)
-Front fan LEDS barely show through the front panel
-Not tool free installation
-Not tool free side panels
-Mounting front fan can be a bit hard
-Stealth bay can cause issues with installing fans at the top as optical drive sticks out
-Space at the top for installing CPU cooler can be a bit tight
-Cannot use the plastic/silicone fan mounts on the back due to overlapping side panel.

So obviously if they improved the disadvantages, they could surely make a product that "wins" in even more ways.

[Jay]

nice review mate, well done.

[Terbinator]

Looks like a decent case for the price board wiring and a plent of fan options. Also i have to ask, 1.9v really ???

[Ulti]

Looks like a decent case for the price board wiring and a plent of fan options. Also i have to ask, 1.9v really ???

Haha I missed out the 3 in both cases, guess I was too tired when I posted this last night. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Domestic_Ginger]

Nice review, thanks.

May want to change the title to 'NZXT M59 Mini Review' atm I though it was for a new mATX case.

[Pob255]

Nice Review

I'm going to be looking at my casecom version this weekend so it'll be intresting to compare the two.

[Ulti]

Nice review, thanks.

May want to change the title to 'NZXT M59 Mini Review' atm I though it was for a new mATX case.

Ah yeah thanks for yet pointing out another mistake, would be good if a mod changed this as it's too late for me to update the actual title now (seems even when I change it, it doesn't actually affect the title) Can't believe I forgot to include the name of the actual case, silly me.

Nice Review

I'm going to be looking at my casecom version this weekend so it'll be intresting to compare the two.

Would be nice to see how the casecom stands, I've got to mention that the M59 is quite light for it's size though but you can tell that from the half filmsy side panels. The interior seems pretty rock solid though. My older casecom was even lighter than the M59 though but it was also slightly smaller. Well I'm glad I can fit a 160mm height cooler in there as now even with a 120mm fan on 100% it's still pretty much silent. Most of the sound right now comes from the Akasa fan but it's quiet enough for me, will be getting an Enermax Apollish fan later on though but £13-ish for a fan is a bit on the expensive side haha.

[Pob255]

I've just got the front off my casecom and found something I didn't expect, I did expect part of it from your comments of the M59 but I've still found something I didn't expect.

The casecom only came with one fan at the front, It's held in by 4 long screws (sound familier?) they go all the way through the fan and into a metal bracket at the back, they are normal case sized threads not common fan sized threads.

The reason I mention it, is to ask if this sounds familier?

Also, the thing that caught me off guard about this front fan is it's not the normal 25mm thick, it's only 20mm thick.
What's the thickness of the M59 fans? are they the standard 120mm X 120mm X 25mm? or are they this odd 120mm X 120mm X 20mm?

PS on the inside of the front bezel of the Casecom opisit the fan there are actually some plastic clips as part of the bezel molding, so instead of screwing in the fan you can clip it onto the bezel.
I mention it as something to check to see if it's the same on the M59.

PPS The PSU filter, can you get a photo of it please and what are it's measurements?

[Ulti]

I've just got the front off my casecom and found something I didn't expect, I did expect part of it from your comments of the M59 but I've still found something I didn't expect.

The casecom only came with one fan at the front, It's held in by 4 long screws (sound familier?) they go all the way through the fan and into a metal bracket at the back, they are normal case sized threads not common fan sized threads.

The reason I mention it, is to ask if this sounds familier?

Also, the thing that caught me off guard about this front fan is it's not the normal 25mm thick, it's only 20mm thick.
What's the thickness of the M59 fans? are they the standard 120mm X 120mm X 25mm? or are they this odd 120mm X 120mm X 20mm?

PS on the inside of the front bezel of the Casecom opisit the fan there are actually some plastic clips as part of the bezel molding, so instead of screwing in the fan you can clip it onto the bezel.
I mention it as something to check to see if it's the same on the M59.

PPS The PSU filter, can you get a photo of it please and what are it's measurements?

NZXT fans are still 25mm. The M59's front fan go into a sort of hole where it sits on a small layer of metal with 4 holes. You need long screws to screw it in but as I didn't have any I used the cable ties haha. Sounds similar to what you mention.

Here's some pictures of how the front works:



There aren't any plastic clips to mount the fan onto the front bezel as you can see.

Hard to take a picture of the bottom of my case without turning it on its side (no space on my desk I'm afraid) so I lifted it up a bit and tried to take a pic. In rectangular the terms, the fan guard measures (so not including the little 2 inserts as well as the sort of stick up part of it) 125mm by 95mm. It's probably stopping airflow by a bit then seeing as most PSUs have a 120mm-140mm fan. :/



(For some reason camera wouldn't focus on it so it's a bit blurry)

[Pob255]

Yep that all looks strangly familier
I think I'm going to have to pop down to my local builder supply merchant to see if I can get some longer screws to mount a propper fan.
(If I do I'll pick some up for you as well )

Must say thoes little added extras like the two top fan slots, psu dust filter, 3pin fan connectors and window do look like they are worth the little extra cost.

[Ulti]

Do you think these will work? http://www.chilledpc.co.uk/shop/prod...roducts_id=476

£0.77 + £0.96 (First Class delivery) = £1.73 seems ok for me.

[dave87]

Thread title changed as requested

[Pob255]

Do you think these will work? http://www.chilledpc.co.uk/shop/prod...roducts_id=476

£0.77 + £0.96 (First Class delivery) = £1.73 seems ok for me.

I guess thoes screws would work a charm, they look just right.

[Ulti]

Thread title changed as requested

Thanks again!

I guess thoes screws would work a charm, they look just right.

Well I ordered a mixture of fans so I'll see what they'll come with. To be honest though I think my makeshift idea of using cable ties has worked pretty well, there's no noise due to vibrations so even if I don't get any long closed end screws I won't bother buying any.

[Pob255]

Yes I liked your idea aswell.

I'm thinking about drilling out the holes to make them standard fan hole sized, so I can use some rubber plugs on my casecom 6788

[Ulti]

Well I got the 3 fans I ordered today:

Coolermaster SilentInternal Case Fan with Red LED TLF-S12-ER-GP
"22dB, 42.73 CFM, 1200±10% RPM"

Xigmatek XLF-F1253 White
"20dB, 61 CFM, 1500 RPM"

Enermax Apollish Red
">15dB, 28.98 - 71.76 CFM, 700-1700 RPM"
£12.52

They all arrived in blister packs which were very easy to open and reseal. The CM also arrived in an extra resealable plastic back that said "Warranty void if removed" oddly enough.



All 3 fans only had 2 extra pieces besides the card/manual which was a bag of screws and a 3 pin fan header to a 4 pin molex connector. The CM and Xigmatek had the normal open ended screws whilst the Enermax came with 6 rubber/silicone fan mounts.


From top right going clockwise: Xigmatek, Akasa, CM, Enermax.

Now for comparisons, the Enermax is definitely the most silent, however it hardly moved any air at all. I put it on my graphics card, on the NB fan and anywhere I could possibly stick the thermistor yet the fan didn't spin up at all so I cut it off and connected the wires together. I could definitely tell it was spinning at 1700RPM then because it was blowing a lot of wind but it was also loud too so I decided to leave it spinning at 700RPM. I positioned this one on my case window. Whilst doing this I realised that the side panel fan was connected via "push-pin screws". Not sure how to explain it so I got a picture and hopefully you can tell how it works. The mesh was removable and could be washed easily I also discovered. Graphics card at load was 60 degrees at 700RPM and 56 degrees at 1700RPM.



However, although Xigmatek claims their fan was 20dB, it was louder than the CM one which I found only slightly louder than the Enermax which I guess is due to the higher RPM. The CM shines quite bright so I use it as my intake now as it blows more air than the Enermax. Xigmatek I will use as my CPU fan as it gets a decent amount of air across. Nowhere near as much as the Enermax on 1700RPM though so I'm guessing their stats are all LIES haha.

I moved the Akasa one to the back as it was the loudest (except Xigmatek). Akasa claims the fan operates at 1200RPM, at a sound level of 17.5dB and producing 38.4CFM of airflow. I think it's level of airflow was only slightly lower than the Xigamatek however the sound levels were equal. I mounted it with the rubber/silicone fan mounts on the back but when trying to put the side panel back on I found that I couldn't as the back part of the side panel overlapped the fan mounts. Therefore I took the 2 side ones off and used traditional screws.



I tried a dual fan configuration but found almost no benefit apart from more noise as temperatures were roughly the same. I'm guessing this is because the exhaust fan is close enough to the CPU cooler that it's almost already a dual fan configuration and that a triple configuration won't really help as fast. (This might be limited to the rate of transfer of heat from the CPU to the cooler but I'm no tecchy so I'll leave my thoughts out on that)