NZXT Source 530 Review

NZXT Source 530 Review

The Build

Wires Sarge…Faaarsands of em!  Nah we’re not worried, this is an NZXT case with 24ish cable tie points, more management holes than you can shake a stick at and a good 25mm of clearance behind the motherboard tray.  Should be a piece of piddle.

NZXT Source 530 Review     NZXT Source 530 Review

 

With the Motherboard in we can get an idea of the size of the case.  This is a full ATX tower, able to take the larger E-ATX boards and although the larger board may slightly obscure some of the management holes, with a standard ATX you’re spoiled for choice, there’s even a pair of good sized holes along the top edge for passing through the 8 pin CPU cable and as many fan cables as you like.  Shame about the Grommets though.  I don’t think we’d have minded an extra fiver on the price for them to be added.

NZXT Source 530 Review     NZXT Source 530 Review

 

We thought this case would be easy to build into, and it was, as you can see from this minimal install there’s plenty of room to work with and even if you chose to mount your SSD back here you’ve still got cable tie points around its mounting plate along with a dedicated SATA power cable hard wired in so you’re not going to have to branch off an ugly  portion of SATA power from your main PSU supply.  As always a good sized trench at the base of the case is ideal for stashing away all those unused and unsightly lengths.

NZXT Source 530 Review     NZXT Source 530 Review

 

Our NZXT Havik 120 matches the black and white fan colour scheme perfectly but with the Source 530 being able to accept tower coolers up to 183mm in height it almost looks lost in there.  If you’re looking to shoehorn some serious graphical grunt inside you’ll pleased to know that even with all drive cages in and a fan attached to the pivot arm a GPU of 282mm is still a viable option.  Whipping of the pivot arm fan ups the max to 310mm and with the appropriate drive cages removed, remembering their modular nature, the max GPU length climbs to an gargantuan 444mm. 

NZXT Source 530 Review     NZXT Source 530 Review  

 

So we know it’ll take pretty much any air cooler or GPU on the planet, but what about water cooling.  Well there are a total of 4 locations in this case with native water support.  Assuming that you’re not going to buy a case of this size and stick a 120 or 140mm AIO in the rear extract location, lets move to where the real action is.  Up in the roof you’ll not only be able to mount any of the 120mm fan based 240mm AIOs such as the H100i and Seidon 240 but also the biggest 140mm based AIO on the market, NZXTs very own 140mm fan based 280mm Kraken X60.  If you’re looking at custom water then as the image below left shows you’ve got 55mm of space between the roof and the edge of the motherboard, which means when coupled with 25mm fans any rad up to 30mm thick will be fine, not forgetting of course that if your’re using 120mm fans then a 360 will fit but f you’re going down the 140mm fan route then you’re going to have to keep it at a 280mm rad.  If for some moral, ethical, cultural or religious reason you didn’t want to put a rad in the roof, or perhaps wanted to add a second large rad to the loop, perhaps to deal with a multi GPU set up and a hefty overclock then all you have to do is whip out the drive bays and unscrew the plinth at the base of the case.  This opens up 300mm of head room and a whopping great 135mm of depth.  Alphacool NexXxos Monsta anyone???

NZXT Source 530 Review     NZXT Source 530 Review Â