Testing

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Time for my standing test. As the case sits on plastic feet which are about an inch tall, I was a little worried that they would give way. Fortunately they didn’t and there was literally no bending, flexing or any sign that the case was gonna collapse under my sole. A well deserved 3 out of 3. As NZXT have designed this case for the gamer, it makes sense that it’s perfectly strong to take to your next LAN event.

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Turning on the case and you’ll be met with red everywhere. The two 120mm fans aren’t the brightest and you’ll only appreciate them in darkened areas and were easily out classed by the blue LED fan used for cooling my Pentium 4. The front of the case lights up, with the line part of the exclamation mark on the front being dimly lit and linked to the on power LED, and the dot beneath being much brighter and is the HDD activity light.

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The biggest disappointment was the temperature readout. As it’s meant to be stealthed, it’s behind heavily tinted plastic. While this makes for interesting aesthetics, it means that it’s incredibly dim and quite hard to read if the room you are in isn’t dark. The pictures are with over-exposure so that you can see what it’s meant to look like.

I decided to take apart the top of the case and see whether the display was dark without the tinted panel. It was perfectly lit and easy to read, which leads me to believe that NZXT have slightly over done it with the tinting ingredients for this batch.

As there is literally no vibration reduction mounts or systems being used in the Blackline which made the result of it being silent a pleasant surprise. The only fan that vibrates is the side panel one, which isn’t horrendous and you can only hear if you are right up close to it. The rest of the fans are quiet and easily mulnaz.

The temperatures of this case were great, with none of the included temperature probes passing 38C at full load (Orthos + RTHRIBL). Nice to see, especially at the noise level of the case.