For the past couple of months I’ve had the Zalman Z9 Neo case lingering around, and other than moving it out of the way around my room several times, I’ve not actually had the opportunity to do anything with it, so now it’s time to finally look under the hood! This particular model is just one out of over 20 mid-tower enclosures Zalman currently offers. I’m not exactly sure whether there’s any correlation between the model number and the quality range, or whether they just label them completely randomly. The Zalman Z9 Neo, which comes in black and white variants, is fairly inexpensive (slightly over 1500 CZK here, 55 Euros in Germany, 60 USD in the US). So this would suggest that Zalman intended for this mid-tower to be postioned somewhere in the lower mainstream.
We personally opted to acquire the Zalman Z9 Neo Black, which has a faux brushed metal front door with a violet hue. It only opens to the right side. It also comes with a tinted left-hand panel window. The case’s overall dimensions are 205 × 490 × 482 mm and the case can support two 5.25″ drives (or 3.5″/four 2.5″ drives in this position), two 3.5″ drives and two 2.5″ ones. There are two front 140mm fan positions, two 120mm, as well as one top and one rear position, and all five come factory pre-installed with 120mm fans. The two top fans come with a blue backlight.
Other notable features include two USB 2.0 and two 3.0 ports, plus audio headers on the top-front panel. They come with rubber sealing gaskets which offers protection from dust. There are also two fan dust filters, one over the front fans and the second one on the bottom under the power supply intake. Most of the case material is steel (a rather thin variety though) with plastic front and top panels. We will take a closer look after a short break, so stay tuned!
Link to the review: http://www.hardwareinsights.com/wp/zalman-z9-neo-case-review
Loading ...