The Perfect Case For Your Gaming PC?

If you’re in the market for a new, good-looking PC case then there are quite a few options out there right now, but NZXT is hoping you’ll choose its new H5 Elite case. Retailing for $140, it’s reasonably priced given its specification, which includes software lighting control and directed cooling for you graphics card.

Out of the box you get two 140mm RGB fans included in the front panel and a third fan – 120mm this time – is located in the H5 Elite’s centerpiece – its angled fan.

The fan is designed to point at your graphics card, channeling cool air in from the bottom of the case and rather than just pointing it in the rough direction of your graphics card like other intake fans, this one shoves it straight into your graphics card’s cooler to boost cooling.

The down side is that this is the prime location often used in other cases for storage hard disks and as a result, the H5 Elite only supports a single 3.5in hard disk that sits behind the motherboard tray. This should be enough for most people, but if you’re looking to transplant more than one hard disk you’re out of luck.

Cable tidying is excellent, though, with plenty of channels for stowing cables as well as Velcro ties. You can also spot the NZXT fan and lighting controller. This can alter the color of the lighting rings on the fans themselves to a number of effects as well as a static color of your choosing.

Sadly, you’ll need to connect the fans to your motherboard as there’s no way to add them to NZXT’s CAM software unless you use one of its motherboards.

The H5 Elite has a removable roof dust guard that’s held on with magnets with a slide our guard protecting the base of the case. The roof has space for a pair of 120mm fans, which are not included and neither is a rear fan for the 120mm mount there, which is a shame as it will certainly aid CPU air coolers.

The front panel is pretty basic with a single USB 3 port along with a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port and unlike many other RGB lighting-enabled cases, there are no physical buttons to control the lighting here. Instead it gives the case clean lines with minimal fuss, albeit with the minimum amount of ports.

If you want to install a radiator you can use a 240mm model in the roof while 280mm models can fit in the front of the case. There’s a fair amount of room inside even with an ATX motherboard in place, with enough space for CPU coolers up to 165mm in height and 365mm clearance for graphics cards – enough to swallow even Nvidia’s enormous GeForce RTX 4090.

If you want a great case for cooling your graphics card, this is it. Temperatures in games were several degrees cooler with the same hardware in the H5 Elite than similar cases I tested recently, including NZXT’s own H7 Flow. As expected, though, the CPU temperature using an air cooler was a couple of degrees higher thanks to the case not including a rear fan.

Conclusions

NZXT has taken the bold move of ditching storage space in favor of better graphics card cooling and ultimately that can help keep your hardware running cooler and quieter. The fact you get one single 3.5in hard disk mount might be an issue for some, but the fact is the majority of PC enthusiasts have a single hard disk at most, with many favoring SSDs.

If you don’t need the RGB lighting then the cheaper H5 Flow is a better bet, although it only includes two fans with one of those in the base angled at your graphics card. Otherwise, both cases are identical, albeit with the H5 Elite offering the swagger of a front glass panel.

A rear fan or AIO liquid cooler would fix the mediocre CPU cooling, but as clean, roomy cases with decent cable tidying and good GPU cooling go, though, the H5 Elite is otherwise reasonably priced and an excellent choice.