The new NZXT H7 comes with a new side vent for the front panel to aid in providing the up to three fans with more airflow. Then there's the perforated top panel, which helps exhaust fans more easily blow out hot air. All this should provide a small improvement to cooling performance. The snap-off top panel also includes a filter, but this one connects to the chassis underneath. The filter covers a mount that can hold three 120mm or two 140mm fans, as well as any radiators of corresponding proportions. If you’re looking to add a bunch of hard disks, sadly there’s just the basic two 3.5in mounts in a removable cage in the base of the case, which can also be used for 2.5in SSDs, in addition to four dedicated mounts for the latter behind the motherboard tray and on top of the PSU cover.

Sadly, when looking at the H7 and H7 Elite, thermal results were less impressive, especially with regards to the Elite. Even with its additional fans, the H7 Elite does not run much cooler than NZXT’s standard H7, with both cases exhibiting GPU thermals that are 5 degrees hotter than the H7 Flow. If you want low system thermals, the H7 Flow is clearly the case you should be buying.With the top filter installed, the H7 Flow’s CPU temperatures are a close match to those of Corsair’s iCUE 5000T, beating both the Cooler Master HAF 500 and Lian Li O11D EVO. In Win’s N515 leads in CPU temperatures due to its different radiator placement, but the H7 Flow almost caught it when we removed the exhaust filter from our configuration. NZXT’s H series has been tinkered with many times over the years. And with the performance of the new H7 Flow, it’s clear the company’s iconic design can evolve and continue to impress with the changing market and growing thermal demands of today’s high-end hardware. There really aren’t many bad things to say about the NZXT H7 Flow. It’s relatively affordable, impressed during testing, and importantly in my eyes, it takes a different approach to airflow with a perforated metal front and top, rather than boring (and potentially restricting) fine mesh.

Thermal performance is an essential factor for any PC case. Your system may look fantastic and seem silent from the outside, but all of that is for nought if your PC has the internal temperature of an oven. Your PC case needs enough airflow for your components to remain cool under load and to prevent any form of thermal throttling. For our test, we used the following hardware using fixed fan speeds (so that only the case and its included fans can influence thermal performance). After unscrewing and removing the second and third slot cover, our ATX build slipped right into the H7 Flow with zero issues. Placing the radiator on the top panel while using its fans as exhaust provides voltage-regulator cooling benefits, though at some cost in CPU temperature. At the bottom of NZXT’s H7 lineup is the standard H7, a model that features a plain front panel design that will be familiar to most NZXT users. When compared to the higher-end H7 Elite model, the only major differences are the H7 Elite’s tempered glass front panel, the Elite’s inclusion of additional fans, and its inclusion of a fan/RGB controller. The first thing that we will note with our 600 RPM fan tests is that NZXT’s H7 Elite would not let its fans run at speeds of below 750 RPM. This is a quirk of the case’s fan controller and software, and for this reason we have not placed data for the H7 Elite into our 600 RPM fan graphs. Simply put, adding 750 RPM fan speed data would be unfair to the other cases that we have tested.With the front panel being perforated, the H7 Flow’s right side panel can be completely closed off. Unlike the H7 and H7 Elite, the H7 Flow does not require a perforated right side panel for airflow, allowing NZXT to ship this model with a plain right side panel. FYI, their H700s were their 'fix' to this via a brute force method of 'just add more fans', while maintaining the stylish and air flow choking design of the previous cases. It worked, though it could've been better if they'd just done the H7 Flow right then and there. Even with an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor, you'll see a good 5% reduction for average temperature in games. It's still not quite as good as some other PC cases, namely the be quiet! Silent Base 802 or NZXT H7 Flow, but it's good to see lower temperatures all in keeping the same overall look of the existing H710.

Voltage regulator temperatures show why this builder prefers to put the radiator (and its extra fans) on top, as the N515 fell well behind the H7 Flow’s clear win... In all, the H7 is slightly smaller than the H710, and it is significantly lighter. The H710 was 12.1 kg, and the new H7 is 10.26kg. That said, both cases support the same levels of CPU clearance, front fan/radiator clearance, and cable management space. The only compromise with the new H7 is that is has 13mm less GPU clearance, not that 400mm of clearance isn’t enough for practically all modern GPUs. Our starting point for this review of the H7 family starts in 2019 with the H510 and H710, which were interesting cases that leant heavily on looks and styling, and rather less on performance. With NZXT’s previous generation of cases, the company started off with more basic designs. For the H510 series, NZXT started off by launching their standard H510, later launching their enhanced H510i model, and later their H510 Elite. Last year, NZXT rounded off their H510 lineup with their H510 Flow, years after the release of their H510. That’s a long wait for those who wanted an H510 model with a more airflow-oriented design.

The NZXT H710i measured in at an average of 73 C for gaming on the aforementioned CPU. Stress testing through benchmarks saw temperatures approach 90 C at bursts before settling in the mid-80s. The NZXT H7 saw a reduction in the temperature of about 5% across the board. Gaming saw an average of 71 C, which is better than the outgoing case, but still short of the N7 Flow. Removing all the panels exposes just how open the H7 Flow is internally, with its forward fan mounts a full 2 inches behind the front panel. The graphics card temperatures saw the Elite's multiple front fans offer the lowest temperature of 71 degrees, followed by the H7 flow and the H7 was 4 degrees warmer due it having just one fan. Conclusions

While NZXT’s H710 chassis has proved to be popular over its lifespan, the PC market has changed a lot since this case was introduced. For starters, CPUs and GPUs are more power-hungry than before, making airflow a greater concern for PC builders. This change to the PC market has forced NZXT to include more fan mounts on the top of their H7 series cases, adding support for top-mounted 360mm liquid cooling radiators while redesigning their front panels to enable increased system airflow.As expected, NZXT’s H7 Flow delivers much lower CPU and GPU thermals than the standard H7, so much so that the case is one of the best performing cases that we have tested with 600 RPM fan speeds. While the case does not offer cooling that is on par with Fractal’s Torrent chassis, it gets remarkably close for a case that only ships with two fans out of the box. If we added a few more fans to this chassis, maybe we could expect CPU/GPU thermals to lower even further. This mid-tower is perfect for a minimalist build while keeping the process simple and intuitive, utilizing widened channels, hooks, straps, and toolless entry.