Update: NZXT has identified a potential fire hazard on some H1 cases and is asking customers to contact it for an updated kit. The company said a screw on the PCIe riser cable may cause a short where it contacts the case. H1 customers are asked to contact NZXT at h1support@nzxt.com to see if their unit is impacted. The company has advised customers to power off units until they have determined if a repair kit is required or not.
Building in a small-form-factor case can be a royal pain. Unlike with larger alternatives, more forethought and foresight is required, as difficulties around order of assembly and cable management (among other issues) will crop up.
With its new H1 case, NZXT attempts to strike a middle ground: This $350 13-liter tower is actually more of a kit, as it comes equipped with a preinstalled 140mm all-in-one liquid CPU cooler, 650-watt 80+ Gold power supply, and GPU riser cable. Moreover, the included cables are all custom lengths designed to fit perfectly within the chassis’s confines, as you’ll see in our video above—all you have to do is the simple work of inserting a processor, motherboard, graphics card, and storage.
(Curious just how much simpler the H1 makes a small-form-factor build? We put it to the test, pitting our time spent assembling a full rig in the H1 against our time rolling together a similar PC in a full ATX case. You can watch the video embedded below.)
Given that the H1 eliminates the major annoyances of small-form-factor builds while still giving the DIY crowd the freedom to personalize hardware, it’s not a surprise that the case is currently sold out on NZXT’s website. Both colors (matte white and matte black) are out of stock still, though NZXT says that it anticipates more will become available by the end of March.