Construction

 

Four thumbscrews two on each side are used to hold the two side panels of this case. Unlike other cases you will want and need access to both sides for installation and fine tuning of your system. The thumbscrews are a great idea but the plastic screws lower the perception of this being a quality case. They are plastic covered standard thread system screws, and since there are only 4 they could have been a better quality. As with most enthusiasts these will be replaced with a higher quality set probably color matched to a case theme.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This case is configured to mount the power supply unit (PSU) on the the bottom. With a PSU mount on the bottom air is pulled into the system from that area by the PSU fan. When a case is on the floor or computer hutch you will be glad to have the Lexa S dust filter provided for the PSU. The filter can be removed with a thumb clip mechanism for cleaning and I know for my house this is a must because of pets, however the case will have to be tipped to access the filter. The documentation claims that 4 screws need to be removed for this, but there must have been some changes between production and documentation.

 

 

 

 

 

Overall system ventilation is provided with four fans.The system comes with three 120 mm fans. One on the top, rear, and on the removable panel. The single top mounted fan is 140 mm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The front bezel can be removed as it is held in with 4 pressure point mounts to access the drive bays and fan. Be aware that it is fairly top heavy and wants to flip down. The lower grill of the front bezel also has a fine screen inside of the bezel but you will need to use canned air to clean this area. Unlike many cases that use melted plastic mounts this is attached with philips head screws and could be removed for cleaning if needed. A nice touch was to add a fine screen mesh on the front mount 120 mm fan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The center of the front bezel route wires from two circuit boards. The first is the fan control and the second is the front mount ports. I have been a fan of front mount ports since the industry moved to include these for ease of use,  the Lexa S has USB, audio and external SATA connectors. The circuit boards that provide the connections have cables attached with hot melt glue which is a nice touch, but in removing the case I found the SATA cable was no longer glued in. For any enthusiast this is not a big concern but make sure you check these connections when you are installing 5.25" device to prevent having connectivity issues. If I can find my hot glue gun I am going to re-attach that SATA cable.

 

 

 

 

The styling of the 5.25" and 3.5" covers is a fine steel mesh as you see in the picture. This will allow additional air draw locations but could also be dust catches. The team designing the Lexa S did a nice job of putting a fine foam mesh behind these in what I am guessing is a practical purpose. It will have to be seen how well this functions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the bezel you have the typical cables of power, reset, and lights. The Lexa S also adds two fan controls, LED bars and the convenience ports. The cables running from the front bezel to the case body are nice and long. The cables have a nice routing path built in from the front to the main board body area. The fan control provides fan speed control knobs located on the front bezel behind the door. However there is no indication of case temperature or fan speed.

 

 

 

 

The drive bays are plentiful on the Lexa S. Four 5.25" front mount bays with a separate section for 2 3.5" front mount bays. The internal five drive bays have provided mounting clips for traditional disk drives mounted 90 degrees off from cases you may be accustomed with. Additionally for enthusiasts NZXT has provided a nice 3.5" to 2.5" double drive adapter. I have recently moved one of my machines to the Intel X-25 generation 2 Solid State drives (SSD) and will show and describe that below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The case has a very nice texture to the paint job. I personally like this type of texture compared to "gloss" finishes. The metal edges are finished nicely with rounded corners, extra sheet metal bends providing a cut free system building is a bonus for any system builder. I found nice locations for wire routing and grommets to push cable management on the back side of the motherboard area for a clean look and to improve airflow. Additionally there is a large access hole to help enthusiast change or modify the CPU cooling devices they may be working with. For those of you doing liquid cooling there are tube ports on the rear of the unit. Additionally the top 140 mm fan area can be used for a radiator area instead of mounting traditional 120mm or 140mm fans.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The case has a standard PSU opening at the bottom with filter as mentioned earlier. A nice feature provided for noise reduction are 4 rubber fan grommets mounted to reduce PSU vibration noise. Above the PSU opening you have seven mesh back plate covers that come with the case. Above the slot covers there is an open mesh area with approximately 4mm diameter holes. The same 4mm mesh covers are used for the single 120mm rear fan area and the double 140mm top fan area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Documentation

 

 

"Before Beginning
For safety issues, it is highly recommended that all users wear gloves during installation."

This introduction to the case made me laugh. I don't know about you but I don't have the dexterity with gloves on to do the intricate work inside a case. I don't think I could do much system assembly even with fine cotton gloves on. If anything you could ware cotton gloves when handling the case to not leave fingerprints all over the window or bezel.

A nicely printed manual is provided on 11.5" X 13.75" paper. The complete documentation is on one side of the paper. Four languages are covered one per side with two total sheets. The included languages are English, German, French and Spanish. While reading the document it became clear that this was meant to be a booklet and not on a single page. The order and layout of the information was confusing. For most builders you don't or won't read the manual. But when a critical piece of information is needed it is invaluble to have it well documented.

The Lexa S graphics design team should have been reformatted to fit the single page provided.

There were specific sections of the document that was lacking or completely missing. The documentation and internal labels for the fan control cabling was poor. The cables themselves are color coded, but there are no labels on the cables and the documentation did not cover which cable colors were controlled by which fan knob. It was easy enough to figure out, but these are the little quality touches that help all enthusiasts and system builders.

Additionally the document did not match the product as in the PSU filter example given earlier. Some of the technical call-outs for pin locations were difficult to read. I downloaded the product PDF and the PDF was better but could have been provided in a higher image quality to decode some of that missing detail in the printed copy. A missing essential in my view is a adhesive label with the system pin outs. As a builder I want to attached a label like that somewhere inside the case for future reference.