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The case hasn’t exactly been a joy to work with either, with a very cramped internal layout and few of the refinements like a removable motherboard tray or well thought out cable routing that can make building a system a great deal easier.

The exterior is also very uninspiring, with the blank black box looks and poor case door with its tacked on blue lit metal plate, resulting in a case that just looks at best understated but will probably come across just plain boring. While we frequently praise cases for being a blank canvas for modders, here there’s none of the style and finesse we’ve praised in the past – it’s just a featureless black box with a metal triangle and a blue light on the front.

And there’s a pretty hefty price tag involved here too, with the NZXT Whisper currently selling for around £95. In this range there is big competition from the still superlative Antec P182, available now for under £90, which bests the NZXT on literally every front, from build quality, to ease of use to overall performance.

We’ve also recently seen excellent high airflow cases like the HAF 932 (priced a bit higher at £125) become very competitive in the low noise stakes with the use of larger and larger fans meaning blades spin slower, and noise levels drop sharply, while not compromising on airflow.

If we wanted a £90-100 “blank canvas” case – every single time we’d get the Akasa Mirage. The build quality, space and design easily outweigh the extra £10 in cost.

After our time with it, the core build quality is mostly there, but the level of polish and attention to detail you’d see from bigger names like Cooler Master, Lian Li, Akasa or Antec just isn’t. This puts the NZXT in a very tough position, as it’s competing at a price point against higher quality cases from these very manufacturers and that's where it ultimately falls down. For the same money you can get a different case elsewhere with much better build quality, performance (in relation to cooling and noise), looks and features for less money, and it’s for this reason that we can’t really recommend the NZXT Whisper.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...isper-review/1

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