HEC Blitz Case Review

The Top, Bottom, and Rear Panels

The top panel of the Blitz can be seen in Figure 7. It has a mesh with an air filter, featuring a 120 mm fan (Hong Sheng A1225L12S, which is the same fan sold by Thermaltake as TT-1225, 1,800 rpm, 70 cfm, 32 dBA). You can install a second 120 mm there, if you want. The top panel uses a tool-less mechanism for these fans, and it is very easy to change the fan from exhaustion mode (i.e., pulling hot air from inside the case to the outside of it) to ventilation mode (i.e., pulling cold air from outside the case to the inside of it). This allows you to easily configure the case to work with positive air pressure, meaning that you have more forced air entering the case than exiting.

Figure 7: Top panel

Figure 8: Top fan

The bottom panel has two air intakes, one for the power supply fan, and the other for an optional fan.

Figure 9: Bottom panel

The rear panel and the interior of the Blitz are painted black, which is nice to see on a USD 40 case.

Only two expansion slot covers are reusable – the other five you need to break and toss away. The rear panel has a locking system for the expansion slots which fastens all expansion cards using only one screw. You can still use individual screws with each expansion card, if you want.

There are two holes for hoses of liquid cooling solutions, but if you have hoses bigger than 0.5” (12 mm) in diameter, you will need to break their metallic protections in order to fit hoses up to 1.2” (30 mm).

To the left of these holes, the case has a place for installing a nine-pin D-Sub connector (the one used by legacy serial ports).

Unfortunately, the Blitz doesn’t come with a rear fan installed. It supports the installation of one 80 mm, 90 mm or 120 mm model.

Figure 10: Rear panel

The Blitz comes with a hole for you to install a Kensington lock, preventing unauthorized people from opening your computer. We think that HEC could have simply added a tab or a loop for installing a regular padlock, since the locks from Kensington are somewhat expensive.

Figure 11: Hole for Kensington lock

Let’s now take a look inside the HEC Blitz.