NZXT Hades Case Review

The Disk Drive Bays

Hades from NZXT comes with four 5.25” external bays featuring a very easy to use screwless installation mechanism. Internally, however, all bays are 5.25” (see Figure 16)! So this case has in fact nine 5.25” bays (from these, only the top six use a screwless installation mechanism).

Figure 16: 5.25” bays.

For installing hard disk drives, you need to install an adapter to each drive. The case comes with four sets of adapters, a number that may be somewhat frustrating for more advanced users. These adapters must be screwed to each hard drive, but at least each hole has a rubber ring to help reducing the noise produced by the hard drive. The case also comes with an adapter for 2.5” devices (mostly SSD units).

The hard drive with the adapter installed can be installed to a 5.25” bay using the screwless mechanism. You can move these mechanisms around. For example, if you have four hard disk drives and only one optical drive, you can remove the mechanisms from the unused external 5.25” bays and move them to the 5.25” reserved for hard disk drives. It is good to keep in mind that the bottom four 5.25” bays are recommended for the hard drives because they are located in front of the 200-mm front fan.

In Figure 17, you can see all accessories that come with the case. See the hard disk drive adapters on the top part of this picture. The forth set comes already screwed to the case with the 2.5” adapter installed on it.

Figure 17: Accessories.