Page 3 - Physical Look - Inside
Popping the two side panels off is pretty straightforward. As you saw from the second to last picture on the preceding page, the two side panels are held on with captive thumbscrews. The see-through panel is held in with a metal frame that has two metal pegs sticking out. This secures into the side of the case where holes line up. The glass panel otherwise sits on top of the power supply shroud lip. Unfortunately, we still have no rubber or foam padding here to prevent side panel vibration, which is a bit disappointing. Overall, I still like this way of holding the glass panels, as it provides an easy way to install and remove the side panel while securing the glass panel with both pegs and screws. The glass itself is decently thick at 4mm. The top, left, and right edges are bordered with a black outline to prevent handling marks. The glass, as already mentioned, is quite tinted, making it a bit more difficult to see through.
Internally, you can see the NZXT H510 Elite is still an open case design with only a division between the top and bottom. Majority of your components will go on the top where the glass panel exposes it, while the bottom is filled with the power supply, extra cables, and drives you may want to put there. The dividing aluminum is not solid all the way and is filled with many perforations. This allows air to pass through the two areas. Otherwise, there is no cage for optical drives, though that has been gone for practically all of 2018, so to think it would be present here would be silly.
Looking at where the motherboard would sit, you can see the NZXT H510 Elite already comes with the standoffs installed for an ATX motherboard. These have been painted over in black to match the rest of the dark interior. At the back, we have the single NZXT Aer F120 Case Edition fan, which has some slightly changed specifications from the retail Aer F120 we looked at previously. The back has an open slot for a single 120mm fan or radiator with the back I/O output beside it. The top has an opening for a single 120mm or 140mm fan or radiator here, assuming you have enough clearance. As mentioned previously, NZXT will include a one Aer F140 fan at the top with consumer units. This opening is situated in the middle of the top panel, which may cause some compatibility issues with your motherboard, so your mileage will vary. Cabling holes exist at the top to route in various cables like the CPU power cable and hide any extra cables you may have from your CPU cooling options. Speaking of which, the large opening for the back of the motherboard exists so users can install a backplate for the aforementioned cooling without having to remove the motherboard. The edges of this cutout are rounded over and smoothed to prevent any accidental cuts that might otherwise occur. Finally, at the top you can see a mounted RGB LED strip. As this is their updated case, we have the second generation of HUE accessories, which we will expand on shortly.
Continuing down the back of the NZXT H510 Elite, we have the seven expansion card slots with individual screws for each. In addition, we have the two vertical mounting slots if you want to show off your expansion card in a different direction. I am not the biggest fan of this orientation, especially since the card would therefore sit quite close to the side glass panel. Graphics cards, especially open-air cards, will not have much room for fresh air to be taken in from their fans. Otherwise, at the bottom, we have a perforated division between the power supply basement and the rest of the case. The NZXT H510 Elite does allow for 2.5" drives to be mounted on this area, just like the H500, but these are located on the back of the motherboard by default.
At the front of the NZXT H510 Elite, you can see how cable management is handled in this case as well as the cooling options here. First, we have the signature metal bar that covers over the large routing hole behind it. This is something shared across all of their H-series cases, though I think there are some changes they can make with this. For one, I think they could have increased the gap clearance between the metal bar and the rest of the case, since it is a bit tight for some thicker cables. At the very front, a metal plate here can be removed from the inside that houses the cooling area. The front glass can be removed with some screws internally to also get access to the fans, but the bracket makes this problem irrelevant. Two Aer RGB 2 140mm fans are installed in said bracket. Otherwise, there are a few more routing holes exist near the back and on top of the shroud to allow for data and power cables to pass through here.
As this is their "Elite" case, it would be strange for NZXT not to put their smart hub here. In the case of the H510 Elite, we have their second-generation hub for fan and lighting control. As such, all the preinstalled fans and lighting strips were already plugged into this smart hub. This hub is mounted at the top, and NZXT has done a pretty good job in tidying up the cables. Speaking of which, we can see the large routing hole, followed by the plastic valley for holding cables. Two Velcro straps are also placed here to secure cables in this valley. In between the case side panel and the back, we have approximately 19mm of cable spacing at the narrowest point. We will see what this looks like later on when we install into this case. At the bottom, a single drive cage exists to store two 3.5" drives here. You can only store the larger drives here since the cage is really just a metal box that attaches to the side of the hard drives. This is a bit disappointing, but once again we will see how this affects our final build later on. If you do want to install the smaller drives, you can do so using the plastic trays underneath the backplate motherboard cutout. Otherwise, we have an area at the back for the power supply with a mesh filter underneath. There are no rubber or foam pads here to prevent vibration noises, which is a strange omission.
All of the front input cables are here and sleeved in a black cable to keep its discreet nature. This includes a USB 3.0 header, the newer USB 3.1 Type C header, an HD Audio jack, and the front panel pins. Like the other NZXT cases, this front panel pin connection is all together in a single block design, making it easy to plug into your motherboard instead of fishing with individual wires. Again, all case manufacturers just need to do this, especially most modern motherboards follow the same pin layout. If it does not, NZXT has also included a splitter for this block to accommodate other layouts.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion
