Nexus and their cases make me cry

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:14 pm

Hi!

I have the Nexus Breeze ATX case and was totally fooled by Nexus with their patented perfect airflow design. Not only this, but my friend has the Nexus Caterpillar (aka Version1) and I also got frustratedwith that case when I tried it out with my friend. So keep away from Nexus cases, they don't know how to make quality cases. Their newest Nexus Clodius is the only case that seems to have a stable and good airflow, but the case is just so basic that everyone would be better off with a cheap Antec (not that Antec cases are bad, I meant the price).

Well a picture is worth a thousand words they say. Well I quote a little of the text found on Nexus' website and attach a picture of the case with my own comments on it. All stuff except the Nexus Morpho comments are of my own experience.

1. Nexus Caterpillar (aka Version1)

The version1 case is equipped with two Real Silent 120mm case fans (black/white model) to create great airflow inside the case. Further more the inside of the case is fully covered with wave-foam noise absorption material to absorb any unwanted noise coming from your systems components.

2. Nexus Breeze

The Nexus Breeze 500 case has been carefully designed to meet the requirements of the most demanding silent computing enthusiasts. This perfect airflow results in very low case temperatures and optimal working conditions for your components. Yet inaudible!

3. Nexus Morpho (not of my own experience, just thoughts)

The Nexus Morpho is a premium aluminium case without compromises. We have done our utmost to get every little detail right. Pure Nexus craftsmanship!

(Image too big, click on the link) http://willhostforfood.com/files3/4055259/airflow.png

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What makes me cry is the Nexus Morpho. It is by far the most problematic case of all Nexus' cases plus it is so falsely advertised (picture shows possibility of a SLI system to be installed inside!). But the fact that Nexus has done their utmost and the case was designed with pure Nexus craftmanship hurts a lot. If the Morpho is the best what Nexus can make, then Nexus have ultimately failed. The reason for my feelings is that I like many of their products like their case fans, PSUs and HDD silencing solutions. Why didn't Nexus realize the problems of the Morpho before bringing it out to the public? It hurts the company's image a lot I think. Also for the price of the Morpho one could get a real premium case with place for even an E-ATX system, and the Morpho supports in reality only mATX (ATX not really an option). The whole Morpho case is a big steal I think. For me it is sure: no Nexus cases at all, I'll stick with Antec and Cooler Master and any other random manufacturer with better solutions. Oh yes, the Nexus Caterpillar is a modification of the Xilence X1, but at least Xilence had a wind tunnel for the GPU making for better airflow than in the Nexus version of the case.

This sucks big time. -LodeHacker

Post by **MikeC** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 1:33 pm

Your present your "case" well; nothing more for me to add... only that I agree.

tehfire · Post by **tehfire** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 6:39 pm

Haha this is the most measured rant I have ever read. I'm sure your purpose was not to rant, but I couldn't help but chuckle at your systematic destruction of the Nexus cases

Moogles · Post by **Moogles** » Wed Dec 17, 2008 7:06 pm

For what it's worth, the Morpho was designed and built by Abee of Japan. Nexus just slapped their name on it and tried to market it. Fortunately they failed, as that case is hugely overpriced and flawed in many regards.

It's not difficult to design an effective and aesthetically pleasing case. The problem lies with all these various manufacturers trying to bring something unique to the market. These so called innovations only make their cases less appealing and not as functional as a more conventional design.

Nexus cases are exceptionally ill conceived, priced and marketed though.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 2:42 am

Thanks for the nice comments

Yeah this is kind of a rant, didn't mean it but systematic destruction fits the description too

Moogles wrote:For what it's worth, the Morpho was designed and built by Abee of Japan.

Good to know. I discovered that the Nexus version1 was a mod of the Xilence X1 case. Good to know this about the Morpho.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:02 am

I learned that an upside down design for the motherboard is potentially a big mistake. One thing you get fooled with is the basic physics that hot air gets up and cool air stays down because it is heavier. However, most cases of this type like one of the Lian Li cases have the tendency to put an HDD cage right in front of the only intake thus making the intaked air warmer. Warm air gets to the CPU area anyway. It must be said. But the true problem starts with the GPU cards; unless the case allows for a liquid cooling kit to be installed, all GPU cards whether passive or active will heat up much much more, because their fans/heatsinks will face upwards and the PCB of the GPU card is facing the air (that is, if there iss any air). Also a problem with this design is the PSU placement. There's no idea putting it up and there's no idea having it on the bottom. So don't get fooled.

From my experience I have learned a great ability. Take a picture from somewhere, start to analyze it, try to find weak points in the picture and preview it to the last bit. I did the same with the Nexus Morpho, and you can see how many problems I could spot in that single picture. I used to trust companies because companies did not lie customers in the past; now they are making patents for ridiculous stuff like if you stick two pencils together with hot glue you call it the "doublepen" and patent it. Then you start every sentence advertising the pencil in this way: "The patented doublepen..." and throw in stuff that doesn't even fit the description: "the doublepen is our most innovative invention and with the patented design you can be assured that it's done with pure craftmanship!". Err... dude it's a pencil. I mean two f**king pencils hot glued together.

One has to have the ability to look in between sentences to find the real information. I don't care if some speakers have patented UltraBass technology, I just want to know the size for the middle frequency driver and the wattage.

Bakkone · Post by **Bakkone** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 4:43 am

And here I thought my girlfriend would love the all exclusive double-pen. I better find her something else for christmas.

Strid · Post by **Strid** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 5:26 am

Bakkone wrote:And here I thought my girlfriend would love the all exclusive double-pen.

She would ... after all it's patented!

Hypernova · Post by **Hypernova** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 6:00 am

Just my 0.02 on the foam:

Foam of the thickness can only remove high frequency. To deal with low completely you are looking at concrete walls. Plus high frequency is more annoying to listen to. They can only do so much given the space constraints as a better-than-nothing.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 8:58 am

Hypernova wrote:Just my 0.02 on the foam:

Foam of the thickness can only remove high frequency. To deal with low completely you are looking at concrete walls. Plus high frequency is more annoying to listen to. They can only do so much given the space constraints as a better-than-nothing.

I know what you're into, but what I meant was it is better to have NO noise absorption material. First of all, if you already have silent components your PC won't sound bad at all, but the problem with noise absorption material is that it kind of "compresses" the sound (like from high to low quality audio) and with noisy components the end result is just UNBEARABLE. I have experienced that I "feel" bass frequencies much much better than high frequencies no matter how low the bass sound is. Same goes for AC hum like sound...

So don't use noisy components with noise absorption material. The sound your PC makes does get dampenede, but the end result is just annoying. Plus the noise absorption material makes everything warmer and is not worth the effort. Just get silent fans and stuff and you're good to go.

Hypernova · Post by **Hypernova** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:14 pm

LodeHacker wrote:
Hypernova wrote:Just my 0.02 on the foam:

Foam of the thickness can only remove high frequency. To deal with low completely you are looking at concrete walls. Plus high frequency is more annoying to listen to. They can only do so much given the space constraints as a better-than-nothing.
I know what you're into, but what I meant was it is better to have NO noise absorption material. First of all, if you already have silent components your PC won't sound bad at all, but the problem with noise absorption material is that it kind of "compresses" the sound (like from high to low quality audio) and with noisy components the end result is just UNBEARABLE. I have experienced that I "feel" bass frequencies much much better than high frequencies no matter how low the bass sound is. Same goes for AC hum like sound...

So don't use noisy components with noise absorption material. The sound your PC makes does get dampenede, but the end result is just annoying. Plus the noise absorption material makes everything warmer and is not worth the effort. Just get silent fans and stuff and you're good to go.

Than I guess it boils down to preference, personally I prefer low freq as I'm used to AC noises. And with the right fan you also filter the noise down to the whoosh which I have no problem with. I hate high pitched grinds with a passion.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:34 pm

I guess you have consumer level speakers as well with MEGA AC humming, right? My monitor's have like zero AC hum and since I got them I started hating the sound

Hypernova · Post by **Hypernova** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 3:14 am

LodeHacker wrote:I guess you have consumer level speakers as well with MEGA AC humming, right? My monitor's have like zero AC hum and since I got them I started hating the sound

Plain Logitech Z-4 and I usually use a head phone. In the dead of the night the most annoying sound source is actually my SS 245B that have light coil whine and my florescent lights. Other than that there's the whoosh from the HRV in the ceiling which drowns out most noises.

Compared to my brother's P182 which have 3 Tri cools on mid and another on high. He explicitly states that noise is not an issue for him

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 6:04 am

"fail" comments have finally been creeping their way to SPCR I see, saw some in another thread also. I'm saddened. Otherwise, good information here, I never fell for their cases anyway, nice to see someone point out the flaws.

blackworx · Post by **blackworx** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 6:09 am

So, so true. I know a guy who completely bought their marketing nonsense (the old "picture covered in blue and red arrows" guff) and shelled out over GBP120 five years ago on an essentially rubbish case. Oh how he waxed lyrical about his magnificent new case, saying how it was going to singlehandedly silence his computer blah blah blah. The only thing that got silenced was him, after he figured out he'd been sold a lemon.

Mind you, I have to admit it's not as if I was exactly there by his side going "no that's just nonsense" ... The marketing fluff is pretty persuasive and I think if I'd been in a position to throw that kind of money around at the time I could easily have made the same mistake.

Arvo · Post by **Arvo** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 8:55 am

I've used Breeze (with limited success) and built systems on Caterpillar (with limited success).

Because both systems included low-power graphic solutions (Radeon 7000 in Breeze and Intel IGP in Caterpillar), then cooling of graphic card was not a problem.

Nexus Breeze "patented" airflow pattern is actually impossible - air cannot be just created inside the upper HDD cage

Well, I could direct air into that area using standard IDE cables, no big problem. Forcing all hot air to escape through PSU was bigger problem (old Athlon XP was hot), low efficiency of Nexus original PSU didn't help either.

Biggest trouble (noisemakers) are HDDs - Nexus cases don't include any kind of HDD supension. Nexus Disktwins offer some help (esp in Caterpillar, if you need install one HDD only); in Breeze I did install additional suspended HDD cage (5.25" disk cage from some older case, placed on foam) and used DiskTwins inside that.

But yes, having used Breeze and Caterpillar and looked at design of Cloudius and Morpho, I no more look at Nexus cases, even for low-power systems. Too much hassle to bring noise down to acceptable level.

Riffer · Post by **Riffer** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 9:14 am

Nexus is one of my favorite vendors, but when I looked at those cases I couldn't figure out what they where trying to achieve.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:53 pm

ryboto wrote:"fail" comments have finally been creeping their way to SPCR I see.

I started using that word after I spent a few days reading http://failblog.org

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 6:18 pm

LodeHacker wrote:
ryboto wrote:"fail" comments have finally been creeping their way to SPCR I see.
I started using that word after I spent a few days reading http://failblog.org

Yea, it seems like a huge internet fad to use that word now, if something is even slightly bad, it's "fail". I mean no offense, but when I read it, it just screams juvenile and the author of whatever text loses credibility in my eyes. It's just one of those things on the list of trivial things I can't stand. But your post was educated, and this is SPCR, so I'm doing my best to accept it.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 2:26 am

One thing you're looking over is that on most web communities like SPCR forums people don't talk formally. So it's perfectly acceptable to see a good deal of LOL/WTF/Fail. However if someone wrote an article at SPCR with those things then it loses credibility. I can write formally as well without that fail stuff, but then again I would be writing stuff that is (unnecessarily) lacking the touch of the h4x0r culture. It's like saying something seriously, but with fun intended (notice fun not pun). So if you can accept this you failed, because you need to get into it as well

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 8:23 am

LodeHacker wrote:One thing you're looking over is that on most web communities like SPCR forums people don't talk formally. So it's perfectly acceptable to see a good deal of LOL/WTF/Fail. However if someone wrote an article at SPCR with those things then it loses credibility. I can write formally as well without that fail stuff, but then again I would be writing stuff that is (unnecessarily) lacking the touch of the h4x0r culture. It's like saying something seriously, but with fun intended (notice fun not pun). So if you can accept this you failed, because you need to get into it as well

what? I don't quite follow. SPCR is a web community, true. Though, as many of us will agree it doesn't really fit with the majority of the web communities. I've just never seen those e-speak words used here until just this past week. Why is it a bad thing to leave out the "h4x0r" culture? Does it really belong here? Last I checked SPCR users were mostly silence/efficiency oriented, not internet/pop-culture oriented.

LodeHacker · Post by **LodeHacker** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:02 am

ryboto wrote:Why is it a bad thing to leave out the "h4x0r" culture?

Didn't say it's bad to leave it out. But be honest, isn't it simple to just say Nexus' cases fail rather than write a deeply thought and long article about why Nexus' cases are bad.

Oh well... Will leave out the fail stuff and lol/other stuff, just to make you happier and not start the SPCR pop revolution. Agree?

ryboto · Post by **ryboto** » Sat Dec 20, 2008 12:28 pm

LodeHacker wrote:
ryboto wrote:Why is it a bad thing to leave out the "h4x0r" culture?
Didn't say it's bad to leave it out. But be honest, isn't it simple to just say Nexus' cases fail rather than write a deeply thought and long article about why Nexus' cases are bad.

Oh well... Will leave out the fail stuff and lol/other stuff, just to make you happier and not start the SPCR pop revolution. Agree?

But you did write a deeply thought out article. Sure it's easier, but it's a vague assertion about the product. If you want to start a revolution, power to you, I was just expressing my opinion on the matter. I'll always be annoyed by it, and I'm stubborn, so it will probably never change. What's wrong with using words like "bad" or "crap"? eh, it's just trivial, sorry to even rant about it here, I should start something in the off topic section. I still appreciate the information, since I'm sure a lot of users will find it informative and useful.