February 16, 2021 The recall of the NZXT H1 case has been made official by US and Canadian safety agencies
NZXT’s H1 gaming PC case has officially been recalled for posing a fire risk. The problem lies with the case’s PCIe riser bracket, and was initially discovered by Gamers Nexus – if screws were taken in and out of their hole on the unplated board, then the PCB around the hole would start to wear down, which could eventually cause a short circuit. As you can imagine, metal screws and electricity don’t mix.
NZXT initiailly recalled the H1 late last year, believing the issue would be a simple fix of swapping out the PCIe riser screws for non-conductive nylon screws. However, Gamers Nexus has released a follow-up video criticising the decision and suggesting the case still poses a fire hazard if owners decide to swap out the replacement screws for their own parts, or the case is bought second-hand years later.
NZXT’s CEO Johnny Hou then followed up with a blog post at the start of February, saying that the H1 was to be immediately removed from sale for a second time, and to roll out a fix that would “address the root cause of the issue”.
Now, the recall has been made official by the US and Canada, with the US Consumer Product Safety Comission repeating what NZXT told H1 owners earlier this month – you should immediately stop using the case and contact NZXT for the revised repair kit. The report page states that there are 32,000 cases that need to be recalled in the US, and 1,024 in Canada.
Outside of these areas there’s still no official recall, but NZXT is offering free refunds or repair kits to any NZXT H1 owner, no matter where they live.
“Going forward, we’re instituting more robust and thorough design processes,” Hou says in the original blog post. “From the initial designs, QA, to additional testing, we’re committed to quality in both our products and our response to your concerns.”
If you happen to have an NZXT H1 case, you can head over to https://info.nzxt.com/h1-safety-notice/, or contact NZXT at 888-965-5520 or [email protected].
Would you pick up an NZXT H1 once this issue is sorted? It looks like it could be a solid case for crafting the best mini gaming PC build, and Samsung managed to bounce back from its Note 7 fire fiasco pretty quickly, after all.