NZXT H7 Flow RGB (2024) review: Great cooling in a small footprint

Our Verdict

The NZXT H7 Flow’s tool-free panels and excellent cable tidying mean it’s a pleasure to work with it, and even the non-RGB version includes fans for just $130 with both models offering decent cooling. We also love the unique vertical PSU mount, which gives more space for liquid cooling radiators than typical tower cases, without compromising graphics card support.

Reasons to buy

• Great looks and small foorprint
• Loads of room for air and water-cooling gear
• Excellent cable tidying features

Reasons to avoid

• Base looks ugly without fans
• Fan frame lighting is partially obscured
• Adding more fans doesn’t improve airflow much

While it’s not a revolutionary case, the new NZXT H7 Flow RGB (2024) makes a significant tweak to the original model released two years ago, with a vertical PSU mount. This means the main chamber now has loads of room for water-cooling radiators, large graphics cards, and CPU coolers, in a surprisingly small footprint. The $150 RGB model also includes a 360mm fan frame with three 120mm fans embedded in it, which looks great with RGB lighting shining through the front mesh panel.

This market is crowded when it comes to finding the best PC case options between $100 and $150, but NZXT has done an excellent job in making the H7 Flow RGB (2024) distinctive and attractive enough to stand out from the crowd. It sits atop front and rear ledges to raise its lower flush fan mount off your desk, and the clear side panel nearly spans from top to bottom. The interior also looks particularly clean, thanks to the exterior panels acting as dust filters, which further boosts this case’s support for large radiators.

If you want to water cool your PC with multiple radiators, or just use a large AIO cooler or air cooler for your CPU, there’s massive potential here for both camps, and I’ll be looking at how well its three included 120mm fans perform.

This case’s features focus on making it as easy as possible to build a gaming PC, including providing tool-free panels, as you’d expect from a premium PC case. The vertical PSU mount makes a profound difference compared to the original H7 Flow as well, releasing the whole of the base for fans and radiators in a similar way to a dual chamber case, but without the massive footprint.

Specs

Design

Despite its vertically mounted PSU, the NZXT H7 Flow RGB has an otherwise standard layout and even supports E-ATX motherboards up to 277mm-wide. The fact the PSU sits in a rear chamber means there’s loads of room to hide cables as well, both in front of the PSU or in the numerous routing channels peppered with Velcro cable anchors.

The case itself is sturdy and well-made. Plus, as all its exterior panels are removable without tools, it’s simple to install your hardware, even if your setup includes multiple additional fans and radiators. There are no interior dust filters either, as this job is handled by the exterior mesh panels, which will require cleaning a few times a year to prevent them from looking unsightly, especially if you opt for the white version.

One aspect we felt would have helped the build process, though, is a removable fan mounting tray in the roof. Given the case’s excellent water-cooling credentials, thanks to multiple radiator locations, this feature would have been a useful addition to save you holding fans or radiators at the same time as screwing them in place.

There’s also one negative aspect of the design, which stems from the vertically mounted PSU. While the fans in the base are welcome, they’re offset from the motherboard by a good three or four inches, meaning only a portion of their blades actually point at your graphics card. The mesh on the exterior panels is also quite fine, and this may restrict airflow and reduce the impact of additional fans. We’ll see if this is the case in the cooling results later.

The case stands on stilts at either end, leaving a chamber underneath it that’s begging for some RGB lighting, and NZXT provides its own F360 RGB Core fan frames for just that task, and you could add extra fabs or your own LED strips too.

The base area has another quirk as well, which is that NZXT has left a gap between the bottom of the fan mounts here and the edge of the PSU cover, giving an unwelcome view of your power supply and cable stowing area if you don’t fill this void with fans or one of NZXT’s fan frames, like the one included with the H7 Flow RGB. This is a shame, and will really spoil the view, especially if you have a black PSU and the white version of the case.

Features

As well as the ability to fit three 120mm fans or 360mm radiators in all three fan mounting locations, the front of the case can alternatively house three 140mm fans or a massive 420mm radiator, while the roof can also house two 140mm fans. You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to liquid coolers or custom water cooling, and there’s 185mm of CPU air cooler clearance, and essentially unlimited space for GPUs too.

The F360 RGB Core fan frame, which is included with the RGB case model we’re reviewing here, can either be connected to an NZXT RGB controller, or to your motherboard by way of a 3-pin header, and it also has a 3-pin fan header for power. A single cable runs off the frame to reduce cable clutter before splitting into these elements, which is a neat touch, while the standard model of this case includes three 120mm fans.

Further clutter-reduction comes from the addition of a large cable cover next to the motherboard, which can be removed and then replaced after you’ve hooked up power to all your gear, so you can hide the likes of the 24-pin ATX connector and front panel cables as much as possible. Neither version of this case has any rear or roof fans, so your CPU cooler and graphics card are left to their own devices when it comes to directly exhausting hot air, though there’s at least a generous helping of positive air pressure at the front.

If you have hard disks and 2.5-inch SSDs, then this case also caters well to your needs. There are two 2.5-inch/3.5-inch drive bays, and two further dedicated 2.5-inch bays behind the motherboard, which is enough for most PC enthusiasts, and these drive bays thankfully don’t affect the length of PSU you can install in the case either. Finally, the front panel covers all the usual basics, with two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, and a headphone jack.

Cooling performance

In its out-of-the-box configuration, with three 120mm fans at the front, the NZXT H7 Flow RGB (2024) managed to keep our Core i5 12600K’s CPU temperature to 74°C, which was 2°C warmer than the NZXT H6 Flow RGB with its three angled front fans, but 2°C cooler than Cooler Master’s MasterBox TD500 Mesh V2. Interestingly, adding fans to the rear, roof, and base mounts failed to lower this figure by more than a degree.

The 63°C temperature of our Radeon RX 7900 XT test GPU was more competitive, being 4°C lower than the result from the NZXT H6 Flow, likely due to the much larger area beneath the GPU cooler, and the fans pointing directly at the GPU too. Adding more fans to the base also saw a further 3°C knocked off this temperature, so this is potentially worth doing if you’re going to install a hot-running graphics card in this case.

Noise level

The NZXT H7 Flow’s noise reading of 41dBA was just under the 42dBA recorded by the NZXT H6 Flow RGB, but the fans did exhibit a little bit of a high-pitch drone at full speed.

We advise limiting the fans to running at 75 percent of their full speed or below, as the drone disappeared at these settings. At a more typical 50 percent speed, the fan noise was cut to 38dBA, which was basically inaudible above the noise made by the rest of the system.

Price

The NZXT H7 Flow RGB price is $150, while the non-RGB model retails for $130. These prices are competitive, especially when you consider the case’s support for up to three radiators, while still having room for the largest graphics cards on the market. Such a setup can usually only be achieved with much larger cases, or dual-chamber models that take up far more desk space. The equivalent cases from NZXT’s own lineup, such as the H6 Flow RGB and H9 Elite, as well as the Lian Li O11D Evo RGB, cost either the same price or are more expensive.

There are certainly more affordable options with less cooling potential, such as Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh V2, but none of them have the same cooling potential. In addition to all that cooling power, the H7 Flow RGB also looks great and is a pleasant case to work with. It would get full marks for value if it were $10 cheaper, but it’s already reasonably priced at $130-150.

Alternatives

NZXT H6 Flow RGB

If you like to really show off the hardware in your PC, then NZXT’s H6 Flow RGB offers an aquarium-style view of your PC’s interior for a very reasonable price. It doesn’t have the small footprint of the H7 Flow, but it does look absolutely gorgeous if you have the desk space for it. Like the H7 Flow, this case also offers great cable-tidying features and excellent build quality.

Read our NZXT H6 Flow RGB review.

Verdict

The NZXT H7 Flow RGB is not only a great-looking case, but it also offers superb radiator support for water cooling and comes with three RGB fans as standard. Combine this with the excellent cooling power on tap, as well as the excellent cable tidying features, tool-free panels, and eye-catching design, and the NZXT H7 Flow RGB is a great piece of PC case design.

It’s genuinely a pleasure to work with this case and build a PC inside it, and while there are some areas that could be improved, it still has a great design for the money. That vertical PSU mount basically means you can squeeze loads of hardware and cooling gear into the interior but without the massive footprint of a dual-chamber case. This case enables you to build a cool, good-looking PC, while also not taking up too much desk space.