Page 1 - Introduction
NZXT RogueProduct: Pre-Modified SSF / mATX PC chassis
Info: www.nzxt.com
Buy: $159.99
In the past we reviewed pretty much most of the PC cases from the guys at NZXT, a fast growing company that specialized themselves in making what they call "gaming armor". Let's talk about gaming armor for a brief moment. Armor is supposed to shield you from danger, and of course chassis wise shields your PC. Yes my Guru's we are actually talking about PC casing here. A couple of years ago at first we checked out NZXTs Guardian case, then their truly lovely Nemesis casing and after that the tide did turn with their super sexy Trinity chassis.
Today we'll move onwards to the SSF segment of the market which is a verb for, Small Form Factor product. SSF PCs make use of tiny mainboards and are supposed to be compact in all it's ways, and really that says it all .. it's all about tiny. NZXT released their first SSF chassis under the name Rogue. Quite an interesting name as is has several meanings, in biology however Rogue equals "a usually inferior organism, esp. a plant, varying markedly from the normal". I think it's safe to apply that description to the chassis we are testing today. A chassis that for the bigger part is a aluminum chassis guaranteeing optimal cooling, low noise levels and since it's NZXT .. looks to die for.
Right, back to SSF. I don't know if it even sounds familiar, but you also might have heard of mATX (micro ATX) ? [Ed - Surely Micro is typically abbreviated to "u" or "ì" as in 1x10^-6 as thats how engineers and mathematicians the world over use it, but it seems the "m" is used a lot too, despite "m" being the abbreviation for "milli" as in 1x10^-3. Anyway...]
The mATX form factor is a small motherboard size of 9.6" x 9.6" (244 mm x 244 mm). Compared to full ATX, micro ATX has reduced the amount of I/O slots but a smaller power supply can be used. MicroATX PCs can hold the same hardware as ATX cases. It's just as fast as your standard PC and can for example include more than a gigabyte of RAM; a serial or parallel ATA hard drive; a dual-layer DVD burner; PCI, AGP, and PCI Express cards; floppy drives; and media readers.
SSF / MicroATX cases are a lot smaller than typical ATX towers. This means that although the same standard hardware is supported, it is supported in lower quantities. For example, an ATX motherboard may support 8 USB ports, while a microATX may support only 4. In addition, usually the case may only hold one or two 3.5" hard drives and one or two 5.25" optical drive.
So pretty much the Micro ATX standard is a miniature system that you can place on your desktop. They typically allow for one AGP/PCIx and two PCI expansion slots. By inserting the right components you can have a very sweet little gaming rig on your desktop, with good esthetics, and of course these are also great for LAN parties as they are easy to carry around. And that's all about the NZXT Rogue. Let me walk you through the Rogue chassis which NZXT calls "the ultimate gaming SSF chassis".
Let's have a peek shall we ?
