When it comes to computer cases and supporting components, the market is separated by vendors with different levels of products to different users. Typically, the average user who uses their system for a lot of everything don’t put much thought into their computer case aside from cost. Then there are users who enjoy the cleanest, most polished, professional look and are willing to pay for it. Finally, we have gamers who have a certain sense of pride in showing off their extreme gaming systems, usually in a modified case of some sorts.
With the market so spread out, it’s not uncommon for manufacturers like NZXT to offer products that span the three largest groups of users. Their Classic and Crafted series cases contain a little of something for everyone. Granted, there are a few very ‘creative’ cases that have come and gone, but with some valuable experience under their belts, they’ve produced some new interesting designs. Today we’ll be looking a case that has seen some of this experience: The Guardian 921.
Specifications & Features
The Guardian 921 is aimed completely at budget conscious gamers with the right amount of features and cosmetics. At a price point, NZXT has still been able to include the following features:
- Side panel window and design
- Solid .88mm and 1.00mm Construction
- Extra space for large video cards
- Removable hard drive bay
- Tool-less drive bays and PCI mounting
- Three temperature probes for monitoring three components of your choice.
- E-SATA, Intel HD audio, Mic, and 2 USB external ports
- 3 120mm silent fans installed to maximize cooling performance with minimal noise
- Blue LED side panel and front 120mm for that gaming touch
This is a pretty decent array of features for a budget gamers’ chassis. While we’d all love a black interior, the feature would drive the price up considerably. Controllable fans aren’t necessary in this case since they’re the quieter variety of 120mm cooling fans, but of course, a bonus is a bonus.
What’s in the box?
As far as the case bundle is concerned, it’s rather light weight since most the needed tool-less hardware is already installed. In a small brown envelope were mounting screws, tool-less black hard drive rails and a user manual.
There aren’t any extra zip ties or clips for wire management.
It would have been nice to see just a few small items to help control the spaghetti wiring. We’re pretty use to having well manicured systems around here. It makes for a really slick experience when wires are well managed and you can do that right out of the box.
The New Face of the Guardian
Looking at the Guardian 921, it’s very obvious that NZXT has listened to comments and suggestions on the first guardian by offering a much more user friendly case. As a result, the Guardian 921 is a far nicer looking case than its older sibling.
The original Guardian was one of NZXT’s signature cases and was the brainchild of case innovator, Johnny Hou. Johnny still pays homage to his original design, but tones it down for a new generation of case owners. It’s a more mature version of the famous “Gundam Case” if you will.
There’s an ominous “eye” of sorts at the very top above the door that displays three different temperatures when in operation. One could use the sensors for most any reason to keep tabs on three different components. Obviously, one of them offers an internal case reading.
The bezel is enclosed behind a hollow door with an interesting back lit ‘Y’ symbol to add a further robotic feel. It lights up when the case is operational. Given their size, they shouldn’t be bright at all which is important when looking for a good balance of looks and illumination in a modified case. The door offers an open molded frame at the bottom to allow internal airflow from the front of the chassis.
The bezel is much cleaner this time around with the usual 5.25″ and FDD tray plates behind the door. A decent fan grill/filter provides air flow via an internal blue LED 120mm cooling fan. It offers typical air flow for this size fan which is around 60 CFM. This should help cool the hard drives mounted inside fairly well.
New side panel and window design
The windowed sidepanel breaks away from seemingly bland shapes and offers a bit more support to the robot theme. It’s actually a nice creative touch and should be worthy of a glance or two when properly illuminated.
One bonus feature is that the 120mm blue LED cooling fan is mounted with a decent filter on the side panel, keeping dust at bay. One side effect of having a grilled side window is that the light is limited to illuminating the inside more than the outside. Depending on where you are sitting, that’s a good thing as it should keep you from seeing blue lights all day after sitting next to it for a couple hours. If you’re at a LAN party, your neighbour will thank you.
Backside of the Guardian 921
Overall, the design is quite basic with the power supply up top and an additional internal 120mm cooling fan just below. This fan does not light up unfortunately so if you want that extra special touch, you’ll have to swap it out for another Blue LED fan at your own expense.
Inspecting the Internal Perimeter
After removing a couple good quality black thumb screws, the panel easily slides off. You can then see the 120mm LED fan a attached to it a little more closely. Both, the window and 120mm fan are mounted quite securely which cuts down on that “budget” sound during operation. You know, that special vibrating, tin can kind of whirring noise when you’re gaming, often found on cheap cases.
The internal chassis layout is basically simple. The main features again include tooless PCI mounting, tooless 5.25″ drive bay, tooless 3.5″ hard drive bay, and two lower 3.5″ hard drive bay with sliding tooless rails. The two top 5.25″ slots are left clipless except for the top slot where a black tray sits for external drive use and is only fastened by black thumb screws.
The inside offers a better of view of the tool-less PCI mounting slots and power supply framing. It should easily support standard ATX power supplies. The extra little shelf tab is a necessity these days given the 5+ pound average weight of most good PSUs. A controllable 120mm cooling fan would have been a nice touch. Perhaps, we’ll see it as an NZXT standard feature next time around.
One feature that wasn’t expected was the lower removable hard drive tray. In a case this size, it’s not a common feature since there are only a few slots available. However, water cooling components need a little extra room. The vacant spot could now be occupied by a reservoir or pump if needed. A little scalability has its benefits as this means that the case can grow with your needs.
While the inside of the chassis isn’t polished or painted black, it is at least machined well. There was no evidence of weak molds or questionable rivets. It was all pretty darn clean around all the edges which is right on for a tool-less chassis. The last thing you want to do is offer a tool-less chassis and not get rid of the razor like edges inside.
Behind the Motherboard
Opening the left panel, back side of the motherboard tray, reveals that it’s pretty barren in terms of useful space. It was a little disappointing to see so very little space that could be used for running wires to help with a little cable management. Offering this feature would require sacrificing about half an inch inside the system area as well as a little extra fabrication in terms of cut outs.
One challenge steel cases face is the often random amounts of scratches or abrasions that discolor the metal when you first open them. However, the overall internal steel construction of the NZXT Guardian 921 was free of any these cosmetic defects. Clearly, someone is looking into the details as cases roll off the line.
System Setup
For the basic purpose of evaluating the case under real world conditions which include thermal performance and ease of assembly, we assembled a system with the Guardian 921 using the following components:
- Intel I7 965 3.2GHz Processor
- INTEL X58 Smackover Motherboard
- 3x1GB Kingston HyperX Triple Channel Memory Kit
- Zotac GTX 285 AMP! Video Card
- 500 GB Seagate SATAII Hard Drive
- Sony Bluray 16X DVD Burner
Now we’re going to toss these into our Guardian 921 and see if there are any snags with the install.
The Finished Product
After installing a few components, it was evident just how easily the chassis will work for all. The black tool-less drive rails clipped on perfectly enough that they didn’t fall off while being handled. Hard drives and CD ROM drives all slid in to their perspective slots and locked in to place as well. Even when pushing on the locked drives, it was evident that they are not going to shift when the case is moved. All the motherboard standoffs were the right height and aligned very well. It’s very frustrating when a motherboard doesn’t line up with the stand offs or a case’s PCI ports.
The new theme reveals itself when looking at the lit bezel in low lighting. The side panel blue LED fan does a nice job of lighting up the insides with minimal blinding effect outside. The front blue LED can’t be seen as well since the bulk of it is behind the door. However, the overall effect is a nice break from the norm. Something that the original Guardian was also successful at.
The thermal sensors were also a nice touch for those that need extra information at a glance and can be taped to pretty much any component. All of them are viewable on the Guardian 921’s LCD “Eye”.
Thermal Performance
For testing temperature, we decided to go with a slightly different method than we normally use. Typically we would just located idle and load temperatures by using standard platform monitoring software. Instead, we used a basic heat gun set to low, and placed it inside the NZXT Guardian 921. We heated the case till the internal temperature reached 50 C. This essentially represents a worse case scenario of extreme heat building up from components. Then the system was powered up to see how well the case could handle the extra heat.
As you can see, even with the heat gun, the case fans kept the internal temps to 37 C average. It does an admirable job in either case. The regular system was no problem for the 921 whatsoever. But, the heat gun heats up the chassis metal and continues to ambient heat. This isn’t bad at all. It doesn’t quite take a minute which is quite good given that the case only uses three 120mm fans (four if you include the PSU).
Now, realistically, there really aren’t many components that can continuously emit the kind of heat needed to reach 50 C during operation. It would take some serious sabotage of sorts to fabricate the right conditions. But, it is nice to know that a price point case can still do the job.
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
Overall system installation was flawless with the NZXT Guardian 921. Everything fit securely and easily most importantly, no fingers or epidermal layers were sacrificed in the overall handling of the chassis. If there’s one thing that’ll earn a case a big strike, causing pain and bloodletting is one of them. All in all, installation was pretty uneventful which is seriously all we can ask for from a new case. The less problems, the better.
The NZXT Guardian 921 has one simple purpose which is to offer users a decent gaming chassis that looks good and offers the features that we just can’t do without. That would be things like tool-less installation where possible, good cooling, some tasteful lighting, and an experience that’s worth the money.
Current pricing at Newegg puts it at $90 with a $20 mail in rebate, bringing the price tag down to $70. It’s clear the Guardian 921 was properly programed to be a winner amongst gamers. Well done NZXT!
Pros
- Improved Guardian theme
- Good window design
- Clean gamer case look
- Tool-less features
- Better quality chassis
- Thermal sensors & Eye display
Cons
- “Eye” could be odd for some
- Manual could use some more feature details
Overall Rating: 8.5 / 10.0
NZXT Guardian 921 Crafted Series Mid-Tower Steel Chassis Photo Gallery
