Let me start off this review by saying that I am not a big fan of the new fad/style of ‘pre-modded’ cases. Most of them are either to glitzy, to cheap looking, or just plain look like garbage.
I was a little jaded going in to this review since I had already seen pictures of the case and was thinking to myself… “Yippee, another wannabe mod case”.

I received an email from Bruce Young of Nikao Canada, mid afternoon on a Thursday, asking for my shipping address and telling me he would ship me out a case… I was a little shocked and pleasantly surprised when I heard a knock at the door the next morning at 9:00 am – there was a Purolator truck in my driveway and the delivery guy standing at my door with a case in his arms – now THAT is fast shipping!

The box arrived with no real damage, so I had no doubt what was inside arrived safe and secure as well.

The outside of the box has a good picture of the case and the standard Nikao graphics, and also a Chinese style dragon. Although it shows the case with an optional fan controller/temperature monitor installed, this case did not come with one – and as I have learned, they do not ship with at all and it is a part/option you must purchase separately if you want one. (which I eventually did do, but will not be talking about in this review).

I have received a lot of cases and typically the packaging is the standard 2 pieces of Styrofoam, top and bottom, and a plastic bag covering the case… well this case had that, and more. The case had the standard Styrofoam packaging on 2 sides of the case, but there was also a sheet of Styrofoam inserted on each side of the case to fill the empty space and protect the case sides… a very nice and thoughtful addition. As well as the Styrofoam, the case was placed in a plastic bag, but again there was an added thought/touch in the way it was done… the case was wrapped in a soft tissue type of paper prior to being placed in the bag, which really saves on scratches on the case’s finish.

I unpackaged the case and was met with an amazing looking case – yes, it’s a dreaded pre-mod… but the paint on this case was excellent! The paint shined and looked deep… sort of like it was still wet and you could dip your fingers right in to it. My thoughts at this point started to change and I began to look forward to this build and review.

OK, now that you have seen the case, let me show you the specs and features of the case as taken from the Nikao website –

Specifications:

• Housing Material : 0.8MM SECC Steel Metal
• Input Voltage : 115/230 VAC Mounting Kits
• Main Board Size: ATX Form Factor 12" x 10.5" Or Smaller
• External Disk Drive Bays: 4 x 5.25" & 2 x 3.5"
• Internal Disk Drive Bays : 5 x 3.5"
• Case Dimension (L x W x H): 488mm x 200mm x 425mm
• USB & Audio Port : 2 x USB2.0 & 1 x Sound Audio Port
• Ventilation : N/A
• Fan : 1 x 120mm in Front Panel & 1 x 120mm in Side Panel Window
• Fan Grill : 2 x 3D Blade Fan Grill on Side Panel Window
• Power Supply : Not Included
• Color : Black
• Weight : 25 LBS

Features:

• Suitable for any Standard Pentium / AMD Power Supply
• Pre-Modified Sword Side Panel Window
• Tool-Less & Screwless on All Drive Bays
• Pre-Modified Net Design Side Panel Window
• Pre-Modified Net Design Front Door
• LCD Panel can be Installed (Optional)
• Thumb Screws for Easy Assembly
• Electronmagnetically Shield
• Good Show Car Paint Job
• Universal ATX I/O Shield

If you haven’t noticed yet… the side panel and front are a mesh, the same thing as what is referred to as ‘modder’s mesh’. This was definitely a big bonus in my eyes, as I am getting just a little tired of the standard acrylic windows… it was time for something new and Nikao met that need – and the cooling benefits from a mesh side are also a nice feature and added bonus. Here are some more pictures of the case, showing it a little better –

The chrome accent pieces are a plastic, held on from the backside with screws, but even being plastic, they look fantastic and it is hard to tell them from actual chromed metal if you are more than a foot away from the case, heck, you basically have to touch them to know for sure. The front door also has an open slot in it for the use of a fanbus or a cd-rom/dvd-rom that you use frequently and do not want to have to open the door to access all the time – another well thought out idea!

On the right side of the front of the case are the standard ports included in almost all cases now – 2 USB ports and an audio out and microphone jack, and also a knock-out for a firewire port too.

Well, let’s take the panels off and have a look under the hood of this beast, shall we?

The inside of the case features what has now become fairly standard in cases, tool-less drive bays – all bays use plastic holders with a twist lock feature – they are good quality and hold everything in place firmly.
If you take a good look at the front of the case with the door open, you may notice there is no catch for holding the door shut – this instead is accomplished with the use of 3 magnets, and fairly strong magnets too – this way of keeping the door closed is very nice and works very well. You can also see the included, large 120mm fan in the front of the case, and there is also one on the side panel, and a 120mm fan grill on the back panel for an optional fan. The fans they included are a blue LED style fan, have basic 4 pin molex connections and are not the highest cfm fans, nor are they the quietest fans I have ever used, but they are more than adequate and not to loud that you would need or want to replace them. The case comes with a baggy of screws and pci slot cover plates (in case you knock out the wrong one and need to cover it back up… oooopppssss). The motherboard tray also comes with the stand-offs pre-installed as well as a bunch in the bag of goodies. Right here I will say what almost every other reviewer says – I would have appreciated seeing a removable motherboard tray in the case, but that was not to be.

The edges of the steel inside the case are not sharp, some are even rolled over, so it seems a little attention was used and they addressed any issues of sharp edges before making this case a finished product… which made me particularly happy as I am always cutting my fingers inside cases. (Well, that happened with this case too, but it was more a fault of the operator than it was the case).

Now, before I go into the installation of a motherboard and other hardware in to this case, I have to say that every system I own, I water cool, and although I love the look of cases with excellent wiring jobs, I am not one of those who do such a great job with wires – maybe it has to do with rushing to see the end result ;) so do not hold the wiring job against me or Nikao LOL.

I decided I wanted to mount a radiator to the outside of the case, and do it with as little moddin’ as is necessary, which is another reason I am pleasantly impressed with this case – with the rear 120mm fan grill there, I was able to just cut a small slot out of the case for the 1/2" tubing right below the rear fan grill and then use threaded rods in the holes for the fan screws to hold the radiator away from the case about 1 inch… and boom – perfect radiator mounting… it turned out this is a great case for liquid cooling.. even when using the large, 1/2" ID tubing! Here are some pictures of the finished build –

System Specs:

• Asus K8V-SE Deluxe socket 754 motherboard
• AMD Athlon A64-3200 (overclocked to 2500MHz)
• 1 gig (2x512) Kingston PC3200 Ram
• Sapphire ATI X850XT Platinum AGP video card
• Western Digital 200 gig hard drive
• TDK DVD-RW
• Vantec Power Supply
• Danger Den TDX cpu water block
• Silverprop Fusion HL video card water block
• Polarflo TT Chrome water pump
• Black Ice Extreme 120 radiator
• Dual floppy bay reservoir modded with an added fill port

Conclusions –

Overall this case was a pleasure to work with and surprisingly good looking for a pre-modded case. It’s tough to stuff a full, 1/2" ID tubing, water cooling kit in to a standard mid-tower case, but with the way this one was set up, it went smoothly and required only a minor modification, but it was a mod I would have had to do to almost any case available. Prior to this I was using a case of the same size, only it had an acrylic side window, and since changing over I have noted a temperature drop of 2-4 degrees on average, which I attribute to the mesh side and nice airflow this case provides. You will also notice, if you purchase a Nikao Dragonfire case, (which are now available from Xoxide.com) that interior case temperatures will be lowered substantially as well compared to an equal sized case with either steel, aluminum or acrylic sides – the mesh works wonders and I just can’t say enough about it… and one other thing… it is ‘far’ easier to clean than a clear window and acts as a dust filter to some degree as well.
The fit and finish was second to none, and the quality of materials and construction were excellent.

PROS:
Paint job is excellent
Chrome accents are high quality (would have preferred metal ones though)
Mesh side window and front door are a very nice change
2 120mm Blue LED fans included
Tool-less bays for hard drives, cd-roms, floppy drives, etc.
Grill for optional 120mm rear fan
Minimal sharp edges
Magnetic closing mechanism for front door
Open slot in front door for fanbus or optical drive

CONS:
No removable motherboard tray
Chrome accents are plastic and could break or chip
Box shows optional fanbus/temp monitor which can be mis-leading

UPDATE:

I have now been using this case for over 2 weeks and can say I like it even more than I did when I first built it – for anyone looking for a sharp looking case, already modded to some extent; this is the case for you!

I want to thank Bruce Young from Nikao/Tradex for supplying this case, Andrew Voudouris from Xoxide.com for opening the door for this review to make it to the web, and also Bobby, from here are Hardwaremods.com, for allowing me to do the review and getting it online.