Final Words & Conclusion
The Verdict
We believe the NZXT Whisper is a nice design chassis carefully thought through in many ways, but also believe it's not good enough to reach an audiophile enthusiast and demanding market.
We are used to see perfection from NZXT, it's their reputation. The Whisper by all means is not that. We do feel that the included fans at full speed are too noisy for a product labeled Whisper, you'll likely end up lowering PWM / RPM on the fans with the help of a fan controller. However, once you do that, it will have a dramatic effect on airflow as well. So that definitely is a compromise you need to be aware of.
On a positive note, we liked the sound dampening features of the chassis for sure. Also we have lot's a of space to work in and the 9 storage devices we can mount in there are bringing a smile to my face as well. Though I do like the new HDD mounting system, I however can't deny feeling that the spring steel tabs bend a bit too easily. Also, a problem for some of you will be PSU placement. You'll need fairly long PSU cables in order to reach the 4 or 8-pin CPU power connector located on your motherboard
Then there's the airflow issue for the upper compartment. There is no intake for fresh air, only an exhaust. I find that to be a little weird choice NZXT made.
But that's it though ! Other then that I really do not want to sound too pessimistic, we did like the chassis. The rubber mounts for the PSU, the rubber seats for the 9 (!) HDDs, internal dampening foams, rubber grommets it all will prevent resonation and noise from getting away from that chassis. It helps a lot. The most interesting fact however remains that this chassis is large, you have plenty of space to work in and the storage options however are unprecedented. But as far as silence and airflow goes ... we have seen (and heard) better.
So there you have it. we feel that the Whisper is a very nice chassis, though it has a couple of compromises. At 139 USD it's priced roughly where it should be. Not too expensive, not cheap either. The one thing I expect from a chassis called Whisper, is for it to be really silent .. and it's just not silent enough.
The mishaps we are reporting are not very big though, some discomforts at best, but it certainly can't be overlooked as there are a few of them. I'd tag the Whisper as a spacious versatile big tower chassis with good build quality. The sound dampening features itself are really great but to get it to proper silence level .. you'll need to PWM control the fans either with your motherboard BIOS or purchase a fancontroller, and to us that just did not make sense. Other than that, this is a lovely chassis of course.
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