Installation and Performance

Before I get to testing I did need to get a test PC setup. Lucky for me I already had our X299 Micro-ATX configuration mostly together already so I just had to prep the H400i by getting the standoffs ready and install the board with the heatsink, CPU, and memory all already together. NZXT did provide a nice standoff installation tool that uses a Philips head like most company’s but they went an additional step to make it also have thumbscrew like grips on the side to start all of the standoffs first. With those installed the board dropped right in. I did, however, go back and remove our heatsink and reinstall it in the vertical orientation to better work with the fan layout on the H400i.

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I also went through the box of accessories in order to find the standoffs. You get labeled bags of screws, a good amount of zip ties, and they also include a second LED RGB light strip. One comes already installed in the case, this one isn’t installed to allow you to decide where you want it. It can be installed with double-sided tape or it also has magnets built in.

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Next, I wanted to get our power supply installed. Unlike the Fractal you can actually slide this one in through the back side panel. But you also have the option to remove the PSU bracket an go in that way as well or to remove it later. While doing that I pulled all of the cases wiring out to get a good look at it an I was a little scared. Most of the wires are fine, but the splitters used with the fan controller end up looking like a mess, this is why I was wishing the controller had more hookups on it for both the fan and RGB connections.

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Surprisingly though wiring ended up being extremely simple. The wire management tracks that allowed me to know if I was bundling up cables to much to be able to put the door back on helped a ton. In addition to that I ended up just using the metal stripe that runs up the case to run the thicker 24 pin motherboard power cable, it dropped right in and stayed hidden. I installed our SSD in the back rather than the front because I didn’t want to break up that black on black look, even though that Kingston drive would have looked good up front as well with its silver and black.

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Then I installed the Asus 1070 Ti and once again it did sag a little but overall it looked and fit well. The longer card may prevent push-pull configurations with the front radiator though, but you can see that there is more than enough room for the fans with the radiator inside of the front or the other way around.

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With the side panels back on I powered everything up. The whole setup looks amazing in the H400i with the exception of the Noctua cooler breaking up that murdered out look but I will fix that in another article soon. The pre-installed top-mounted LED lights look amazing and light everything up. I haven’t installed the second set just yet as I wanted to see what area might need it. I think on the right or down below the video card would both be good options just depending on if you want to light up the whole card or not. With everything powered up the power button lit up in white so I snapped a picture of that as well.

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Once up and running I did installed the CAM software to play around with it a little as well. Especially with the controller and software playing an important role in the H400i. I’ve used the CAM software in the past to control the lighting on the Hue+ and I should note that you need to sign into the software to be able to use all of its features, including the adaptive fan profiles. The software actually has a lot of different functionality. For example, there is just a page that tracks your in game FPS all of the time. In addition to that, it will let you know what temps both your CPU and GPU reach while you are in game. You can also just get into details with a full listing of your current hardware

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The main landing page is a lot more useful though. It shows all of your current temperatures, load, clock speeds, and fan speeds. Even beyond that, it shows how much of your drives you are using. You can also switch to advanced modes for each device and see graphs that show each of those results over time as well.

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There is also an overclocking tab where you can at least on our setup overclock your GPU.

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Now the lighting page, this is what I was used to working with on the Hue+ and all of the same functionality is here with the H400i and its included LED strips. You can pick from a list of presets or you can customize your own settings. Remember the lighting on the H400i is individually controllable so you can do some really cool stuff with waves and marquee’s that will chase around the inside of your case. I have the H400i alternating back and forth between red and blue on each light for a police effect right now. You can also get into smart functionality where the lighting can let you know how your PC is doing when temps go up or similar.

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So the adaptive functionality is the second to last tab on the left and to get everything up and running you have to jump through a bunch of hoops. Each of the three pages up top have their own stress and idle tests that will need to run and in total that take a while. I actually spent a long time trying to get mine working. The calibration page would just start over and never finish, turns out my fan had come loose and I was having issues with the CPU getting too hot. That said when I got things up and running it did work alright. With our cooler being a little undersized for the monster CPU I put in the build there wasn’t much the software could do to help. I found that it ran a little warmer when in adaptive mode and noise wasn’t really too bad in either mode.

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