IT’S NICE from time to time to build a system that doesn’t really require too much thought. There weren’t a whole lot of problems to solve with the NZXT H9 Flow, if any. That’s the highest compliment to a chassis and its design team. Building inside of the H9 Flow was ultimately painless. Fan placements were good, radiator installation was easy, and motherboard setup wasn’t a problem. Once we worked our way around a particularly odd combo in the PSU department (okay, matching a rotated PSU with a chassis that rotates the PSU by design isn’t exactly smart), it was pretty much smooth sailing from there.
That said, there are a few things we’d change with the build in general—firstly, the fan setup. Having multiple brands at this stage, with the RGB suites being what they are, is quite annoying, particularly as you need more RGB hubs to control it, and potentially have conflicts with software suites to think about. In an ideal world, we’d have loved to get some of Corsair’s iCUE Link hardware in (think daisy-chainable cooling solutions, with a single cable/hub throughout for up to 14 devices), or something from Lian Li or Phanteks. On top of that, a custom cable kit would really make this build pop, too.
The only other bugbear we have is the number of front I/O cables attached, and of course, that Dominator Titanium memory not turning up in time for the final reveal in the photo shoot. That said, it did land while we wrote this piece, and it is now in the machine. All the benchmarks in the following graphs are using the memory we priced up at the beginning of this build, but we will cover what differences the 7200 MT/s kit makes shortly.