Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsA step up from the H500i, but with some new problems
Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2023
I've been using the H500i for a few years now, but I decided to upgrade to the H510 flow after I upgraded my CPU and started having some trouble with heat issues, so I have a good bit of experience working in NZXT's cases.
Some things I love about the brand and line in general:
The H500i was the first case I built in and carrying on the legacy, the H510 flow is extremely beginner friendly. Having some experience both as a noob and as someone trained in technical writing, the instruction manual is really well written. The diagrams in it manage to explain everything incredibly well and their use of colored highlights and guide lines make it really easy to see what they want you to do. On top of the manual, the cables are really well labeled with plastic tags on each of them explaining their purpose, except for the USB 3 Gen 2 connector in the H510 flow, I'd never seen a Gen 2 before and while I was able to do most of my work without opening the manual, I did have to look for what the unlabeled foreign-to-me cable was for. The cable management systems in both cases are incredibly well designed, although I'd say the Flow's is even better, and I'll get to that in a moment. The cable cover bar down the middle is a godsend for hiding all those annoying wires. All and all NZXT has incredibly sleek designs, and they look great because of their simplicity.
Some things I was impressed by in the H510 flow:
First off, the obvious reason and why I bought it, the vented front is everything I've been asking for, and I love how easily removable it is for cleaning the filter and working on a radiator. There's been a good improvement in clearance for the top fan, whereas in my old case my 140mm be quiet fan was literally squeezed in there so bad if I faced it the wrong direction the blades would scratch against the case, in this one it fits in incredibly easily. The cable management holes in the front where a radiator or dual fans might sit are far more accessible. The way they changed the radiator mount leaves my case a lot less claustrophobic to work in. They also changed the design of the removable SSD mounts, and given how much I hated the old ones for being difficult to click into place correctly, the change is well appreciated. It's also worth noting they kept a fair few things backwards compatible, like I was able to move my LEDs over with ease and I was too lazy to unscrew my hard drive so I just put the old HD wrack in the place of the new one, and if for whatever reason you want to keep your old back panel, that fastens in exactly the same. It also seemed like a lot of the screws that had been overtightened and tearing up metal when I got my old case were screwed in at a much more reasonable torque.
The things that didn't drive me insane but are worth noting for anyone who might be looking at upgrading:
The NZXT CAM fan connector box from the H500i doesn't have any clear mounting point in the H510 flow if you're looking at carrying it forward. I just ended up using a little double-sided tape to stick it into the same spot though, no problem. And, while I don't use it, if you wanted to take the vertical GPU mount from the 500 and carry it forward, that's not cross compatible, I think the 510 series has their own thing going on for that.
Noooow onto the things that drove me nuts.
The new thumb screws on the back panel are just not good. While I've pulled my old panel off and put it back on to my old case dozens of times with no issues, the very first time I tried to pull the back panel off on this one, one of the thumb screws came completely out and fell on the floor. I thought it might be broken, but I didn't see any damage. By the time I got done fiddling with it while I was building, I decided to just use my old back panel. Maybe not much of an issue, but it's an incredible pet peeve of mine. On top of that, for the first time ever I ran into the problem of the standoffs coming loose while I was trying to screw in my motherboard. My old case didn't have this problem at all, and when I looked up how to get the screw and standoff apart so they weren't stuck on my motherboard, the solution video I watched mentioned it can be caused by low quality standoff screws. This ended up happening to me twice during installation. And then when I went to install my radiator, the thumb screws WOULD NOT line up. Took it back out and found that somewhere in the process of pulling it out, screwing in my radiator, and installing it, the bottom of the mount had bent and could no longer sit flat in the case, pushing it out of alignment. I haven't dropped the thing once or gone banging it on the table, so I really don't know where this happened. I ended up just using a pair of pliers and a rubber mallet to tap it back into place instead of putting in a replacement request for the sake of convenience, but it really ticks me off it somehow broke that easily and quickly.
If they improved the quality of the screws and radiator mount, I'd say a solid 4 or 5 stars, but as is I'm settling for a 3, good, but room for improvement.
