If you’re looking for a compact case for a PC that has plenty of features including ample room for air and liquid coolers then NZXT’s new H5 Flow RGB could be a good choice if you have $120 or less to spend. In fact, if you’re not bothered by RGB lighting, the standard H5 Flow costs just $95, but we’ll be looking at the former in this NZXT H5 Flow RGB 2024 review to see if it’s the best PC case out there right now.
NZXT H5 Flow RGB Cooling and hardware support
The new range of H5 Flow cases has been refreshed for 2024, with new features and a tweaked design that ditches an angled front fan included last time that pointed at your GPU, in favor of two fan mounts that point directly at your graphics card. These had a significant impact on temperatures too if you’re prepared to add a couple of extra fans.
The case can also house large 360mm radiators in the front too – perfect for a large AIO liquid cooler, although you’d need to remove the included F360 RGB fan frame that has three 120mm fans built into it with the RGB version.
The roof has space for either a 240 or 280mm radiator, although NZXT hasn’t extended this area out to house another of its F360 fan frames despite there being room for both it and a 360mm radiator, limiting the latter to the front of the case. It punches above its size in motherboard compatibility too, supporting E-ATX models, CPU coolers up to 170mm tall and graphics cards up to 410mm long.
All from a case that’s less than 9 inches wide, 17 inches deep and 18 inches tall. There’s no vertical graphics card support out of the both and only space for one hard disk, though, so if you’re looking to transplant a bunch of hard disks from your current case that won’t be possible.
NZXT H5 Flow RGB Design and cable tidying
The H5 Flow sports a tool-free design that means no screwdrivers are needed to remove the front, side or roof panels. Speaking of the roof, there’s no slide-out tray here to make installing fans and radiators easier. There are no separate dust filters with the case either. The dense mesh in the panels acts as both airflow inlet and dust filter. Cost saving for sure, but dust will tend to sit on the outside of your case and need to be cleaned occasionally.
As you’d expect from a modern case, cable tidying is well thought through with Velcro cable anchors and a decent gap between the motherboard tray and side panel. There’s also plenty of hidden space below the PSU cover that’s useful for stowing additional cables.
NZXT H5 Flow RGB cooling performance
Below we can see temperatures for the graphics card and processor during stress tests to see how well the case cools your hardware. It does a decent job with the processor that in this test was a Core i7-14700K, offering similar cooling to other cases such as the Cooler Master MasterBox TD500 Mesh V2 and NZXT H6 and H7. Adding extra fans didn’t improve its performance here and in fact made it slightly worse.
Adding fans beneath the graphics card was a different story, though, as it meant its temperature fell from a decent 65°C to a chart-topping 59°C, and there’s plenty of space for even the thickest cards to have fans underneath them too,.
Should you buy the NZXT H5 Flow RGB?
The 2024 revision of the NZXT H5 Flow RGB is definitely a step in the right direction. It looks great, cools well, offers plenty of cooling expansion and support for large graphics cards.
The price is right too and at $120 it’s definitely one of the best looking and best-performing cases around for that price. It’s also worth noting that the cheaper model without RGB has most of the same features. Whichever you pick, you won’t be disappointed with the NZXT H5 Flow RGB
