NZXT is an American computer hardware manufacturer based in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

. The company manufactures computer cases, components, and accessories for the PC gaming market.

History

NZXT was founded in 2004 by Johnny Hou producing products specifically for the DIY PC building community. The company's first product was the NZXT Guardian, which was a case featuring a plastic front bezel resembling

Transformers ''Transformers'' is a media franchise produced by American toy company Hasbro and Japanese toy company Tomy, Takara Tomy. It primarily follows the Autobots and the Decepticons, two alien robot factions at war that can transform into other forms ...

toys and lighting effects. Over time, they gradually expanded to other categories of computer hardware, including computer power supplies,

computer cooling Computer cooling is required to remove the waste heat produced by computer components, to keep components within permissible operating temperature limits. Components that are susceptible to temporary malfunction or permanent failure if over ...

, motherboards, and streaming devices.

Products

NZXT is most known for its

computer case A computer case, also known as a computer chassis, is the enclosure that contains most of the hardware of a personal computer. The components housed inside the case (such as the CPU, motherboard, memory, mass storage devices, power supply unit a ...

s, but also sells motherboards,

power supplies A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a res ...

, cooling products, LED lighting, and other accessories marketed towards PC gamers. The company design and develops their products in

, while manufacturing them in

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

Cases

NZXT has been making PC cases since 2003, when they released the Guardian. In 2013, the Phantom 630, 530, and 410 were released. The S340 was released in 2016 and later featured a collaboration with

Razer Razer may refer to: * Razer (Canadian TV channel), former name of MTV2, a Canadian digital television specialty service * Razer Inc., a Singaporean-American computer peripherals manufacturer specializing in PC gaming * Razer Phone, a smartphone desi ...

. The S340 was refreshed in 2016 with the S340 Elite, which featured a

tempered glass Tempered or toughened glass is a type of safety glass processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass. Tempering puts the outer surfaces into compression and the interior into tensi ...

side panel instead of the

acrylic Acrylic may refer to: Chemicals and materials * Acrylic acid, the simplest acrylic compound * Acrylate polymer, a group of polymers (plastics) noted for transparency and elasticity * Acrylic resin, a group of related thermoplastic or thermosett ...

panel of the previous S340. A limited Hyper Beast edition of the S340 Elite was later released. Also in 2016, NZXT released the Manta - A mini-ITX chassis that featured radically different design compared to their case lineup at the time. Later NZXT and Razer stopped their partnership though. A new line of cases was released in October 2017, consisting of the H700, H400, and the H200. They are minimalist in design, and are constructed from steel with

side panels. The "i" variants of each case come with decorative LED lighting and a fan controller. NZXT H500i case empty 10-13-2018

A cheaper case, the H500, was added to the lineup in May 2018. The H-series cases were refreshed in May 2019. The new revisions introduced a front-panel

USB-C USB-C (properly known as USB Type-C) is a 24-pin USB connector system with a rotationally symmetrical connector. The designation C refers only to the connector's physical configuration or form factor and should not be confused with the conn ...

port. One of the refreshed cases, the H510 Elite, added a second glass panel on the front of the case. In February 2020 NZXT released the H1, a compact form factor case. Several months later reports began to emerge of H1 cases catching fire, which were first reported on November 30, 2020 by Gamers Nexus, a popular PC hobbyist

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channel. On February 2, 2021, NZXT removed the H1 case from their product lineup, until a permanent solution could be made.

Cooling

NZXT has multiple all-in-one water cooler products under their ''Kraken'' lineup. The first of these was released in 2013, in both 140mm and 280mm sizes. NZXT has since released multiple updates to this lineup, including new coolers in 120mm and 360mm sizes, and improvements to the pumps and radiators. Most recently, they released a new cooler, the Z73, which includes a customizable LED display, and updates to the rest of their AIO lineup.

Motherboards

NZXT released their own line of motherboards for the

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

Z370 chipset in January 2018. It was praised for its minimalist design, as the circuitry is not exposed; but was initially criticized for its high price. The lineup was refreshed in October 2018 to support the Z390 chipset. The NZXT branded Z390 motherboards were manufactured by Elitegroup while a Z490 one is made by

ASRock ASRock Inc. is a Taiwanese manufacturer of motherboards, industrial PCs and home theater PCs (HTPC). Founded by Ted Hsu, it was founded in 2002 and is currently owned by Taiwanese electronics company Pegatron. History ASRock was originally sp ...

Power supply units

NZXT began selling power supply units in 2010, before ceasing sales of them in 2016. They re-entered the market in July 2018 with a series of

modular Broadly speaking, modularity is the degree to which a system's components may be separated and recombined, often with the benefit of flexibility and variety in use. The concept of modularity is used primarily to reduce complexity by breaking a s ...

digitally-controlled power supplies in a partnership with

Seasonic Sea Sonic Electronics Co., Ltd. (), stylized as Seasonic, is a Taiwanese power supply and computer PSU manufacturer and retailer, formerly limited to trading hardware OEM for other companies. They first started making power supplies for the PC ...

Lighting

NZXT started making their own line of lighting products including RGB & fan controllers, underglow, LED strips, RGB cable combs, and the hue 2 ambient v2 desktop lighting system.

CRFT

NZXT released the first product on their CRFT line, a series of themed limited edition pc cases, in May 2018. They first started with a partnership case with ''

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'', before moving to a "Nuka-Cola" ''

Fallout Nuclear fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and the shock wave has passed. It commonly refers to the radioac ...

'' themed case with Bethesda Softworks. Another PUBG and Fallout series case were released as well as

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and

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themed cases.

Audio

NZXT started selling their line of audio products in November 2019; they released their headset, audio mixer, and headset stand.

Gaming Accessories

NZXT released their first product in their gaming accessories line starting with the puck in January 2017 used for cable management and a headset mount. They expanded it later to include mousepads and a sling bag.

BLD

In 2017, NZXT launched a computer building service called BLD. The service asks about what games would be played on it, budget constraints, and customization options before generating a PC build. The build is sold pre-assembled. They offer 4 categories of PC builds. They are Starter, Mini, Streaming, and Creator.

References

{{Commons category-inline Computer enclosure companies Computer power supply unit manufacturers Electronics companies established in 2004 Companies based in Los Angeles Computer hardware cooling Computer hardware companies Computer companies of the United States