BitFenix Nova Review

Performance Analysis

In terms of cooling performance, it's not an especially good showing for the Nova, but with a mostly sealed design and a single 120mm exhaust we didn't expect much to begin with. Thankfully, the supplied fan is not a loud model, and while the Nova does have the highest CPU delta T result of any case so far (other than the Silent Base 600 at minimum speed), the important thing is that our overclocked CPU didn't overheat inside this chassis.


The GPU has an arguably worse result, with the joint bottom result in our charts. Again, this isn't shocking – the Nova has no intake fans, a mostly blocked front panel and not even any vents in the bottom panel through which the graphics card might draw air. By default, your graphics card will be getting practically zero help from the Nova. In fairness, installing a GTX 980 is unlikely in a case like this, but many less expensive cards, especially AMD ones, do still run hot under load and this may present as either slightly lower frame rates through less boosting or as your cooler getting louder to compensate. It's worth considering adding an intake fan, but you'll probably get more benefit from buying a card with a good third party cooler to begin with.

Conclusion

While the cooling clearly isn't a strong point for the Nova, you can at least give it a bit of a boost with the front intake mounts and while our components did run hot, they are arguably overkill for a case this cheap and even then they didn't suffocate entirely.


The thing you really have to keep in mind here is the price, and we think the Nova delivers more than enough overall for less than £30. The build quality is fine, and the feature set is pretty strong with the inclusion of USB 3 and a PSU dust filter, for example. There are also no major issues when it comes to ease of use, though some rubber washers and zip ties would have been nice to see and they're hardly expensive. Obviously, some corners in all areas have had to be cut, if you're really looking to drive down costs the case isn't a bad place to start and the Nova isn't actually too bad looking either. We honestly haven't seen a case this cheap in a long time, which makes comparing it to others tricky, but it certainly seems to be on the money for the cost.

As it's so cheap, we've just about stretched to giving it an Approved Award, but on the previso that you populate at least one of the front fan mounts and limit your hardware to low-end to mid-range. Even if you do buy another fan, it's still one of the cheapest ATX cases around.