NZXT S340 Review

Interior

The side panels are simple to remove thanks to thumbscrews and handles, with the former being captive too, making them easy to realign and ensuring you don't drop or lose them.

Inside, the S340 is split into two sections, one lower one with the PSU and hard drives in, and the main one above which is visible through the window and houses the main components as well as a couple of SSDs or 2.5in drives. The compartments are neatly segmented by a full length metal cover, which ensures a very clean look by shielding the vast majority of cabling from view when peering in through the window in much the same way as the equally attractive H440.


Ease of use is another strong point for the S340; motherboard mounts come pre-installed, a large cutout on the motheboard tray aids CPU cooler installation, and there's a thumbscrew-attached bracket provided allowing you to directly slide your PSU in at the back. There's loads of room down here for extra long PSUs and for stashing excess cabling, though there isn't any rubber for the PSU to rest on. Finally, the two floor-mounted 2.5in drives in the main cavity are secured using individual trays, which are also held in with thumbscrews.


At the front of the hidden portion is a fixed-position hard drive cage. It's only small, and is only capable of housing two 3.5in drives, which must be first slotted in from the side and then secured with screws at the front of the chassis. This necessitates removing the front panel, but thankfully this isn't difficult. Finally, beneath this two-bay cage is a set of mounting holes on the case floor, which you can use to secure one more 3.5in drive, which requires screwing in from beneath. As such, the S340 can house a total of five internal drives. Many cases do offer more, and more flexibility with regards to their sizes too, but even so we think this is enough given the high capacity SSDs and HDDs that are available. Also, even Intel's Z97 platform, for example, only has six SATA 6Gbps ports natively anyway. Still, we can't deny there are better options if you're really looking to go to town with multiple hard drives.


For water-coolers, the lack of an optical drive and lower than average drive mounts has its advtanges, as despite being a fairly compact mid-tower the S340 can house both 240mm and 280mm radiators in the front mounts. Officially, only 30mm radiators with a single row of fans are supported, but removing the cable management bracket would open up a lot more depth, with your radiator then acting as a means of blocking cables from view too. It would also impede on the available room for GPUs, but with 364mm here to start with you've still got plenty of flexibility. The rear and roof mounts can also be used to house single radiators, though you'd struggle to fit more than a slimline all-in-one cooler in either of them.


Instead of cable routing holes, the areas to the side and bottom of the motherboard tray are completely open, yet NZXT keeps the S340 looking incredibly tidy, firstly by shielding the lower section from view and secondly with its steel cable management bracket, which does the same for the side section. A few sensible holes are included though – one for the EPS12V and fan cables (which come neatly pre-routed as well) and a couple just behind the two SSD trays so you can sneak power and data cables to your drives and also neatly route front panel connectors to your motherboard tray. With lots of space behind the motherboard tray (17mm at the lowest point) and loads of hooks as well, the S340 is fantastically designed from a cable routing perspective. In a matter of minutes we had our system built with barely any cables visible – it's a joy to use.