Xigmatek Nebula C Review

Interior

As previously mentioned, the three removable side panels click into place using plastic pins and interlock to keep gaps to a minimum. They come off easy enough and you're given excellent access to the interior from all sides as a result. the motherboard sits in the base, with two PCI expansion slots for up to dual-slot graphics cards. There's an extra 30mm of clearance in length here compared to the original Nebula at 230mm although CPU cooler height remains at 80mm.


Plenty of cases of this type have mounted the motherboard on the side of the case and the PSU over the top, which proves tricky to deal with. Here, though, the PSU sits on its side at the top so you still have access to most of the motherboard. For example, you can just about get at the memory with the PSU installed and removing the graphics card is no hassle either.


Cooling is fairly limited and the single 120mm rear fan mount is occupied out of the box. It's unlikely you'll be able to use an all-in-one liquid cooler either due to the proximity of the fan mount to the drive bays. The latter offer space for two 2.5in or two 3.5in drives, with the ability to mix and match with room inside for a dedicated 2.5in device too - pretty much what you'd expect for a case this size but with hard disks topping 8TB these days, if you're desperate for storage space there are options.


The drive bays use adaptors that secure to the drives themselves before slotting into place. It's a little clunky and Xigmatek could quite easily improve things here, plus there are plenty of places you could mount SSDs inside the chassis too. Again, though, this is a comparatively cheap case and the build quality is high enough to make complaining about creature comforts a little picky.


There are a couple of issues we did find though. Firstly, cable routing isn't something that's really been considered. There's nowhere really to store cables or attach them to the side panel and only a couple of cable ties are included in the box. As such, you'll need to invest in additional ties or clips to tidy things up and if your PSU is modular, removing any unneeded cables would be very beneficial.

Our graphics card was actually slightly longer than the advertised 230mm but we just about managed to squeeze it in, although as you can see, there's very little space for airflow whatever cooler your graphics card uses. Finally, there are no dust filters. This is a shame as it would be very easy to include a magnetic one for the base. As it stands, you'll likely be needing to clean out your PC a couple of times a year.