AZZA Genesis 9000W Case

The Overclockers Club crew has published a revue of the AZZA Genesis 9000W case today. The verdict? The case is great for cooling but the fans are a bit on the loud side.

Well there you have it. This case, to put it simply, rocks at cooling. There is a downside though – the stock fans are pretty loud. So while the AZZA Genesis 9000 does put up a good fight to the other cases (the exception being chipset temperatures) it's being compared to it is also easily the loudest of the bunch.

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I have the black version. I'll add a some of observations.

I wanted a case that would hold both E-ATX and XL-ATX mainly because I got tired of cramped cases and wanted the extra room to work, but also for a bit of future proofing.

While I agree with most of the review, but have to disagree on a few points. I wouldn't say to fans are particularly loud. Audible yes, loud no. The bottom 140s are what are heard above all else. The led/fan button turns the lights off and the top and bottom fans to 5v, on this setting the case is silent. I have an old style PCP&C Silencer 750 Quad, and I didn't have to remove a fan to install it, just had to pop off the cover of the front fan (they just pop into the fan mounting holes, so could be used with replacement fans) and slid the PSU in place. The lower fan covers remind me of SS Air Penetrator fans (avoiding possible patent infringemant?). If you ditch the bottom filters there's 35mm of useable vertical space in the base. So you could install rad fans there for a push/pull config.

In person the case looks better than in pics. I'm not one for aggressive gamer styling (the Enermax Fulmo GT is more my style), but this case looks fine by me, I actually like it the looks of it since it's not OVERY bold. Sadly, there are some things that AZZA could have done better, such as the drive trays needing the side panel removed to unlock them. More wiring grommets would have been nice. Fans could move more air, but cooling is still good, thought since there are no front fans the drives only get additional cooling from the 2 side fans, adding optional fans to the other side to pull air would undoubtedly help. Almost everything uses thumb screws. The GPU support system is a nice touch.

Almost everything plugs into the front header PCB, so it would be easy to mod wiring for fans & such. The bottom fans use 1 set of pins and the wiring is split to 2 wires with 3 pin connectors (only 2 wires).

I was able to cram a lot of cabling behind the mobo tray.

I asked about additional drive backplanes, they're $5 each, trays are $5 each as well. They'll add $10 per order for S&H. The side fan is $8, but oddly the optional vent for the 230mm fan that's shown in the manual isn't actually available.

The included bay adapters are only for the bottom bays in the PSU location. These bays are available if mounting the PSU in the rear, and are nonstandard width (1/4" wider than standard), so the adapters are also nonstandard.

Overall, not a bad case, but with a bit more work AZZA could have hit a home run.