The Nexus Prominent 9 case is a silent PC case with all the features you need for quiet operation without compromising those features needed in a case you want like tool less installation of drives and PCI cards.
Ease of Use, Performance: 4/5
Look & Feel: 5/5
Features 3/5
How much I enjoy 3/5
Total: 4/5 Stars
Nexus is an expert company in dealing with both heat and noise for computer cases and components based in the Netherlands but sells worldwide with a great range of cases and cooling products. Nexus has several silent case designs and coolers for both CPU’s and other components with an emphasis on quiet operation along with heat reduction.
The Nexus Prominent 9 is a case designed for quiet operation with several features that are almost unseen in the mid-tower case but adds a lot to the quiet operation. The Prominent 9 case is a mid-tower case fitting ATX and smaller motherboards with nine available front panel slots for optical drives or hard drives on trays.
The internal features of two four slot hard drive trays sits behind the front panel and can be removed for the full use of all nine front panel slots or installed for more hard drive installations. The two hard drive trays are fastened with thumbscrews for easy installation and removal while the eight drives themselves are fastened with regular screws.
Six of the nine 5.25 bays for optical drives or trays are secured with a tool less latch system on the left side of the trays while the bottom three are secured with screws. The case includes a set of screws for drives on the removable trays and the other locations but all the trays and other secure points include rubber cushioning.
The hard drive trays, power supply rear face and bottom feet of the case itself include rubber and foam rubber bumpers for vibration absorption to keep noise down. The two side panels have thin and medium thickness foam insulation to also reduce noise internally so the case is quieter for your entertainment and general computer use.
The prominent 9 comes with two real silent fans in 12 and 14 cm sizes that you can move to the best location according to your system and cooling needs. The system I installed has a common ATX sized motherboard with the Asus Sabertooth 990FX along with dual GTX460 graphics cards that also have oversized coolers which do hang over the motherboard.
I also installed a Noctua NH-D14 heat sink on the CPU which is one of the largest coolers you can buy for processor cooling and I only had to ensure the fans were sitting toward the motherboard to get everything to fit. The two GTX 460 graphics cards in SLI with their oversized Artic Eccelero Xtreme PLUS II coolers fit inside the case with room to spare but not much.
The ends of the coolers are about an inch from the hard drive and optical drive cage ends so there is room for cables to run between them and the case parts. The removable drive trays allow for more room if needed and with both removed you will really have plenty of room if you have large heat sinks on your graphics cards or simply large graphics cards.
The Prominent 9 does use a lot of tool less features but the hard drive trays do require screws for your hard drives but once the screws are installed on the drives themselves the drives slide in and out of the trays without tools. The drive trays mount with rubber grommets between the tray and the drive which is another large feature of the Nexus case where the drives and the PSU have rubber mounts to protect from vibration noise.
The PSU has a foam rubber seal and four rubber pads for the power supply to rest on at the bottom of your case and the whole case has four large rubber feet as well. The motherboard tray has a cooling spot right behind the CPU for Intel motherboards while it sits to the side and only has about half of the AMD AM3+ CPU area visible.
You can install a 90mm fan that is thinner here but the common 35mm thick fans will not work but a 10mm one will to add cooling to the backside of the processor. The motherboard side of the case has the thinner layer of foam rubber so there is room for cooling air to move between the panel and the motherboard tray area.
The left side panel has a thicker and contoured foam pad to absorb noise and keep the system quiet and with the two low noise case fans you can keep things quiet. I installed the two case fans and the two sets of graphic cards fan along with the two fans on the CPU cooler but removed one when the CPU did not reach any significant temperatures that I needed to worry about.
The case does keep the system noise down with my second work computer definitely being the louder of the two cases while the Prominent 9 keeps my test system both cool and quiet. The Prominent 9 can really be optimized for noiseless operation using other components like a solid state drive.
The Prominent 9 only comes in black and has a couple of USB 2.0 front panel connections along with an eSATA connection and the usual power and reset buttons. The front panel also has the audio and microphone connections for stereo headphones or speakers on the panel which is facing toward the front of the case.
The front panel slots have a metal grill with a foam filter on each slot cover but the covers are removable from the outside which is different from a majority of other cases. The Prominent 9 case has plenty of features but it does have a few drawbacks as well with one being the lack of case fans with the case.
The Prominent 9 only has two case fans when you purchase it but it is easy to add others which can be bought from stores and sites like Nexus or Newegg.com. I received the Prominent 9 from a website called EndPCNoise.com and they do sell cases and components that are specialized in quiet computing.
One review I saw had the case as a bit too expensive but EndPCNoise.com does have the case at a lower price of $64.95 with shipping adding $24.02 for my area using ground UPS. Shipping is going to cost about the same for any case so the price you can find the Prominent 9 at some sites is more than reasonable given the features.
The Prominent 9 is a great case with enough handy features that make it a worthwhile case for a system with less noise along with a mostly tool less design. I highly recommend the Prominent 9 case as a quiet computer case that has the features a system builder wants in a case that can be found at a reasonable price.
Prominent 9 @ Nexus
Prominent 9 @ EndPCNoise.com
Reference:
- www.nexustek.nl/nexus_prominent9_premium_silent_pc_case.htm
- www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/silent_pc_case.html
