AZZA Genesis 9000 Case Review: Building It Every Way
by Dustin Sklavos on July 13, 2012 4:15 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- ATX
- AZZA
In and Around the AZZA Genesis 9000
Big cases draw a lot of attention and even can draw some consternation due to their sheer size, and I can see how the styling of the AZZA Genesis 9000 may not be for everyone. As far as gaudy enthusiast cases go I actually don't mind the Genesis 9000 as much, and users not bullish on the white-and-blue motif can pick up a black-and-red version for the same price.
Looking at the front of the case, you can immediately pick up on two things. First, the front of the case is almost entirely 5.25" bays, reminiscent of Cooler Master's Stacker line. That means that there are no front intake fans on the Genesis 9000, which is unusual in a modern enclosure. There's also a bottom vent held in place by plastic and thumbscrews, but behind that is actually one of the power supply bays complete with a cable that routes to the back of the enclosure. The blue plastic accents aren't just for show, either; when the fan controller's "high" setting is enabled, they actually glow.
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The sides of the Genesis 9000 are just as revealing. The two side panels are interchangeable, with the windowed panel tinted blue. It also includes two 120mm intake fans powered by 4-pin molex connectors and a 200mm fan mount. The less ostentatious side panel just includes two 120mm fan mounts. What AZZA got right that cases like Lian Li's PC-A55 didn't was the ventilation in the bottom: there are venting holes along the sides of the bottom of the case to allow the bottom intake fans to do their jobs.
The top of the case hides two 230mm exhaust fans under slanted vents as well as housing the fan controller, I/O cluster, power and reset buttons, and fan speed/LED toggle. You can also remove the top panel via the thumbscrews, but it's still largely held in place by virtue of having to disconnect all the fans and headers that come plugged in by default. Still, you can do it, and that's how you can install a massive radiator to the top of the case. The blue strips up top also illuminate when the "high" fan speed is enabled.
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When you get to the back of the case, you can see the handle for the removable, rotatable motherboard tray held in place with six thumbscrews along with the routed power cable for a front-mounted power supply. There's also a removable bracket for a rear-mounted power supply, but when we open up the Genesis 9000 you'll see that space is occupied by one of the two ducted 140mm intake fans.
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By default the Genesis 9000's motherboard tray is actually mounted in an inverted configuration as opposed to the standard ATX style, and the internal cabling is very neatly tied to the back of the tray. You can also see the removable support bar for extra heavy video cards. What's changed for the Genesis 9000 since the last era of removable motherboard trays, though, is that we now route cables behind the tray for cleaner internals. That means that if you need to rotate the tray, you're going to need to do all the routing you've already done.
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AZZA also includes ducts above the included 140mm fans for both directing air and reducing noise, and these easily snap on and off of the fans. You should also pay close attention to just how much space there is in the bottom for installing newer, more powerful fans. Theoretically you could set up quite a little wind tunnel inside the Genesis 9000, or alternatively a healthy amount of watercooling. Note, too, that the front power supply bay (which is admittedly preferable for most installations) can also house two 3.5" drives.
What we have, essentially, is an extraordinarily flexible enclosure design the likes of which I haven't seen since NZXT's Switch 810. NZXT sells the Switch 810 for $169, but the AZZA Genesis 9000 is in many ways a more high quality enclosure with even more flexibility for the same price; I'm surprised to see a vendor try to undercut NZXT. You'll see the Genesis 9000 also offers solid performance, but we'll get there soon enough.
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Dustin Sklavos - Friday, July 13, 2012 - link
Personally I'd probably be fine with the 3"-4" of clearance.BlueHighway - Friday, July 13, 2012 - link
Thank you, and a follow-up question I forgot to add in earlier:According to the NewEgg video describing this case, there's a button at the top of the case that turns on/off the LED strips AND the two bottom fans. In your review, you say that the "high" fan speed setting on the controller turns on the LED strips, but imply that the controller turns all fans on high. Which is it? I guess I'm confused whether there's a separate fan speed controller and a button to turn on/off LED strips and the two bottom fans.
Operating without the bottom intake fans would just leave the side fans for intake, which could be problematic with so much left-over exhaust, unless the top fans can be flipped upside down for more positive pressure.
BlueHighway - Friday, July 13, 2012 - link
Edit: someone posted a correction comment under the NewEgg black Genesis listing, so I understand now -- the LED button lowers the top/bottom fan speeds, but does not turn off the bottom fans.SunLord - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
The intro a paragraph for this article says you can put a atx and min-itx motherboard in this case at the same time. Does it actually have a second motherboard mount point or is it something you have to rig up on your own?ShieTar - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
Actually it says that the "Fusion 4000" by the same company has the capability of mounting an additional mini-itx board. And according to the manual of that box, it does not only have the mount points for the second board in its "top unit", but also offer space for a second power supply for that system.ShieTar - Saturday, July 14, 2012 - link
"Still, you can do it, and that's how you can install a massive radiator to the top of the case."Could you quantify this in a little more detail? I have just made the mistake of buying the "ideal for water cooling enthusiasts" Shinobi XL (according to the Bitfenix Homepage), only to realise that the two options for 3x120 radiatiors allow a maximum height of 75mm (top) or 85mm (front). Not enough for a 65mm radiator and 25mm fans.
So how much combined height does this case allow for radiator and fan?
BlueHighway - Sunday, July 15, 2012 - link
Ok, you can laugh at me for this question, but I can't figure out if the LED strips on the white case are teal or more light blue. On promotional photos, they look like a pale teal color, but then on some photos and videos they look plain light blue with no green... What color are they actually?ViperRCR - Monday, July 23, 2012 - link
I realize that the bottom supports the 140mm fans/rads.Does anyone know if the top can support 140mm fan/rads?
I am interested in mounting a 3x140mm (420mm) radiator up top and was wondering if the mounting holes are already there for the 140mm width.
nleksan - Monday, October 8, 2012 - link
I am a believer in former following function, especially with things that are so critical to the entirety of a system (not just completed computer systems, but everything from cars to, I don't know, refrigerators)... But surely I can't be the only person who thinks that this case could have been made to look infinitely better?As it stands, I find the Genesis 9000 to be a truly ugly case. Plain and simple, it is the absolute opposite of "good looking" in every possible way. I am so, so, so sick of the "G@m3rZ" cases designed to look "high tech", futuristic, and tend to have thirty-bazillion "lines" (visual lines) that go up, do, wn, all-around, and still manage to intersect one another at the worst possible places. Now, I am appreciative of the fact that, unlike many of the cases geared towards 14-18yr olds who subsist entirely on Mountain Dew, Taco Bell, and Cheetos, this is not covered in strobing LEDs, useless (and terrible) "temperature sensors", and countless "features" that exist solely to pad the Case Features list on retailer's sites yet in practice actually serve no purpose but to take up space (at best) or even impede performance/function (far worse and, unfortunately, more common). I get memories of the first case I ever used to build a custom PC in, the Thermaltake Xaser V, which was (is) actually an extremely nice case with a level of build quality that is hard to find today for less than 3-4 Benjamins, and at the time the teenage me thought it was a "wicked" case with its fancy digital display and other doodads. The fact is, the Tt Xaser V is an ugly, ugly case, and while far from the worst, I have never bought a "gamer" case again.
The most recent build of mine, and the first foray into custom water cooling since it has become much closer to mainstream (and not dependant upon Bonneville heater cores), has been in what I have to say is perhaps the absolute best case under $200 or even $250, for water cooling. I was originally going to be purchasing a CaseLabs TH10 with White Powder coating, the 85mm extended + ventilated top, XXL MB-side and XL PSU-side Windows, 6 total drive cages (a mix of Flex-Bay and regular), the entire Extended Pedestal with Reinforced Casters, USB3.0 I/O panel, 6 Flex-Bay fan mounts, 2x 4x140 Rad Mounts, 3x 4x120 Rad Mounts, 1x 3x140 Rad Mount, 1x 2x120 Rad Mount, 4x Accessory Mounts (2x Extra-Large Horizontal HD and 2x Extra-Large Vertical HD), 8x HDD Bay fan mounts (blow air up through HDDs), 6x 90deg 120/140mm Fan Mounts (for behind HDDs, and spot cooling), all fan holes replaced with Hex-Mesh Grills, PSU Support (Magnum), 8x SSD Mounting Kits, and lastly full anti-vibration kit (HDD/MB/Fans/everything) and full-case filtration. The wonderful people at CaseLabs were actually giving me a good price for buying it all at once, and I was extremely close to purchasing when...
I saw the Switch 810 for the first time, and instantly fell in love. I was originally facing the dilemma of "CL TH10 + IVB" vs "no-CL + ultimate SB-E", and I instantly changed to the latter (although I will still be purchasing the TH10 when I add GPU's 3+4).
The NZXT SWITCH 810 is the preeminent example of how to design a case that is:
- Elegant and Understated yet Subtly Powerful (Aesthetically speaking)
- Cuts NO Corners in Function or Features
- Makes the Absolute Most of the Space Inside incl E-ATX MBs, 200mm PSU's, 10+ 140mm Fans, 7x 3.5" or 13x (up to 15) 2.5" drives, 4x 5.25" Bays including the Hot-Swap Bay and Stealth ODD bay, and insane amounts of room for water cooling (420 + 280 + 140 + 120 rad config possible)
- Does not sacrifice airflow when you go with H2O for CPU/GPU's, unlike the majority of cases
- Assembled entirely with SCREWS instead of Rivets (the sole exception being 3 of the 5.25 bays) making modding as easy as possible
- Removable and easily cleaned fan filters for all intake areas
- Almost a full inch of space behind the MB panel for cable management, with 10x cable routing grommets
And I don't feel like a dork showing it off, in fact it fits the modern black/white/grey/blues style of my house so well that most people ask if I had it made custom.
I guess my point is that there is absolutely no excuse for building ugly cases! It is ALWAYS possible to make an equally functional, if not more functional, case that looks GOOD, grown-up, and mature than it is to make a "Uber-L337 GamerZ Dude Mega-Ultra-TechPlus eXtreme Ultimate Gaming Case" filled with pointless ugly trash.
The tech community has grown up (at least the gamers/tinkerers), and most of us want mature cases, we don't want stuff we have to hide under a desk because it's embarrassingly childish or tacky.
I sincerely hope AZZA recognize this and start, at the very least, producing a line of cases with far more upscale designs. Just follow NZXT's lead (and Fractal Design's Arc/R4/etc, Bitfenix's Shinobi/XL/Prodigy, Silverstone's FT02/TJ04/TJ07/TJ10, the exterior of Lian Li cases (they are masters at making "it was so close to being perfect but it falls short" cases because they have a truly horrendous internal design philosophy which seems to be "let's make this as bad on the inside as it is good on the outside"), and of course the PREMIUM case manufacturers such as CaseLabs (by far the best enclosures ever built, ever, by anyone), Little Devil, XSPC, Mountain Mods, and Phobya).
I promise, we are waiting...And "us" is many....
DeepFrydFreedom - Wednesday, July 24, 2013 - link
i have a question about the front mounted psu, im not gonna bash it or anything im looking forward to building my first pc soon. and im very interested in this case, but about that psu it takes in air at the bottom of the case and exhausts out the front. but my question is when you have that front panel on and the psu is exhausting air to me i looks like the only place for it to go is up or down. is the being exhausted out of the psu into the bottom part and being sucked back in a endless cycle plz reply this going to greatly effect my choice for my first pc.