NZXT PODCAST - #154 - Ask Us Anything!

Episode Date: April 14, 2023

On this week's episode of the NZXT Podcast... you ask it, we answer it! We had our chat ask us any questions, from the origins of NZXT to the designing of our first case! Tune in live every Friday at 10AM PT on twitch.tv/nzxt!

and welcome to episode 154 of the NCC podcast, the official podcast of the NCC community. This podcast is recorded live every Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on the official NCC Twitch is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike. And with me as always is Ivan. Ivan, how are you doing? I'm doing great, Mike. How are you doing?

I know you were a little under the weather this week. So I'm happy you're feeling better and alive and able to do. do the podcast with me today. Yeah, I'm still, I'm still a little under the weather, but, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, going on today. So earlier today, this morning, like around five in the morning, uh, we made an Instagram story where we ask people to ask us a question and today's episode is going to be just you and me

answering those questions from our Instagram story as well as questions from this, from the chat here on Twitch if you're tuned in live. So if you have questions for us, just ask them in the chat. We'll copy and paste them into our little list here and we'll answer them throughout the show. The other thing we got going on is if you are tuned in live to twitch.tv slash nzxte. If you wait until the very end of the podcast, you will get a bunch of, you will get a code for some bonus entries into our podcast giveaway. So if you were tuned in live, we are having a podcast giveaway type exclamation giveaway in the chat and you get a link for that and we also have another giveaway going on today it actually ends today it's uh for the capsule mini and boomar

mini so here's this is uh actually mike this is the capsule mini i'm sending you in the mail later today yeah so it's our brand new miniature microphone it's a smaller version of our regular microphone the NCXT capsule just released last week. So if you guys want to win that bundle, we are giving away three of those. And we also have bonus entries for that giveaway if you listen to last week's podcast. So you can go to either Samincloud, Spotify, Google, or Apple podcast and listen to last week's episode. And I guess you don't have to listen to the entire show, I guess.

If you're... No, listen to the entire show. to the entire show. Give us a couple more views. Yeah. If you're cheeky, you can just scrub it all the way to the last like five minutes or so and get the secret word. But if you want to support Mike and I listen to the whole show, I'll appreciate it. So I guess without further ado, Mike, let's just get into the questions here. I'm just going to fire up my Instagram here and see what questions we got. So I can actually answer this first one right here

From Aziz 99R What's the difference between the H9 Elite and the flow? So the main difference between the two is Really, it's performance or RGB So the elite will showcase more of your RGB because of its glass panel And the flow is more about performance Because it has a perforated panel, which allows better airflow. So it depends on which one you want.

But both the number are huge and both performances. To be a little more specific, you're referring to the top panel. So both cases have the same glass front panel and both cases have a fully perforated back panel. However, the H9 flow

has a perforated top panel and the H9 Elite has a glass top panel to show. show off your fans up top yes so very similar but the the flow has more holes basically flow has more holes um you want me to read the questions mike or want to go back and forth uh yeah you can uh read questions let's just let's just trade off let's just go back and forth you read one and i read one all right so the next one's actually from our our good buddy who's in the chat right now PNW Tech and if you're not following them on Instagram please do so it's PNW.

dot tech really great images and videos on their feed there so their question is when are we going to see Mike's and Ivan's setup tours I guess we can do a quick one right now however mine's not messy mine's actually clean but I'm gonna I'm gonna flex a little bit I have some least NZ-E60 product here that I can't show people but I'll I'll do my best to hide what I can't show I'll show my PC instead of my setup here I won't be able to really show my setup too well except I'll have to like take a picture because my camera's mounted onto my desk yeah I'll just show my PC which is identical to your PC because it's the same one the PC it's it's It's a scene one that didn't work or you don't want it for some reason.

You're like, no, because it was, remember, it was when I first got it, it, so I, for those that didn't know, I was supposed to get a new PC because my PC was just having a hard time, keep you up with streaming and editing. They sent me a new PC, but the UPS person didn't deliver it. They signed it and kept it on the truck. So we're like, well, shoot, that's an exception. expensive PC that we just lost. So let me go ahead and reset you a new one. And they reset me a new one. I got that one.

So that was good. But then a couple days later, the UPS guy later delivers the package again. And I was like, oh, shoot, now I have two PCs. It took me a while to send it back because I didn't have a car for a while. And I didn't want to walk around downtown Seattle with an expensive PC that anyone could take. so I did it to do that. But I'll show the reason why I chose this one, though, is because it a surprise you guys signed it.

Yeah. They signed, a lot of them signed the back of it. So that's the reason why I kept this one in particular. That was Lauren's idea. I do see a question in the chat here from CassidyYT. Any updates on the Z-7090 release? The answer to your question is it is released. And like other products on our website, if it's sold out on nzhty.com,

we recommend you do two things. The first is sign up for the email alerts on the product page so you can get notified when it comes back in stock. But the other thing we'd like to tell people to do is to either go to nzactct.com slash retailers and find a different store that is selling the product. just check amazon new egg micro center best buy etc there's a bunch of different websites out there that sell nzxc products and i know for sure some motherboards are available at different retailers um like i could probably just check amazon real quick for you right now and double check i know there were

a bunch of there recently so let me see n zx t z 790 on amazon and boom it's right there with prime one-day delivery so you get it today or you order today you'll get it tomorrow and it's available in both black and white so i hope that answers your question yes another question here from t north zero in the chat do you all have a team of product testers or can people apply or sign up to be a product tester really good question so we do have product testers however right now they are all NST staff members so what we do is whenever we release a product the product team you know sends different people and that are in this group here at NST the products we can test it out like the last one that I participated in was for the

capsule mini which you see right behind me you know the the product manager Patrick who was on our podcast last week he made a little group on Slack and he's like hey I I want you guys to test out our new mic and boom arm and let me know what you think. So we did that for a couple months and gave him feedback. Before the pandemic, we used to do a lot of focus groups with people. So we would go primarily on our subreddit and Discord server and just put out a call to action out there. You know, if anyone is interested in seeing unreleased NZXT products and giving us your feedback, come on down to our office and you can literally come on in.

I'll make you sign some paperwork so you don't build any secrets you may see and we'll pay you some money even to get your hands on stuff. So we did that with keyboards. We did that with cases. We did that with mice. We did it with a bunch of products. However, once the pandemic happened, we kind of had to put a thought to that because there were different, not just rules and regulations, but also just safety for people,

you know, and not just people that work here, but people that come in here. So we haven't done in a while. However, I know I heard on the news that just this week, President Joe Biden signed some paperwork that said the pandemic is officially over, Mike. Did you hear that? Yeah, so hopefully we can do that stuff again soon. If you're local in the Los Angeles area, we would love to have more people coming in here. From Big Man Thunder to chat, have you thought about an NZXC chair?

Well, we actually did have an ZXT chair. I didn't have one right now. Yeah, it's the NXT Verdegear chair. I'll pull up pictures of it real quick. Yeah, we made, it's the Verdeger SL-200 chair, and we teamed up with them to incorporate this color way into it. It was not a limited edition. It was a special edition chair, which it's sold out in a lot of different parts of the world, but not in every part of the world. Like I know in the UK,

they have, right now, they actually, they're exclusive to scan computers. So if you live in the UK, you can get one there. But every once in a while, people ask that question and I'll be like, yeah, I'm sitting on wondering. Do you like, do you like the gaming chairs or do you like ergonomic chairs more? You know what? I hate the way gaming chairs look, but I love the way they feel. Oh, okay. So you're the other way.

Most people hate the way they feel, but they like the way they look. They feel great. I just, you know, I feel like I'm sleeping in a race card bed whenever I'm doing. But yeah, like, I love just like chilling back like this and just, you know, playing video games with my controller. like it's super comfy. I like that. Yeah, but I would never have one in my house just because, you know,

like it reminds me like of a race car bed. I actually have a question, but I'm going to spin it a little bit because obviously we can't really answer it. From extremely based human as what are your plans on your next case. Obviously, we can't really tell what we're planning on doing.

However, I'm going to spin it. Either what things would you want in the next case. if you could make a nz. Okay, so one thing that I do know about our, not just our cases, but all our products, but specifically our cases, because that's what our red and butter is, what we're most famous for and what we've been doing the longest, is that every case we make has always done a couple of things.

Number one, it's always made it easier to build in. And number two, it's always like, means. it easier to just look cleaner like hiding more cables and things like that so what i would like to see in our future cases is probably um you know the ability to just have hide more more cables like um you know especially now with like these giant GPUs like i'm looking at my graphics card right now and like the one thing that sticks out is like there's like six cables sticking in the couple of for it. It seems like a really

like a lot of unnecessary things that you don't really need to look at. So I don't know, maybe we can figure out a way to hide that stuff or maybe we just need to make an NZXTGPU with the cable management bar. Some questions about that.

Yeah, the other thing I would like to see is maybe screws that don't require a screwdriver, you know, more toolless stuff so you can just slide brackets out install your radiator your fans without screwing stuff in that would be nice to see um another thing too is maybe i would also like to see updates to our mini ITX cases um we haven't updated the h 200 at all we've updated the h 500 to the h5 but they did the H-100 to the H-7, get the H-9 now.

So maybe, you know, a mini H-9 would be cool in mini-itX. I know a lot of people have been asking about that on social media. Maybe even an update to the H-1, you know, would be cool. Maybe even a micro-ATX case. People have been asking about that stuff for a while, too. We stopped making those, not because they weren't good cases, but it's just the micro itx market in general is pretty small for some reason like which i always think it's kind of interesting because if you think about it micro itx is probably the most

convenient form factor out of all motherboards because most people are not using all the pti slots on their ATX motherboard so it's like you have your GPU on the top and then the bottom is just empty and if you have a mini ITX motherboard you know you always think like oh I need a little more and more slot for like a capture card or something like that so micro ITX is like the sweet spot in my opinion it's like not too big not too small right in the middle but for some reason people either go big or go small no one likes to go in the middle that much so you know maybe I would like to see more micro ITX cases from NZX in the future what about you Mike um

Yeah, so the main thing that I was going to say was like, I would love some more mini ITX cases. But then I'm thinking about the graphics cards and they're so so big now. I was like, I don't know how feasible they will be in anymore. Like, mini ITX will pretty much end up being micro ITX and micro will be a little bit bigger. Just because of these, you know, graphics cards are huge. I mean, like, we have a 40 series card in ours and it's a literal like, it's this thing. And I'm even joking. It is literally the stick.

Which, by the way, when you, when you, when you, when you mailed me this PC, did you know that you did not include the foam insert inside the case? I should have had the foam insert, I thought. I did it. I opened it up and it was like not in there. But the GPU did not like move around or anything, which was interesting. That's weird because I remember specifically putting it in there. Oh, maybe. Oh no, maybe someone opened it before me then took it out.

Oh, that's possible. Yeah, because I remember, I remember specifically, like, opening it, putting it in, and then making sure because I had to open and put the Pachy slip in. So I remember specifically seeing it. So maybe someone sounded. Yeah, no, they probably opened it, pick it out, to see what was in there and then gaiting the PC. But I was like, did Mike not put it in there? No, no, no, no, I'm not that dumb.

I'm not that dumb. Because I remember specifically because I had to go home and print, because I didn't have a printer in my old apartment. I had to print out the packing slip and I had to reopen the PC and put the packing slip in. So then I remember specifically seeing that. It'll be good. Let's see. It'll be cool to see K for BNW.

It'll be cool to see cases that came with included GPU riser cables and gave you the ability to mount the GPU onto non-traditional. Or N-60 wall mountable or open-air cases. I thought about open-air cases. Do you have an opinion on those? Like, I think they're fine. I think they're they're cool but

I don't know like even like the ones you mount on the wall and stuff like that like they're cool like don't get me wrong they're cool but I don't necessarily think they're convenient you know like first of all you know the case does more than just

hold the hardware it also keeps dust out right yeah so I think if you have an open air case it's just gonna you're gonna have to clean it a lot more than if it was, you know, a regular traditional PC case. So it's not for everyone, for sure, because a lot of people don't even bother testing or cleaning their current PC, right? And then as far as, like, mounting on the wall also looks really cool, but not easy, right?

Like, not everyone can just, you know, drill holes in the wall and, like, put a PC up there. But it looks awesome. Like, don't get me wrong. Like, I love seeing open air cases. we actually if you want to open up our Instagram Mike I just posted a H9 Elite mod which they converted into an open air case which is pretty cool right there this one the the pink water yeah right there ooh jeans I see G's from oh this is sick yeah with the custom cooling and everything like that dang

that's like set yeah see that looks awesome but if you have a PC like this it's like lot of work not just to build it but just to maintain it because number one you're gonna have to make sure this thing is always constantly clean because you don't want like performance to be hindered right and you know if you have pets it's just gonna be you know fur flowing in there and whatnot right and then because it's liquid cooled you know which is also looks great but you're gonna have to keep it really close eye on your attempts you're gonna have to clean that fluid swap that fluid like every so often it's not like an easy thing to to do so yeah clearly would be

annoying but it would be really cool to have something like that I think yeah see you know the question Ivan I'm scrolling through here there's like a lot of free PC questions so many free pieces of let me see Ivan how are you doing today today's well I'll be quite honest I'm very very very tired because my baby, I have a almost one-year-old baby who is teething at the moment. So sleep is not something that I'm getting a lot of these days, but I'm all right, man. I'm happy. It's Friday.

Ready to start the weekend. Probably going to do some barbecue. It's going to be nice spring day here in L.A., so looking forward to it. How about you? Yeah, I'm still getting over his sickness. so I'm probably going to spend some time this week just recovering, not dying, stuff like that. Nice. I have a good question here.

Okay. Go for you. From Jair Lightitens. This is something that for some reason or another, we get asked, like, often. People want to know how old NZXT is. I think a lot of times people might just hear about us. Like, you know, they might just check, like, they just heard about NZT today. And then they go to our website and they see, like, a bunch of products.

And they maybe do a Google search and they see a bunch of old cases. And they're probably like, what the heck? Like, back come I just heard of this place, right? So to answer your question, NZXT's been around since 2003. So 20 years, we've been a business. Wow. Yeah. From 2003 to 2007-8-ish, the company was primarily just our founder, Johnny and a couple people here and there.

But it was primarily, you know, it was no more than like three or four people working on everything. And then in 2000, around 2008, you know, the company started growing more. when we started working on the phantom cases, which really made NZXT a household name in the PC industry. And then from there, the company just kept growing and growing. I know when I first started in 2015, we were like, maybe like 40 people globally. And then right now we're a couple hundred globally.

So the company is pretty big. and growing and been around for 20 years, believe it or not. Yeah, you've been... Almost your entire life, Mike. Yeah, and you've been there since almost pretty much almost the beginning. Oh, not 20 years, man. No, no, no, no, but you said... I remember it was like before, like, what social media started to actually, like, come through.

You're literally the beginning of, like, the social media for it in general, so... It's all my fault. Yeah, it's all your fault. Your fault that I'm here. YKL underscore 0728 asks will we will NZXT ever sell the headphones again and the answer is yes so for those that don't know NST designed and made a headphone oh yeah in 20 that was when I was here in 2018 or 2018 or 2019 I forget the year And we're all set to release it. Like we were about to launch it and then we realized, you know, we're not ready to launch this thing yet.

There's still a lot of things that are not what we want from a headset. So let's just pause it, go back to the drawing board and work on this again. and, you know, we're still working on it. Our product team has not stopped working on this thing. We're hoping to, you know, we can release it to the world one day soon. I actually, I still, I have NZXT audio stuff, and I use the NGXT audio stuff. It's just, you know, nothing that we've ever released. It looks really cool.

I remember when I was an intern. and they like showed us in the office. It was the coolest thing. Scrip-O-3 asks, this is a question we get often is how to buy something if your website is sold out. And we talked about this at the beginning of the show is that there are a couple things you can do,

but what we'd like to tell people to do is just check another website. Go to mzxty.com slash retailers. type in your location and you'll get a list of stores that sell NZC stuff. You can check those stores and if they don't carry NZXC stuff, you can just bug them and say like, hey, I really want you to get this stuff and, you know, please, please get it. Like, we can't force retailers to carry our product, but what you can do to help

is to, you know, just tell them to carry it and hopefully they'll order it and stock up for you. from Rudra How does NZC sponsor non-content creators Oh, that's a hard one Because it's really hard for us to sponsor people that don't make the content That we provide them, right? For those that don't understand

A lot of the business side Of like sponsorships Sponsorship is a two-way street, right? You know, let's say a very famous streamer is streaming to a large platform. They need, they have a large audience, then a company sponsors them. The reason why you're sponsoring them is because since they had a large audience, hopefully showing off our product to that streamer will get views, get eyes on it,

and maybe even potential purchases. if you're not a creator how would why would we be giving away money without it having some sort of money coming back to us that's what a lot of people don't understand like which is you know understandable because you know not every 10 12 13 year old is going to understand the presence of of like a business um but you just have to know So it's at both sides, it's going to be a business. And you just have to understand that in order for us to give you something to sponsor you, you'll have to give us something back in return.

Here's a question for you, Mike. Yeah. From Matthew Cheneppen. Is it true that girls like gamers? No, never. Never heard of that. If you're a gamer... If you're a gamer, no.

You don't talk to anyone. Anyone at all. you stay in your room but you don't talk to anyone Owen Klein Owen Klein jeans Because this is a play on Calvin Klein jeans They ask how do you make those clean design So that's actually an interesting question

Because NZXC is You know known for having Very simple minimal minimalist design And It's You know it's interesting how the design came to be and Shin who

he's like our main industrial design guru over here you know when I first started working at NZ-XT I actually sat right right next to him so I got to see a lot of his design process and a lot of the stuff that he was working on and

what was interesting to me is you know he didn't spend the entire day you know designing paces or or anything like that you know what he was you know what he was drawing at his desk like what he was he was drawing boats cars motorcycles um swords he was drawing like different things but making them very simplistic so for example like if you look at like our our phantom cases right he he he he he he

He showed me like this sketchbook that he had and he was drawing yachts. Like he was drawing big yachts that had like these funky curves on him. And then when it came time to design the phantom cases, he literally like took that inspiration that he got from drawing boats for like a year. It's like, I'm going to put this on a case now. And then with the Manta, he was drawing a lot of supercars. And if you look at the Manta, there's like a lot of lines

that are very similar to cars and things like that. So I'm not saying that, you know, NCXT designs all their products that way. Like, that's just something that stood out to me when I first started working here. You know, the team has grown a lot since then. He's not the main person that's doing everything now.

But that's one way I know when we came up with the designs. Dang, I know that. That's actually a really cool insight. We should make a video about that. We should, I need to ask shit if he's available for like, because I really want to ask, like, do like a video interview of him of like how he made like some of these cases. You know what? I actually did do a video like that. It's a hidden YouTube video now because it's like super old with like old branding and things like that. So it's hidden on YouTube. But on the H440s four year anniversary, which is 2018, I interviewed him. And this was like, you know, just me asking him, you know, how did you promote the designs?

I think like that. And he goes into it into detail and we show a lot of the sketches. You should probably unearth that video and maybe do something on TikTok. I think it would be interesting. That'd be cool. Yeah, because I would love to show people like the re-sitting behind cases. That'd be really cool. All right.

CRK19 asks, what is the best PC case in your opinion? Oh, the best PC case? I think the S340 in my opinion. Oh, all time or current? Oh, all time. All time. I think S340 currently, that's hard. Because I like my H5 flow, but I do think the best case that we currently have is the H9.

Okay. How about you? All time. favorite NZXT PC case hands down NZT Manta is our very first

mini ITX case and one of the first cases that you know we launched when I worked here so it's very near and dear to my heart because you know that was like I worked really hard to help launch that thing and what's cool about that case to me is

it's a mini ITX case but it's not small it's actually big And people click edit and they're like, why would I ever want a really big mini ITX case? And the answer is because it does a lot of things that a normal mini ITX case can't do. For example, you can have dual radiators on it. You can have push-pull 280 millimeter radiator in front and top. You can have a even like three radiators in it even. You can have a 140 radiator in the rear.

You can put a giant air cooler in it. like I do in my own personal Manta, has really good airflow as well. Like, you know, even though it has closed panels in the front and top, it has vents all along the side. So there's air just going in and out of that case. It's a really, really cool case. It's also unique in that it's curved steel, which is not easy to do. Like the panels look plastic, but it's actually not. it's metal like we figure out a way to bend metal so very unique looking case and yeah people

still ask for us to make this case like often um so that's that's my favorite all-time nzxt case for sure and then my current favorite nzxt case it's probably the h5 flow because you know it's It has like, I don't know, it's very, it's unique, first of all. Like, it has like the quote unquote toilet fan that everyone enjoys so much. Like, it has that. It has the perforated front and top panels, which is great because people have, you know, historically said that NZXT doesn't know anything about. Are we back? Uh, yes.

It should be back. Should be back. I don't know where I left off. I think we left off where I was saying what my current favorite case is. So my current favorite case is the H5 flow because even though it is a mid tower case like our H7s and our H9s, it is much smaller. It's very compact. So it's going to take up way less space than any of our other mid tower cases. But at the same time, you know, it also allows you to put in a lot of hardware in there.

You could have two radiators in there, front and top. I guess even the rear. So technically you could have three if you wanted to. You could have a really big GPU in there. Like in my H5 flow or yours too, we have 4090s in there. You know, there's cases that are bigger than the H5 that can't even support an 4090 card. So yeah, I think that's my favorite case. And like I said, it also has some unique features primarily.

the GPU cooling fan that's just blowing air straight at that 40-9ing so pretty pretty cool case let's see hmm do you think we'll ever make an nz-xc laptop do i think we'll ever make an nzxt laptop yeah i don't know if we will but i do i do think it would be great if we did and the reason why is because i actually never I never I never really cared for laptops especially when it came to gaming I always kind of you know

thought like I like why would I ever want a laptop but then once I became once I became a dad you know and like my space became limited you know in my house where I had to like give up my my office I had to give up my gaming desk I had to give up my PC

like I just just simply for the fact that you know I had to put in a crib or I had to put a little play area for my daughters and things like that out of necessity I had to get a laptop and I have an HP NV 15 inch laptop it's like one of those like two and ones so it's like you can fold it and it becomes a tablet and it's a touchscreen and all that and you know I've been using that for like like two two years now and I love it like I do most of my work on the laptop even when I come to the office I'll bring my laptop and I'll use that to like do my work and you know in my work is you know in social media so like I don't need a a big gaming PC to

check Twitter or anything like that and it's much more convenient for me to just use my fingers and tap on the monitor than to you know fire up a computer and sit in keyboard and mouse all day long so it's now i'm my mentality is switch where like yeah i think laptops are are good they're useful there's definitely a reason why you know i would want one and especially why i would want nzxte to make one because i would love to have a laptop that fit the nzxt aesthetic you know that was clean it had the nzxte look um and it would probably have you know a better GPU than what than my integrated graphics on my HP envy so yeah i hope that nz-dhc does make a laptop one day i would definitely rock it definitely how about you uh i would love

for them to make one for a while i don't know if we'll be able to just because you know it's it's hard to like make something from the beginning but i would love i would absolutely love an nzxc laptop because they can have it for everywhere and then you know you know you can see like someone gaming in like an airport or something like that that'd be fun yeah it would be any other questions from stories you want to get to or from the chat let's see oh from chat uh let's see rather than a plaid shirt or a hoodie what about i don't know what that is is a v dona to league league of legend's shirt slash hoodies i i'm not under i'm not sure what you mean by that like the hoodies that we're giving away for the giveaway for the podcast um i don't think

we can do something like this since we don't sponsor any dota two or league of legend streams or the streamers or anything like that or teams but um maybe maybe down the road have you watched the dota anime no i have not did you know there's a dota anime i know i did know there's a dota anime but I was always a more league I was bigger league fan than Dota all right Phil Phil Enoch's asking a question that a lot of people have asked so as they ask this may be well known to all but to me but how do the name NZXT come to be any special meaning behind it um did you ever post that TikTok video you didn't huh No that's a surprise for later yeah forget it forget I said anything

there's no TikTok video but yeah So if you guys want to know the answer to that, when Johnny, our founder started the company 20 years ago in 2013, he was still a teenager, believe it or not. His whole idea for starting NCXT was that he wanted to create the next generation of computer cases. at the time, you know, every computer case was a, basically a beige box. And, you know, if you're a PC gamer 20 years ago, you know, you had a beige box on your desk. It didn't look very gamery. It was just like, like an office PC. So he designed what he thought was the next generation

of computer cases, and that was the NZXT Guardian, which was the very first case that had, like, like integrated RGB lighting. It had funky colors. It was available in like yellow, red, green, purple, like you name it. It had a front panel that opened up. It looked like a transformer. It was like really, really, really funky.

And when it came time to name the company, he thought, you know, well, next generation's cool, but it's also really long. Like maybe I'll just call it next. But for those that don't know, there is a company already called Next that was founded by Steve Jobs. It's also a computer company. Who? So this guy named Steve Jobs, yeah.

So basically, he just thought, well, I'll just add a Z in there instead of an E and put a dot at the end because it looks cool. And that's it. Like, that's literally the whole thinking of the logo. the original logo, you know, had that dot. We don't have it anymore. But what I could tell people is that that dot is what ended up becoming Pucci right there. So we got rid of the dot and then Pucci was born of the dot.

So that's basically the story. I know I wish I could tell people like it stands for our New Zealand extraterrestials because, you know, our founder, you know, did ayahuasca in the forest and an alien visited him or something like that. No, like that, none of that happened or none of that's true. It's just, it's just something that Johnny thought looked cool. And it does look cool, I have to admit, but the logo is originally how I first thing to know of NZXT. When I first saw the logo, I was like, what is this?

What is this? How do you say this? Is it Niz-X? Is it next? Is it NIST? Like, I had no idea how to say the name. That's the first thing that attracted me to NZT was that funky-looking logo. And that logo, honestly, it's a blessing and a curse because, you know, it's cool.

Like, I think NZXT does look cool, but, you know, it's not easy to be a company when your name is just four letters. You know, it'd be a lot easier if our name was, you know, New Zealand computer technologies or something. something like that it's definitely easier to remember I think and the whole reason why even we had to get rid of the dot in the first place was because you know we noticed that whenever we would make a product or even like a t-shirt or a sticker or a banner for like an event or something that stupid little dot would always make the logo look off-centered right and the the original the original logo wasn't even like our own lettering it was a font it was just like a

forget what font like aerial font like aerial bold font or something like that so what would end up happening is like depending on where we would manufacture the product like if depending on how they would use the font like the logo would be stamped on our products differently so sometimes it would look one way the other times look another way and it just wasn't consistent And like I said, it always looked crooked, you know, because of that dot. Like the dot just made it look crooked. So when we decided to get rid of the dot, we also decided, let's come up with our own font for these letters, right? So we did that.

And then we also decided, let's pick a color that will go well with these letters, and we chose purple. So it's been a long evolution of that logo. And so I guess that's a long way of answering your question, but yeah, it really means nothing is just something that we thought look cool Let's see. Oh, I got a good one from Rowan h 024. How long does it take you guys to design a case from beginning? Well, first of all, Mike and I are not on the product team, but I do know It takes a while so and every case is different like We were talking about the Manta earlier. You know that's my personal favorite case and

And that's the first case that I personally, you know, helped launch, you know, when we came out with it. That was the first project I ever worked on was that case, which is probably why it's so near and dear to my heart. But I know that that case in particular took almost five years to make. And like when I saw the prototypes of that case, it looked nothing like what it actually came to be. The original idea for that case was to have like a, it's basically like a miniature S340. If you're familiar with the S340, which is just like, it's this case right here with the stickers. It was just going to be like a regular small box. But then over the time, you know, those five years or whatever, like the case kept getting bigger and bigger because they wanted to add more into it.

And eventually they just said, you know what? will make this cool is if we just made it as small as possible but just curve the panels so we can do more with it and that's how it ended up happening in that case took you know five years I know not every case takes that long some some cases you know could be a year others could be two years but I would say on average maybe a couple years to to make a case it's not a it's not an easy thing to do and I think for us in particular, the reason why cases are so hard, it's not hard, but they take a while to make is because every case that we do make, it's always a little bit better than the previous one. So there's always like a new feature. There's always, you know, better cable management. It's always easier to build in. There's always less screws.

there's always like a bunch of little things like that that you know I guess we kind of take it for granted you know like you get a you get a computer case and you know you're like oh there's a bracket I can put my radiator on there or you know oh there's a jean a fan cooling my GPU or there's little straps here in the back for me to tie these cables like all that stuff takes you know a lot of time for someone to think about and figure out how to design it and make it work and whatnot so um Yeah, it takes a couple years, I think, to make a pretty good case. Franz at Frahinis, or Franz asked, did you guys check the non-RGB full-black NXT build from Mr. Matt Lee? And the answer is, of course, we did. Always. We cross-posted it on our own social media. I've got to love Mr. Matt Lee.

Mr. Matt Lee is awesome. Awesome, dude. DM1 Pro. Very good question here, because we were just talking about this on our company. any slack here you guys have any suggested fan placement for the H9 elite like where to put the AIO and what fans to push and pull air so Mike I'm gonna ask you to pull up the HLN product page and scroll about halfway down there's two fan configurations that we show so scroll down Mike you want to oh yeah go back

scroll down, scroll down a little bit more. There's a designability. It shows GPU cooling and CPU cooling options. So scroll down. All right. So there's two ways that you can install the fans in your H9. The way the case is designed that the air is always going to go in through the bottom and out through the top, right? So those don't change. The bottom, we always want people to have those as intakes and the tops as exhaust.

However, when it comes to the front slash side fans, those you can either have as intake or exhaust. If you have them as intake, they're going to do a much more efficient job at cooling your graphics card. and if you have them as exhaust, it's going to do a much better job at cooling your CPU. So there's two ways to do those fans. And in terms of the radiator, you know, we put it on the top because if you have it on the top, you're going to be exhausting air through the radiator out through the top. so none of that air is blowing into into the case. However, you could also install the radiator on the front or even the bottom or even the rear of the case.

But primarily, if you put it on top, it should be good to go. And I know like radiator placement is a, it's for whatever reason, like the most contra, well, one of the most controversial things in the PC building community. Like, no matter which way you do it, it's always wrong according to the internet. and then you know what if you watch a video like you'll there's a video that'll disprove every single which way you want to install it but trust me like literally no matter which way you install an all in one liquid cooler it's going to last you a really long time however nothing lasts forever eventually you know something's going to happen to it like might take six years or whatever

but yeah you're probably going to have to switch it out eventually um before For the most part, you know, if you install it, like we show here on the top, like you'll be fine. Like it'll do good for you. CM1 Pro, is there a case that you guys recommend the most? It really just depends on your specs, man, and what you're looking for. You know, if you want like the biggest, most like, you know, glass-filled case, probably the H-9, if you need something more compact, an H-1, the H-5, it really just depends on what you're looking for and the specs that you have. So that's, does, it, most, majority of time, if you have a question about anything like that,

the 90% of the time, most people will answer, it depends. What do you have? Or it depends, et cetera. Yeah, it all depends what you want to do, you know, if, yeah, and you're right, because people will ask us on social media, like, daily, you know, like, yeah, I want a PC, which one should I get? Like, well, yeah, it depends what you're going to do, you know. I guess when it comes to cases in particular, I mean, you have to think, like, okay, well, do I need something to save space?

If so, then you're probably gonna wanna get like the H1 or the H200 or even H5, which is compact and something that's in take a lot of space. Or if you wanna do something that has, you know, for whatever reason, let's say you wanna have dual GPs and you wanna have like custom water cooling and you wanna have really good temps

and optimal airflow and things like that, you're gonna want a bigger case that supports more hardware so it really depends on what you what you need or what your budget is you know if you if money is no object then you know our biggest and best case is the h-9 elite if you want to save as much money as possible and get the most bang for your buck you're probably going to be looking at the h5 um but it all really depends on on what you need all right we're coming up on time here last call for questions If you guys have anything, drop them in now, forever. Hold your peace.

If not, then I guess we'll just go into announcements and drop the secret word, which I don't think, Mike, you even know what the secret word is, right? I do not, actually. I can give it. Beautiful. Each night is by far the easiest case I've ever built into extra room and cable management systems worth extra price. It looks amazing, too. Are you able to buy NCC merch anywhere on the site?

No. Really, you cannot buy. N-16C merch really the only way to do is being in our Discord server, Discord.g.g slash S-XC or winning one here on the podcast. We give out a lot of stuff. I'd love a name. If you hang out long enough with us, like you'll eventually get like buddies and shirts and fingers and all that. I've had people win twice already.

Yeah. Kill, um, kills in a night. I love an 8, 510 with 280 top support. Check out our H5. That's actually literally your H5. I'll show you real quick. It's always funny to me when people say that because we have that. It's just called the H5.

It is literally a H5. But then they'll say, but I want the H510. And I'm like, well, this is the successor. Like this is better than the H510. Yeah. Well, this has 240 on top technically, but like. You could put 280. I thought it was only 240.

uh oh it's you can do 280 yeah yeah but h5 has the front of well get the h5 well get the h5 elite yeah yeah if you if you want the top top support for an h5 10 you should get the h5 and it is also the h5 elite as well yeah but also uh can you go back to the yeah can you scroll down a little bit and show the video section uh for like the airflow visualize right there or go back to the h5 flow because someone was asking earlier if we saw mr matli's video and i believe it's on this page here this one right here yeah the knock to a one well yes we did say mr matt lee's video we like this always we always yeah he's we see mr matt lee everywhere yeah all right already uh i think uh i think

That's it. Ivan, do you have any announcements before I get into announcements? I guess I could give the secret word now. Oh, do that after announcements. Do that after announcements. Let them hear it. So for the announcements, for like, we just released our new capsule mini and mini boomer.

I'll actually pull up the capsule mini real quick. And microphone. This is our capsule mini, everyone. We have a capsule mini giveaway happening actually right now. It ends today, so please sign up ASAP. We basically have this new cardioid gaming mic. It's super tiny, super adorable, and it's actually a really nice form factor. So if you need ACE mic for smaller things, go ahead and check it out.

Let's see. Oh, yeah, we just released our new pre-built as well. We have the player PCs at nzac.com. We have the player one, two, and three PCs. each with a prime version. So each of these PCs is made for a specific person. And if you fit that gamer type, get that PC. And then we, like we just said, we just released the new capsule MIDI and Boomar Mini.

We have new products that are releasing all the time. Cases, coolers, fans, monitors, thermal pace, power supplies, everything that you can think of, we are releasing. So check about ncc.com or sign up for a newsletter. to stay in the loop if they are out of stock. And then Ivan is going to give us the secret code word for those that are here. As a thank you for being on the podcast, being live. We'll give you 500 extra entries into the podcast giveaway. So today's secret word, I'm going to type it into chat here.

So everyone can just copy, paste it. It is all caps. No stupid questions. Oh, Judah. Will the H440 be brought back? No word. But I'll love an 840. I'll love an 8400 or 440 refresh.

I think there are two different cases. Type that H400 is a micro. Yeah, yeah, I would love either one of the refreshes, I mean. Good luck, everyone. Yeah, so no stupid questions, just stupid answers. If you type no stupid questions, you'll get a bunch of bonus entries into our giveaway here, and you'll probably win. And most of the time,

whenever I pull the winners, it's usually one of these people. Code word for the mic, go ahead and check our SoundCloud for our previous episode, and take a look for the code word. And it's IRA's asking about discount code,

so we actually don't have any discount codes, but if you want to save some money, just sign up for the newsletter at nzixc.com, and we will be the first to know whenever we have our next sale. And Max, 2007, 345, yes, our podcast

is on it's on Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, and you can watch the Vaz on Twitch, and even on nzexc.com, you can tune into previous episodes. All right, everyone. Thank you guys for joining us, and we're

tuned in live every Friday at 10 a Pacific Standard Time on the official ZEC Twitch, and don't forget to listen to previous episodes on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. There you go. please leave us a positive review if you like what you hear and if you didn't got any questions for us send an email to podcast at ncxxc.com or tag at ncxte on all social media platforms uh go ahead and join

the capsule mini giveaway before it ends today so please take a look at it and then good luck to everyone in the podcast giveaway and the capsule mini giveaway goodbye everyone