Purple Haze
LENGTH OF TIME: 1-2 HOURS
LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY: EASY
THE CONCEPT
WHEN A NEW COOLER comes out from a manufacturer, it’s not often met with much fanfare. These launches, especially in the tech journalism world, happen frequently, and usually only warrant a solitary news post on the likes of Tom’s Hardware. Even then they’re not likely to garner much in the way of traffic. However, when it comes to NZXT, the company has a bit of a reputation for breaking the rules on what we’ve come to expect from new product launches. You can see this in its cases. Go back to 2010, and its chassis stack was fairly mediocre. Fast forward a few years, and you get innovations like the S510 Elite, the Manta, the H700 series, to the point where the company has dramatically ascended through the ranks to become a top-tier brand.
Perhaps even more impressive than its cases is the company’s cooler design, specifically its Kraken series AIOs. The first gen was very much like the rest of the Asetek AIOs out there—pretty mediocre, some light branding, and a bit of RGB. The second gen came with its own infinity mirror and some stellar lighting effects thanks to NZXT’s own CAM software suite, and that was it. In 2019, though, we witnessed the launch of its third-gen Kraken-series coolers, most notably the new Z range. These flagship coolers come with one heck of a premium price point, but also with a fully integrated 2.36-inch LCD digital display.
In fact, it’s such an impressive part that we decided to theme an entire build around it. So the task here was simple; combine a butt-load of NZXT parts with a $2000(ish)
