Xigmatek Nebula C Case Review

Overview

 

It’s always nice when as a reviewer we get to see products from a new manufacturer, this time its my turn to take a look at a product from Case/CPU Cooler manufacturer Xigmatek. It’s surprising that it has taken this long for me to take a look at a Xigmatek product, as they were established way back in 2005! So, here I find myself with not only a new manufacturer but also a new case, the like of which I have never seen before. This is the Xigmatek Nebula C, an ITX case, that just happens to be the smallest case that I have ever tested since I started pcG back in 2011 (wow, has it really been that long). The ‘C’ denotion is also rather important as the Nebula without the ‘C’ is even smaller!

The Xigmatek Nebula C, is an ITX based case with a white polycarbonate exterior and a steel frame, the case measures 260 mm (L) x 260 mm (W) x 305 mm (H) and comes equipped with a single 120mm exhaust fan. There’s support for two HDDs or three SSDs, USB 3.0 (with USB 2.0 adapter) and the case will accept a regular ATX Power Supply too! The Nebula C has two expansion slots with support for Graphics Cards up to 230mm in length and CPU Coolers up to 80mm high.

 

 

 

As is the norm these days the Xigmatek Nebula C arrived at pcG in a rather unassuming (no doubt eco friendly) brown cardboard box. On the front of the box we have the Nebula C name along with the Nebula C’s tag line of ‘An additional option of Nebula to better complement the room design you desire’. To the right of this there’s four images highlighting the Nebula C’s Mini ITX nature, 230mm Graphics card support, 80mm CPU Cooler support and USB 3.0. The back of the box is the same as the front, well almost… 😉

 

 

Looking at the left side of the box there’s a large black panel on the left sporting the Xigmatek brand name and product name. This is followed by an Introduction, Features and Specifications section (see Specifications/Features below). Over on the right side of the box we find some further technical specifications in various languages.

 

 

On opening the box we find that the Xigmatek Nebula C is well packaged and protected, with the case covered by a plastic bag and supported by two hard foam blocks. The case and all of the contents appeared to be undamaged and in full working order…

Within the box, other than the case itself, we find a small accessories box containing a basic manual, a USB 3.0 to 2.0 adapter and a bag of screws & cable ties.

At the time of review, the Xigmatek Nebula C is available from Overclockers UK for approximately £55 and comes with a 1 year warranty.

 

Specifications/Features

courtesy of Xigmatek

* Additional details available here

 

First Impressions

 

 

Wow! Now that is small! First impressions are that it looks a little like a fridge, maybe even a Beer fridge! Wouldn’t that be nice, but alas I’m sure it’s not although with a few extra fans maybe it might just work! 😉 On a more serious note this thing is really small, and straight away that unmanly of words comes to mind (cute!), sorry but it is, and at this point I rather like it!

 

 

Looking at the top of the case (measuring in at a square 26cmx26cm) we find very little other than the top panel itself which is made from polycarbonate, in the bottom right hand corner there’s a smart looking aluminium power switch. The sides of the case are just simple white polycarbonate panels. The front is exactly the same but with a nice Xigmatek logo and name in silver, found at the bottom right.

 

 

Removing one of those polycarbonate side panels is even easier than undoing a couple of thumb screws, as the panel simply just pulls off! It works well too, they’re easy to get off and fit well when re-positioned. Removing the left side panel allows us to see inside the Nebula C for the first time and there’s not a lot here folks! What we can see is the 120mm rear exhaust fan with its multicoloured cable (shame!, should be black), a drive cage at the top and, well, not much else…

Removing the right side panels allows us to see a little more (or is that less!?) of the interior, what we can see is that the Xigmatek Nebula C features USB 3.0, and HD audio ports. Rather amusingly there’s also a couple of water-cooling holes at the back, although I can’t see many people using those…

 

 

Looking at the front we can clearly see the ITX motherboard tray in the base of the case, with four pre-installed stand-offs. We can also now see that rather large orange indicator in the bottom left corner of the case, that actually looks pretty cool. At this point I’m assuming it’s a power LED!? You can also see from the shot (above left) how the panels connect to the chassis, just a simple push/click fit.

Taking a closer look at that top drive cage we can see support for a couple of HDDS, or SSDs by way of two(ish) drive sleds (more on this later). But, thanks to the small uprights poking out of the bottom of the cage an additional 2.5″ drive can also be mounted here. We can also appreciate the rather unusual Power Supply position in the top right at the back, Xigmatek claim support for regular ATX power supplies, fingers crossed I guess, as there sure as hell isn’t much room in here…

 

 

When I mentioned the drive cage and its associated sleds I used the x2 ish terminology, looking at the image above may now give you some indication as to why. The Ximatek Nebula C ships with one sled yet two sets of slides!? If you want to install just a single HDD you can just use a set of slides. But if you want to install a 2.5″ drive (or and SSD) then you’ll need to use the sled, that can actually support two (sounds complicated, but it isn’t!).

Finally we have a gratuitous shot of what one assumes is the power indicator, as you can see the panels actually fit quite nicely around the outside of its pyramid shape. Impressive considering all of the side panels are just a push fit.

I have to say at this point I’m impressed with what I’ve seen, as I like the design and the general build quality seems pretty good. But there’s nothing inside of this case apart from that drive cage, no cable management space, no holes or grommets, to be fair it’s an empty box and a very small one at that! I’m now getting a little concerned for the installation, I guess we shall see…

 

Hardware Installation

 

Test Rig Setup

Case	Xigmatek Nebula C	Power Supply	Corsair Professional Series AX760i
Motherboard	MSI Z97I Gaming AC	CPU	Intel Core i5-4690K
CPU Cooler	Noctua NH-L9x65	RAM	HyperX Savage 2400MHz 8GB Kit
Graphics Card	Zotac GeForce GTX 970	SSD	HyperX Fury 120GB

 

 

I must confess I thought that installing our test Rig components into the Xigmatek Nebula C was never going to be easy. And (at first at least) I was right; but our test Power Supply the Corsair AX760i actually fitted with ease as you can see, even plugging in its modular cables was simple enough, mainly down to the fact that there’s noting in the Nebula C to get in the way!

Knowing that our regular test CPU Cooler (Raijintek Themis) was never going to fit and the fact that we tend to use a smaller Cooler for our ITX builds anyway. I really thought the Noctua NH-U9S would fit, thanks to its small size and low height. But as you can see from the image above right there was no way it was going in there! Even a shorter PSU would not have helped…

 

 

Luckily help was at hand in the form of the Noctua NH-L9x65, a cooler with a height of just 65mm, perfect for this install (thanks Noctua). So I reassembled the motherboard assembly with the new NH-L9x65 and we were good to go.

As you can see the Noctua offered plenty of clearance and the motherboard assembly was soon in place atop the stand-offs and secured to the chassis by way of just four screws, although there’s not even much room for screwdriver.

At this point there seems like there’s plenty of space inside the Nebula C (and to be fair there is!) but soon this will all be taken up with those pesky cables. I’m not looking forward to this… 🙁

 

 

Due to the size of the case I decided to fit just a single SSD and not our regular Test HDD (Seagate ST2000DX001 2TB), although it would fit without issue. The HyperX Fury 240GB SSD was simply screwed to the metal sled and the slides added. The sled was simply then slid into position within the drive cage.

 

 

The cabling itself actually turned out to be far easier than I thought, helped by the fact that there’s no fixed path for any cable routing, as there’s no form of cable management in the Nebula C. What was even stranger and really good news, is that I seemed to find some great little nooks and crannies to position/hide the cables, almost as they were designed to be there!? Creepy! 😉 Ok so it doesn’t look pretty, but I’m happy with it and, well there’s no side window, so no one’s ever going to see…

 

 

Now I must confess that early on it was quite apparent that our test Graphics Card the XFX R9 290X DD Black Edition was never going to fit in the Nebula C. Xigmatek claim that it supports Graphics Cards up to 230mm in length and teh XFX card is closer to 300mm, the obvious choice the was the Zotac GTX 970 at just 205mm. This card fitted without issue and once it was cabled up the build was complete.

 

 

Overall then the build was far easier that I thought, this is because that really there’s nothing in the Nebula C to aide or help you it’s simply a void. But cables seemed to find a natural position and the end result I’m quite pleased with… 😉

 

 

Testing Methodology/Setup

 

At pcGameware we use Prime95 and CoreTemp to evaluate CPU temperatures and we use MSI Afterburner to evaluate the GPU temperatures. Of course Prime95 being a CPU stress test also helps to generate heat for us to check the case thermals. We also use UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for GPU temperature testing.

CPU performance testing is carried out using Prime95 (Small FFT) to stress the CPU. Each run is timed for 15 mins and the maximum temperature is recorded for all cores and then the average core heat is taken. Testing was carried out with a small overclock on the i5-4690K of 4.0GHz courtesy of the MSI’s OC Genie.

GPU performance testing is carried out by running UNiGiNE Heaven 4.0 for 15 minutes and then by recording the maximum GPU temperature.

* All case fans (x1 in the case of the Xigmatek Nebula C) and the CPU Cooler (Noctua NH-L9x65) are run at 100% throughout testing. To ascertain case noise levels, the GPU fans are set to their lowest setting and the CPU Cooler fan is unplugged, whilst the dB is recorded from 1m away.

 

Hardware Performance

 

 

CPU RESULTS – Xigmatek Nebula C with Noctua NH-L9x65 and Intel i5-4690K @ 4.0GHz

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max CPU Temperature (core average)	Delta Temperature
Xigmatek Nebula C	23.00	87.00	64.00

* Thermals Explained

 

NOTE: Due to the the size of the Xigmatek Nebula C we have had to use a bespoke set of components for the build, this unfortunately is why there’s nothing else in the chart below. What we have tried to do is just put a Gaming Rig together inside the Nebula C using the most appropriate components that we could find. The main changes are of course the Graphics Card and the CPU Cooler.

As you can see our overclocked (4.0GHz) Intel Core i5-4690K got rather warm with an average maximum Core temperature of 87 degrees Celsius, this is down to two things: The small form factor CPU Cooler (Noctua NH-L9x65) and (ore importantly) the rather aggressive voltage (1.2v) that the MSI Z97I places on the CPU when using the OC Genie setting. The cooler and the case managed to just about keep the temperature in check, but for everyday use these numbers are really too high! You may not get a better cooler, but I’m sure that voltage could be brought down a little closer to 1.15v, and I’m sure this would help significantly…

Please also bear in mind that very few of us sit down for an evening of Prime 95, during Gaming the CPU temperature would probably not exceed 75 degrees Celsius, which within reason is fine.

 

GPU RESULTS – Xigmatek Nebula C with Zotac GTX 970

Case	Ambient Temperature	Max GPU Temperature	Delta Temperature
Xigamtek Nebula C	24.00	80.00	60.00

 

Unfortunately our regular test card (XFX R9 290X DD Black Edition) would not fit in the Nebula C as the maximum Graphics Card length is only 230mm. So we opted to fit one of our test Nvidia cards the Zotac GTX 970, at just 205mm long it fitted perfectly. It also performed well in testing not getting over 80 degrees Celsius, but this is really down to Nvidia’s GPU Boost 2.0 and how it manages the card’s TDP. During testing with the fans at default our test card consistently boosted to around 1200MHz, which is pretty darn good…

 

Acoustic Performance

During testing with the fans aboard the GPU at default, and the fan aboard the CPU at 100%, total noise output was around 41dBA. Disconnecting the CPU fan and leaving the GPU at idle meant that we could measure the noise output of the Xigmatek Nebula C’s single 120mm fan. This turned out to be approximately 37dBA, meaning that with the right GPU and CPU Cooler noise could be kept to 37dBA or lower.

 

Final Thoughts

 

It’s always nice when a product surprises you and the Xigmatek Nebula C has done just that. I thought that due to its diminutive size it would be a difficult case to install into, but with the right components it was actually a rather pleasant experience…

The Xigmatek Nebula C came to pcG in a basic brown cardboard box with its contents well packaged with the case covered in a plastic bag and protected by hard foam. Once out of the box I was shocked at the size of the Nebula C (that’s actually bigger than it’s little brother the Nebula). It’s actually the smallest case that I have ever seen here at pcG. It also happens to look like a really small beer fridge (no bad thing!) but I was worried, and that’s not just because it’s not going to hold much beer! 😉 But because installation into such a small case is likely (I thought) to be somewhat stressful…

The Nebula C is a good looking case in all honesty and dare I say it’s rather cute! It’s well made too, fit and finish is good, although there’s no soft touch surface treatment. Impressive though is the way that all of the panels (sides & front) simply un-clip, allowing quick and easy access to the contents. Once open though you do wonder where your money has gone as there’s nothing in the Nebula C other than a basic drive cage and a lot of fresh air!

The first issue that I encountered was the fact that our test (XFX R9 290X) and our test ITX specific CPU Cooler (Noctua NH-U9S) was not going to fit as they were both too big! The Nebula C’s maximum GPU length is just 230mm , while maximum CPU Cooler height is 80mm. Once I had sourced an appropriate GPU (Zotac Geforce GTX 970) and CPU Cooler (Noctua NH-L9x65) the time had come for the build, and I was nervous…

But in all honesty the build actually went rather well and I was far less stressed than I thought I would be. This is not down to Xigmatek’s excellent cable management holes or space, or due to amazing exterior design!? It’s just the simple fact that your cabling can go wherever you put it as there Is no cable management or interior design!

Due to us having to select bespoke components for this build it’s difficult to talk about the thermal performance of the Nebula C. But the simple fact is that it will happily house a high performance Gaming Rig if you get your component choices right. Of course it’s not a cool case, and one shouldn’t really expect it to be with only one 120mm fan, the performance of the GTX 970 was constrained by heat, but it still boosted at around 1200MHz. And the CPU did get very toasty (87 degrees Celsius) during our Prime 95 test. But as we’ve said before, not many of us will sit down for an evening of Prime 95!

Overall there’s a lot to like about the Xigmatek Nebula C, the only thing not to like perhaps is the price. Considering there’s really not much too it, £50+ seems like rather a lot! But the end result is a cool looking, small ITX case, that looks good, installs well and can house some good Gaming components. I really rather like it you know…

 

Verdict

Please Share, Like & Comment below, we really value your thoughts and opinions…

 

Many thanks to Xigmatek for providing this sample for review