Internal Design
Removing the left side case door, the one with the window, gives access to the motherboard tray and that's about it. The motherboard tray has a massive cutout behind where the CPU socket would be and given its size there shouldn't be a motherboard on the market that isn't compatible with this design.
The last two inches to the right of the motherboard tray bend inwards at a slight angle and in this space are three large rectangular holes for cable management, they are complete with rubber grommets.
The motherboard tray provides room for graphics cards as long as 305mm with the hard drive trays installed. Remove them and you get 406mm of clearance. There is loads of space for oversized tower coolers as the H440 has 180mm of headroom.
At the base of the motherboard tray is an integrated power supply shroud that is designed to conceal messy cables and offers a huge amount of cable management space. Additionally, there are two SSD trays mounted above the shroud along with cut-outs for cable routing to those drives.
The side of the power supply shroud has a large plastic decal – orange on our model – with the NZXT brand name engraved in it. The cool thing about this is that it lights up when the system is active making for an interesting effect.
Around the other side, with the right case door removed we find that there is very little room between the back of the motherboard tray and the case door, between 15.6mm and 26.4mm. This doesn't bode well for cable management. However, this isn't an issue for the H440, as that power supply shroud we mentioned hides most of the cables so they aren't stuffed behind the motherboard tray.
You may notice a small black PCB behind the motherboard tray. This is a fan hub that supports ten 3-pin 12v fans (though you can connect 4-pin fans) with a combined maximum power rating of 30 watts. Feeding power to the hub is a single 4-pin Molex power connector which connects to the hub using a 3-pin fan header. NZXT has taken the liberty of pre-connecting the four case fans to the hub as well as a fifth 3-pin extension cable.
The pre-installed fan cables are a nice touch. NZXT has done quite a bit of the legwork at the factory when it comes to the cables with a number of zip ties already in place.
NZXT has also installed an LED hub as well which controls the front panel I/O LED as well as the company logo on the power supply shroud. These LEDs can be turned on or off via a small black switch at the rear of the case.
Where you would expect to find the 3.5" drive cages along with a few 5.25" drive bays, the H440 has a large rectangular cavity. Here there are just five trays, or shelves if you will, which can be removed via a pair of thumb screws. These five trays are designed to house either 2.5" or 3.5" drives, while a sixth drive can be screwed into the bottom of the case.
It's a decent design that allows plenty of airflow between the drives. The only problem is this huge area can only hold six drives in total and this is the same space most mid-towers use to accommodate six drives along with two 5.25" optical devices. Rather than add more drive trays NZXT has simply spread them out. Again, this design is great for cooling but is quite average when it comes to expansion.
There is so much room between drives that if you stacked two of them directly on top of one another there would still be at least 1cm between them. This gave us an idea for a simple mod that allowed us to install one drive on top of the tray and another underneath, allowing for 11 drives instead of six.
Our mod isn't ideal as it requires you to drill four extra holes in each drive tray, but it is an effective way of fitting more drives in. In fact, once complete it looks less like a mod and more like something that should be there as standard. Furthermore, if you install graphics cards longer than 305mm then you will have to remove some drive trays, making our mod a necessity for some.
Of course, the more drives you add the greater impact it has on cooling performance, but the option to install more drives would have been nice. Speaking of cooling, the H440 comes with three of NZXT's newly designed FN 120mm V2 case fans in the front with a fourth 140mm version at the rear. It is an impressive setup for a $120 mid-tower case and if you want to make it even more extreme another two 140mm or three 120mm fans can be installed into the top panel.
For those keen on liquid cooling, the H440 supports 240mm, 280mm or 360mm in both the front and top of the case. NZXT claims that the H440 is the only case of this size that can support dual 360mm radiators out of the box.