There have been complaints for a few months that one of the products has been from PC case company NZXT catching fire. This week, the company finally apologized and pulled the case from the store.
The issues concerned their H1 case, which is basically a very large Xbox Series X-like box. As OC3D report, “It appears that the screws on the H1’s PCIe expansion card are shorting out, causing sparks, smoke, and burns on the H1’s PCIe expansion card.”
An owner managed to film the short, complete with the subsequent flames.
After initially failing to address the issue when it was first reported last year, then brought forward a half-assed fix requiring some metal screws to be replaced with some nylon, NZXT has finally – largely thanks to increasing pressure from PC Hardware Sites – issued a statement on their corporate site and have taken more concrete steps to rectify this.
That statement reads (emphasis mine):
To our community,
We are sorry.
The nylon screws were not the complete solution to the H1 fire hazard; they have not addressed the root cause of the problem. We did not consider scenarios where someone could unwittingly replace the nylon screws with metals. Our execution did not meet the quality that our community has come to expect from us.
We will remove the H1 from the NZXT Store and NZXT BLD. We are going to ship redesigned PCIe Gen3 riser assemblies for the current H1s and we are going to help with the installation for those who need it.
In the future, we will establish more robust and thorough design processes. From initial designs, quality control to additional testing, we are committed to quality in both our products and our response to your concerns.
We would like to thank Steve from Gamers Nexus. He and his team brought to our attention the issue of someone replacing the nylon screws with metal screws and brought up the urgency of it.