Thermaltake Armor A30 Small Form Factor Case Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Thermaltake Armor A30: Exterior4. Thermaltake Armor A30: Interior and Installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

The Thermaltake Armor A30 certainly isn't the easiest case we've ever opened as there are no fewer than ten thumbscrews that must be removed on the rear panel.  Three of these secure the top panel in place while the other seven secure the removable motherboard tray in place.

Installing the motherboard onto the tray is very simple as Thermaltake pre-install the motherboard stand-offs.  As there is no cut-out in the motherboard tray for installing a CPU cooler after the motherboard, this will need to be done before you install the motherboard into the system.  You will also need to bear in mind that this case requires a low profile CPU cooler such as the Arctic Cooling Freezer 11 LP we are using.

We chose to install a Blu-Ray drive into the case which was a reasonably simple process.  First we were required to remove two screws on either side of the case which releases the rack in the front of the bay which houses all the external drives.  Then we slotted the drive in the top bay and screwed it into place.  The last step was to remove the bezel in the front panel and replace the rack in the case.

Those who want to install a 3.5″ drive will need to do so before replacing the optical drive rack as the 3.5″ drive rack is located in the base of the rack.  We decided to install a SSD in the system however.  The 2.5″ drive mountings are located on top of the optical drive rack which makes them very easy to access.  Thermaltake have divised a very simple mechanism for securing 2.5″ drives which consists of a small plastic clip.  There is room for two 2.5″ drives and two 3.5″ drives in the case.

Finally, we installed the NZXT Hale 90 750W PSU into the system.  First we had to remove the power supply bracket from the system, though, by removing the six screws in the roof of the case.  Then we screwed the power supply into the bracket and secured the bracket back to the case.

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