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In our last Fusion review we used the Element Q case from Thermaltake, which has been on the market now for quite some time. For our review today we were kindly supplied the latest and greatest media case from Thermaltake – the Armor A30.
The bundle is comprehensive. A well written multi language manual, speaker, mounting screws for all areas of the case and a handful of cable tidies in two sizes.
The Armor A30 is significantly larger than the Element Q, but it offers substantially more with the updated design. Firstly, the design looks a lot better with angular edges and an almost industrial ‘sci-fi' like appearance. There is a large 230mm fan at the top of the case, a 90mm intake fan at the front and two 60mm exhaust fans at the rear. Both 230mm and 90mm fans have subtle blue LED's to enhance the appearance.
The front of the case has a USB 2.0 port, USB 3.0 port, eSATA connector and headphone and microphone input connectors. The Tt badge is placed centrally in the middle of the central bezel.
Both side panels have plastic windows mounted to give an overview of the internals. These panels incidentally are never removed, the top and rear sections slide out and off for internal access.
Dotted around the circumference of the chassis are thumbscrews which all need to be removed so various parts of the chassis can be opened.
The rear tray slides out easily, and both 60mm fans can be seen from the inside. They both require a molex power connector. Thermaltake haven't cut corners here, we can see these are high quality units which only spin at 1,500 rpm and only emit around 18dBa of noise.
The top panel is slid backwards to expose the whopping 230mm fan, which is again a high quality unit spinning at only 800 rpm and emitting only 15dBa of noise. The front 90mm fan is also a low spinning model to keep the noise levels as low as possible.
With the rear motherboard tray removed and the top fan shroud out of the way, we can see the insides much clearer. Next we need to get access to the optical/hard drive area at the front of the chassis.
Two more thumbscrews need to be removed and then the optical drive section can be slid back and upwards, outside the case. It is a very clever system and the engineering quality is impressive. Additionally, standard ATX power supplies can be used with this case (one isn't supplied).
With the top tray removed we can mount two hard drives in the tray below. We have fitted a 2TB Samsung unit for storage in the image above. This tray is held in place by a single screw. Again, we were impressed with the chassis strength and engineering quality, much better than the Armor A60 we looked at last year.
The system build took about 10 minutes in total and was easily one of the better small form factor case builds we have experienced to date.
What a great looking case. much better than the element Q. looks like a robotic monster from the future with all the armor panels. awesome.
Asus, well not much to say about them, always brilliant. great review thanks for the fusion stuff.
christ, please stop reviewing this fusion kit, I just got married and can’t play with toys anymore 🙁 Unless i give the CC a bashing…. 🙂
Gotta hand it to asus, they never release anything in a half assed manner, no wonder they generate billions each year.
That thermaltake case doesnt appeal to me on a looks basis, but its a nice design inside.
Frigin awesome boards, the pricing of this one is much higher than the others, but it looks to be worth it. thankfully they didnt use laptop memoery slots. that was dumb.
I wouldnt mind one of these to have in my bedroom for streaming to the TV. would like a remote for it though. like a gyro unit. I hate those windows media remotes, useless.
I think these products arent gettign enough coverage, AMDs fusion will be brilliant in a laptop.
I am looking forward to the quad core products in a few months.
The power consumption tempts me, I know my media center must be sucking at least twice that at idle, probably three times. Might pick one up next month, whenever I can find the bits to buy!
low power is the future. the cost of living now is rising all the time. less = more.
I am ordering one of these when its available.
Its well worth 140 quid, compared to the others at 100.
Zardon , all these fusion reviews are friggin pointless man, you can’t buy fusion products anywhere.
AMD release this in January and over a month later still no products in European retail? They are beyond useless.
Not a single fusion board for sale in the UK, waste of everyones time
So I price up a system and realise this motherboard actually isn’t for sale anywhere.
So I look for other fusion boards, and nadda. What’s up with AMD stock?
Thanks for the review. Nice background to the graphs.
Not one to be found in the USA either. Someone on Ebay has them for $263 USD shipped from Hong Kong. It takes weeks to get here and what a rip off. Come Asus get those motherboards shipped. They have MSI and Gigabyte here but they aren’t as good as the Asus model and require fans.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131698&cm_re=zacate-_-13-131-698-_-Product 😀 In stock!
Hi, Great review! I have a question regarding the used Corsair Dominator DDR3 memory. I was searching for it and found modules with different specs. Can you specify the partnumber or details? Another question is, because the Fusion is single channel, is it the ok to place one memory module? Thanks in advance!
Hello, thanks for the comments. I unfortunately can’t check the partnumber right now, as this system is with a colleague in another part of the world. I will try and find out, but any Corsair DDR3 Dominator will work fine with this board. It will just ‘downclock’. Obviously you don’t need to use this particular memory, as every DDR3 stick we have tried has worked fine in Fusion boards.
Single channel, and one memory module is perfectly fine yes, works great.
Hi Zardon, thanks for you quick reply. I really would appreciate it if you can sort out the partnumber or details. Once I’ve got really messed up with incompatible memory and I want it to do now the right way (incl. memory that can take the heat from overclocking;-)