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When we remove the side panel, we are greeted with a first class paint job throughout. There are no patchy areas, and nothing is badly finished. All surfaces are perfectly coated and we could feel no rough edges during our analysis.
The other side of the chassis – there is a hole cut for easy access to motherboard backplates and there are several areas for routing.
There are plenty of bay slots for hard drives – the system to hold these is rather flimsy however. To remove, the glasp is pushed inwards and they slide out. They are made of very thin plastic and I wouldn't be too sure that these would last a very long time with abuse.
The top drive system is easy to work with, and although we rarely include an optical drive in our system builds now, this proved to be well designed when we tested it out.
Inside at the rear, we can see the blue USB cable which runs under the motherboard and around the front. They supply a 120mm fan at the back of the chassis to help with the removal of hot air in the CPU area. There is also a 200mm fan at the top to further aid with a hot running system. If this isn't enough then you can add another fan in front of this.
The bottom of the chassis features vented areas which include dust filters.
For the purposes of our review today we really wanted to break the mould and decided to see if this chassis would handle an overclocked Intel Core i7 980X CPU with a HD5870 and 6GB of DDR3 1600 memory.
We moved our trusted Intel DX58SO motherboard, Core i7 980x CPU, Thermaltake Frio cooler and Kingston memory into the case without a hitch. We have active cooling on the northbridge to help with overclocking later.
We also added a Noctua 120mm Fan into the side panel, we will perform tests with the fan on and off later to see if it helps with cooling on such a high powered system. You can also see we removed the Kingston memory cooler and then played around with a the second fan on the Frio, this doesn't add noise to the system if both are kept on low speeds and its much better when overclocking.
holy shit batman, thats a hell of a price for a very very nice looking case. who the hell would pay £300 for a case anymore?
Hey I was just about to log off for the day and then this pops up. Thermaltake really are becoming a quality company. I never rated them years ago, but recently, the frio, their PSU reviewed here, the Contac 29. and this? great products.
Shall be ordering this when it comes out next month, thats a cert.
damn, I wasnt expecting this to be good. what a crap slogan for a case, but as an overall product it is pretty much awesome.
Not sure I like the front of it, but thats a REALLY small point considering.
out in august? shall be looking for this one, havent seen any other reviews anywhere, nice scoopage 🙂
Its hard to fault products at this price. you expect rough edges, or something wrong, but it seems to be well rounded. cant see anything missing as such. I agree, maybe the side panel fan, but its hard to justify it being a bad point, maybe if they charged 100 quid it might be an issue.
£60 for this? are they kidding me. thats a bloody good price. I was expecting a decent case from thermaltake, but they have 3 good fans? and no glowing shit all over it. I like.
Gotta hand it to Thermaltake lately, they are producing some quality products in all areas. I always liked their branded fans, really good long term products as they dont often fail. 20cm fan as standard is a hell of a deal. I paid 25 bucks for a 20cm fan last year. thats a good portion of the asking price of this case alone.
I went into this thinking it was going to be shit. saw 9/10 and thought Zardon was maybe being generous. after reading it all, seeing the attention to detail on all the areas. and the three fans as standard. As well as paintwork and internal design. its actually 10/10 I think. a 980x in it, overclocked? the noctua austrian sandwich cooler costs the same as this case !
wow KitGuru gets all the hardware really early. and you are just opened. big fan over here, the reviews are so detailed and im learning things about systems as I read your reviews. keep up the fantastic reviews KG, I love this site.
Another stunning review from Z. fab product from Thermaltake, I will bookmark this and remember to buy one for my brother next month.
Long gone are the thermaltake cases of the past. 40 crap case fans, lights everywhere. and crappily made side doors that vibrate.
This is stripped down, quality, but I dont like the side panel idea of the drive etc. thats more a server thing and we dont need that. it also ruins the look of the door.
Great review, thanks.