I only scanned through this article very quickly. As soon as I saw those 50mm fans I knew it was an instant failure, ignoring the price.

Maybe the case is better suited to an Atom system. Lower heat, less noise.

Atom CPUs run cool but not so the chipsets for them. They often need direct air-forced cooling. In short, I don't think the case would be signficantly quieter with an Atom board. Besides, a $270-300 case for an Atom system seems outrageous.

A good review, as usual.

Hi Mike,

Was any consideration given to doing something with the third/middle fan grill? Either to block it (and force more air to come in through the bottom grills) or to add a third fan? 50mm fans are hard to come by; let alone quiet ones.

The location of the PSU is completely odd (as you said in the review) -- not only does it put it in an awkward position, it blocks the biggest intake grill.

Thermaltake seems to be their own worst enemy -- they let the styling/marketing department hold sway over the engineering R&D every time...

Not sure whether Larry mentioned it, but that middle vent on the back was blocked to avoid airflow shortcut. It didn't do much good.

Spelling mistake on the top of page 4:



And in typical Thermaltake fashion, we once again have an expensive case focusing on form over function.

EDIT: I can't read >.<

Fine review, thanks. It seems whatever Thermaltake does, they can't do it right.

If you spend all your money on the case, then maybe you could only afford an Atom system to put in it lol.

Such a waste of money since this case still looks a lot like a computer. With a DVD drive installed it would look even worse. And that display on the front is junk. It looks terrible -- you will never find somthing like that on premium audio gear.

Well, you could rip out that front and replace it with something perforated (needs a PicoPSU, obviously), and put a quiet fan behind it... After paying $300

OrigenAE m10 mini-ITX is also very good looking (as well as their larger cases).
http://www.origenae.co.kr/en/htpc_m10.htm
It should have better ventilation.
But, probably it's not available in US yet.

Would this be an issue with a SATA optical drive?

Is this a fair conclusion? If 20 DVD players are dropped from a certain height, maybe 10 will have broken, and the other 10 won't have. Some chance comes into play when damage is inflicted, it's a step to say this is due to quality control.

You could be right. But even if neither fan was undamaged, the case would sound noisy. And cool poorly. So it's kind of a moot point.

The one really interesting bit is how they managed to route the PSU hookup from the front of the case to the back. If those adapters could be used in, say, the Sugo cases you could put an ATX in the front fan spot. That would free up room for both taller CPU heatsinks and exhaust fans.

What's so special about it? You can make one of those very easily. Although, if you find a good supplier of C13s which aren't nasty, I'll be impressed. And interested.

Sure, you could probably make something like that with a socket from an old PSU and a spare cable, but how do you do it without it looking like it came from ThereIFixedIt.com?

Purpose made ones would be so much nicer.

The Athenatech A1089 does exactly this.

Uuuhhh, by buying quality parts and not assembling them poorly? All you need is a C14 panel plug, a C13 line socket, and suitable cable. It's.. really quite simple. Moulded != good.



Yes, because a fixed length cable of an 'average' size is a perfect fit in any case. Custom cabling > generic cabling. Every time.

I think users of this case can do better to use and duct 8+cm cpu coolers to the exhaust.

This case most probably won't be bought by any SPCR user because of the (measurable) noise, but you can't conclude that there is poor quality control based on 1 of 2 fans showing some inadequacies.
It is giving a bad name to a brand without proper proof.

Sorry if this sounds too finicky

A nice case beeing ruined by crappy 5cm fans..... as i can se a 12cm fan ventilating trough the top would solve all problems?


regarding the zotac board, u need to check if the heatsink is a good fit, I had really high temps, freez and crashes. figured i should change the thermal pase. then i noticed that the rubber square at the bottom og the sink was building to high, so i removed it ad temps droped arround 20 celsius