Problems
During the installation process however, I did encounter some problems as the system I transferred into the case had 2 hard drives. As there were already 2 slots taken with the guide rail trays then I’d have to keep one of them elsewhere with 2 hard drives in the enclosure. However, oddly enough, I didn’t have to resort to this. Due to the fact that I had a standard ATX board and standard IDE cables, installing 2 hard drives in the enclosure was not a possibility as the cable wouldn’t be able to reach both of the disks. A little creative rearrangement (thank god I only have 1 floppy) and I managed to keep everything together. If you have a large motherboard or extended IDE/SATA cables, then you won’t have to worry at all.
While installing the 5.25” drives I had a few problems with the fit as it seems the case I received was defective. For the life of me I couldn’t get anything to fit into the top bay and only after forcing the walls out with a little elbow grease could I fit the drives into the remaining slots. A quick email to our contacts at Thermaltake assured us that it must have just been a defect as they tested 10 cases directly out of inventory and couldn’t reproduce the error.
While securing the motherboard, in cramped areas I found it extremely difficult to put one of the plastic nibs into the pinhole to secure the motherboard. For the life of me I couldn’t get it to go in properly. I couldn’t tell if it was due to the hole not being large enough or my not getting it to go in straight. In the end ignoring it seemed to work since I managed to get the remaining pieces in and the motherboard seemed secure.
When attempting to install my old Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! PCI card, I noticed that since the card was wider than a normal card, the plastic tabs couldn’t turn in place to secure the card. Luckily it seems that Thermaltake anticipated this and allows for screws to be used to hold the card in place. However, removal of the tab requires that the fan panel be removed which although not difficult is a bit more of a hassle than one would like.
Conclusions
In my opinion, Thermaltake is on the right track with the toolless design and should continue with their efforts in that respect. It’s not quite there yet as I still required a handy Phillips head screwdriver to remove the plastic panels guarding the drive bays and to install my power supply as well as securing the floppy drive. I guess the floppy drive isn’t so bad as many have removed them from their rigs, but at least including 4 thumbscrews for the power supply unit wouldn’t hurt.
Personally, I was impressed with the styling on the case, however I was slightly deterred by the lack of attention to details, ie the color mismatch the unfinished backside of the door, where to place the trays with multiple hard drives, etc. But the color of the LED’s and the quality of the illumination within the case easily won me back. The WinGo EL lamp could use a little work to make it match the LED’s better, something I’ll look forward to in Thermaltake’s future offerings.
As for sound, the level of noise was excellent. With the 2 variable speed fans idling, the entire case is quiet enough to sleep with (should you be inclined to do so). When the fans are turned up however, the sound levels do increase, but with a setting in between, the sound is acceptable.
