A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior, simply remove the thumb screws holding each panel in place. Thermaltake has kept the layout quite simple but also has one big drawback. The interior only allows for graphics cards with up to 260 mm length. That leaves people with a Radeon HD 5870 or GTX 480 out of luck, which are 270 and 267 mm in length. Also, instead of traditional spacers, Thermaltake has placed bumps on the tray for mainboard installation. While this saves you the step of placing spacers in the appropriate locations, it may also short your board out if leads on the underside touch these bumps. I would suggest taping them down before installing your mainboard. Turning the chassis around, one can clearly see the opening below the mainboard area. It looks rather compact and I have my doubts if it is large enough to expose the entire backplate of a CPU cooler.


Turning our focus to the inner front, let me start from the bottom. Here is a 2.5 inch bay intended for SSDs. You can only access the screws from the underside of the case. Doing so with a full chassis may be a bit of a pain. Above that are the six hard drive bays with plenty of spacing inbetween each other to let air pass through freely. The very top area is taken by the external drive bays. All of the bays, with the exception of the external 3.5 inch one, come with plastic locks on one side and the option to screw them down on the other.


Taking a closer look at the PSU bay, one can clearly see that annoying metal bar we have seen in so many Thermaltake cases. This is intended to clamp down on the rear edge of the PSU, but also makes installation of the device a bit more complicated. I see no reason for such a clamp unless one is worried that the case structure cannot carry the weight of a power supply. A large air vent covered by a metal mesh piece allows for fresh air to be drawn into the PSU from the bottom. This mesh is not a dust filter by any means. Sure, it will hold back larger parts, but all the fine particles will easily pass on into your precious power supply. Moving up, the seven expansion bay covers are not secured by any screws. They are simply clipped on but seem to hold well enough as all of them are still in place after quite a long shipping process. On the very top you will find one of the newer, quieter type of fans which Thermaltake usually employs in HTPC enclosures.


There is also a 200 mm LED equipped exhaust fan in the ceiling. This unit - just like the front intake fan - can only be powered by the PSU with the use of one Molex connector. This means that both units will run full speed no matter if your system is loaded or idle.


Before we dive into assembly, the I/O and case connectors are of the standard kind. Nothing here to see - move along.