A Closer Look - Inside

Both openings on the sides come with small dust filters on the vented portions. Once again, the magnets are too weak and these will come off easily as you handle the panels.


The interior of the Thermaltake Ceres 500 TG ARGB is laid out traditionally with a metal shroud cover keeping the PSU and any cable mess away from the interior chamber. Thermaltake has placed a mounting bar for vertical GPU placement here and there are several screw holes for the GPU bracket to be connected to, giving you the flexibility you need to place it in the best possible spot no matter the length of your pixel pusher. In the rear, everything is pretty ordinary, with the exception of a big cutout at the top, above the CPU cooler bracket opening. This should really be covered by a grommet as well, just to keep things as tidy as possible.


There are two separate trays which may hold either two 2.5" or a single 3.5" hard drive each, meaning this area of the Ceres 500 TG ARGB can hold up to six storage units. Thermaltake has also employed large Velcro ties at the center using plastic brackets to hold everything together. If you look closely you will notice that there is no ARGB controller or fan hub, which is something you would almost expect to see from a case like this. This is not the end of the world, as the fans allow for daisy chaining of both the PWM connectors as well as their ARGB wiring, but such a controller would still be a nice and useful addition as it reduces cable clutter and allows for case button control.


Looking at the front, below the shroud there is a cage for two 2.5 or 3.5" drives which utilizes a pair of plastic trays. Above that you can see the three exterior mounted 140 mm intake fans, leaving you enough room in the interior to add a radiator thanks to the slim opening in the shroud. The chassis also features openings in the motherboard tray in this area, so that you may route the wiring of any installed cooling elements away from view nicely. On top of that, Thermaltake has included a third drive mounting plate in this area to make the most of the space. This gives you a total of eight possible drives within the Ceres 500 TG ARGB - which is plenty, and well beyond the average for modern mid-tower enclosures.


In the rear the PSU bay is pretty straight forward, but features two plastic guiding rails on which the installed unit will rest. Above that are the expansion slots inside Thermaltake's unique, rotatable frame. And, in the very top, you can clearly feast your eyes on the fourth, ARGB equipped 140 mm fan. The interesting aspect here is the fact that the leads coming off the unit are very short. While the thought was surely that this would help with cable management, it actually tends to make things a bit more difficult as you are locked into using pins on your motherboard that you can reach instead of being flexible in where to route connections to.


Thanks to the width of the Ceres 500 TG ARGB and its additional clearance above the motherboard area, Thermaltake doesn't need to go all out in terms of having the mounting holes for the fans or AIO placed as close to the glass side as possible. That said, that long opening is accommodated by two smaller ones, so if you are diligent enough, you should be able to keep things clean for the most part - even if you just go for fans here.


The connectors for the case are all of the default variety with individual pins for reset, power and LEDs. Thermaltake does go the extra mile by offering flat-band cables for the USB leads, which should make cable management a little easier.