A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior of the DH-202, simply remove three thumb screws holding the cover in place. It should become obvious rather quickly, that Thermaltake has not changed the guts of this case compared to the DH-1 series at all.


In the front is a 120 mm intake fan, right behind the LCD screen. It pulls air in from the side openings of the front. This air path is very obstructive and you won't get very good air flow that way. The hard drive cage, capable of holding three drives has been placed in the middle, front area. This means that the fan does not cool any installed hard drives. The cage for the single external 5.25 inch bay fills up the remaining space in the front of the chassis. As you can see, the metal is cut and holed, so that you could potentially place three such devices here and Thermaltake includes locks for the top two bays, but only the very top one can actually be used for an optical drive bay for example. You could use the middle one for an internal device, but the very bottom unit is useless, as the card reader interferes here. The plastic locks have not changed at all either, but these work alright as our review of the DH-101 shows.


You may take out the hard drive cage, but due to the placement of the screws, it is impossible to actually put it back into the chassis once filled up as the middle hard drive covers one of the screw holes. Taking a quick look at the card reader, it reveals nothing out of the ordinary. All the cables to the reader, VFD and control interface come pre-attached, so you only need to connect them into the appropriate headers on the mainboard.


Turning the DH-202 over, we have a standard PSU bay. As the thin frame reveals, there is no space between the PSU and the case walls or flooring to hide any unneeded cables. You still have the two small exhaust fans in the rear of the chassis and - just like in the DH-102 all of the fans inside the chassis have Molex connectors. This in turn translates into them spinning at full speed all the time creating a lot of noise in the process. The seven expansion bays are held in place by two sets of plastic locks, each covering 3 1/2 bays. While this should make it quick and easy when installing or adding any cards it will also force you to release at least three slots and their contents. I also doubt very much. that this system would be able to hold seven actual expansion cards better than screws. Luckily, this system is not intended to be transported on a regular basis, thus this aspect may not be so important in most scenarios.


Thermaltake routes the VGA signal to the back of the chassis with the use of a standard VGA cable. That cable turns out to be much longer than required, adding to the cable mess you will have to subdue in the end. The I/O connectivity is nothing out of the ordinary. The card reader only requires one row of the mainboard USB header, leaving the other free for the controls of the LCD screen. An ATX 24 pin power adapter is included, which allows you to use your remote control to turn the unit on or off and acts as a power conduit to the display itself.


To install the optical drive, you are still required to pull off the entire front, revealing all the cables. I suggest you install the ODD first before routing all your cables nicely, as you may be forced to undo everything to have enough length to flip the front panel down far enough.