A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the chassis you will need to remove the thumb screws holding the side panels in place. Taking a quick look at the grey interior of the Element T, it does not look much out of the ordinary. The fact that Thermaltake has designed the entire layout on their own is fairly obvious for the trained eye. Turning the chassis over we finally found the missing cover of the rear exansion slot. It came off during transportation and got tossed around the case until it lodged itself right there. A hole in the mainboard tray should make the removal of CPU cooler backplates an easy task. A few of the mainboard spacers are simple bumps in the mainboard tray, but more about that later.


Thermaltake has stuffed the Element T with six hard drive bays. The very bottom one may be used for an SSD or 2.5 inch hard drive instead of the traditional 3.5 inch variant - certainly a nice feature for both gamers or professionals. Only the very top hard drive drive bay seems to have a plastic lock for screw-less assembly. All other storage devices need to be secured with the supplied thumb screws. Moving up to the 5.25 inch bays, we are presented with the same situation. Only the very top one has a screw-less, sliding lock, while the bottom two also require screws.


Turning our focus to the rear of the enclosure, the bottom of the chassis has a large opening for the power supply. There is a support beam, which can be moved back in case you have a large PSU. Above that are the seven mainboard expansion slots. As you can see, they are not secured by traditional screws. This issue is usually solved by using such measures, but due to the way these covers are constructed, you will not be able to add your own screws to hold them in place. This means that the case is quite hazardous for LAN party gamers, as one of these sharp edged covers could wreck havok inside a filled chassis during transportation. The top area of the rear is filled by the two fans. The rear fan is a 120 mm variant while the top fan has a diameter of 200 mm. Both only have a Molex connector, so you will not be able to adjust their speed with the help of the mainboard or a fan controller.


You can pry off the entire front with a firm tug. The construction quality of this part is flimsy, because the plastic used easily bends under a bit of pressure. Two fans - either 120 mm or 140 mm may be mounted in the front to cool down the hard drives. It would have been nice to see at least a single unit in the front to actively cool the hard drives. The bare chassis makes a very good impression. Even though Thermaltake advertises the Element T as being free of sharp edges, this is definitely not the case. The area of the PSU and several locations in the the front design have edges which are fairly dangerous.


The two sets of cables are of the usual variety. You will not have any problems connecting these to modern mainboards out there. Their length is adequate, so that you can route them nicely through the chassis.