Installation

The mainboard installation was quite easy, as the standoffs come pre-installed. The one plastic standoff included in the bag needs to be used here, as there is one standoff missing at the corner of the mainboard. I see no reason not to include a metal standoff, so Thermaltake may just have missed that and solved the problem by including the plastic part instead of changing each mainboard tray. The two hard drives can be installed using normal screws. As you can see the drives fit perfectly and there is very little air space.


The two components were placed back inside the case. Even the large Thermaltake Blue Orb 2 fit perfectly and certainly goes with the blue LED lighting theme found throughout the case. The one thing that may be a very tight fit are the new and very long GeForce 8800GTX graphic cards. The GTS installed here fit fine, with about one inch left toward the hard drive. You may want make sure your card fits inside this case.


To install a 5.25" inch device into the front - in this case a DVD drive - the metal plate needs to be used. The drive is then placed inside the cage and secured on both sides. It was quite tricky filling the drive cage with all the drives, as they had to be lined up by trial and error. I even removed the side windows to gain access to the screws while lining the drives up to fit. The slightly curved front of the case makes it impossible to install one drive and use it as a reference point for the other.


Another problem arose when I started plugging everything in. I used one parallel ATA and one S-ATA hard drive and while the old fashion P-ATA Molex connector holds like a rock, the S-ATA power connector does not have that attribute. Anyone using SATA drives, knows how easily the cables come off. As soon as the optical drives are installed, there is no way to reach the power connectors of the hard drive. If they come off, you will need to remove the drive case to gain access to the hard drives. It took me quite some time getting everything installed. As you can see, I chose to place the power supply so that its fan was pulling fresh air in from the top of the case and exhausting it out at the back. I also tried it the other way around but it did not make much of a difference in temperature inside the case. Everything was an incredibly tight fit. I placed the longer optical drive in the top drive bay, while my 550W power supply is a bit longer than usual OEM PSUs. It all fit - barely. If you have an optical drive a bit newer than my 16x DVD drive, chances are that it will be shorter, thus making space for even bigger power supplies.


Finally the top of the case with the handle was placed back on the case, and the system was ready to be powered up. With everything fitting so neatly I was a bit worried if everything was connected right.

Impressions

Once all the cables were plugged in, the computer powered up right away. The case was very quiet, even tough I expected the two 60 mm fans to be quite loud, they were not. The case is constructed perfectly, meaning that the were no vibrations passed on from the drives or the fans to the case. This is truly the kind of case you can place on your table and work or play comfortably. The blue glow of the front fan, the Blue Orb 2 and the power supply fit perfectly with the blue power LED of the Lanbox.