A Closer Look - Inside

To gain access to the interior of the case, you have to remove a pair of screws holding each panel in place. It would have been a nice touch to see thumb screws on the main side panel instead, but this will do. As I mentioned before, the interior of the chassis is black as well - thus the name V3 Black. You cannot expect anything fancy in the interior, but Thermaltake has done a good job in rounding corners and protecting your precious hands from cuts during installation. As you can see, there is a large opening in the mainboard tray, which should allow access to a CPU cooler back plate.


The hard drive bays and single exterior 3.5 inch bay are rather simple and Thermaltake has included a plastic lock for a single hard drive and the external 3.5 inch device. This is not the first time I have seen such locks and I am happy that Thermaltake has chosen not to include any more, as they do not tend to hold well. Above that are the four 5.25 inch bays, with a single plastic lock once again.


Turning our focus to the rear, starting with the PSU bay, it has a plastic dust filter snapped unto the flooring of the chassis. As we will see later on, it will bear another little surprise. Above that are the seven expansion bays. There is a metal bar to secure all the expansion bays on the outside of the V3 Black. It is held in place by a single screw and works surprisingly well as I have noticed during assembly. The one big downside is the fact that all expansion slots are released when taking it off. The afore mentioned 120 mm exhaust fan is constructed of clear plastic and features four blue LEDs for the additional coolness factor.


You may pull the entire front off with a firm tug at the base. In fact, this is required to remove the front covers and metal covers on the inner shell of the front. While the construction quality of the plastic front is adequate, you can easily flex it out of shape with your hands, but it returns to its normal look and feel once released. It seems like Thermaltake went the most affordable route for the I/O cables as well. While these are perfectly fine in function and quality, the audio cable is rainbow colored. This is something I have not seen in other cases.