Assembly

Wanting to install the X48 board I use for case reviews these days, I stumbled upon two issues. First off, the mainboard backplate did not fit without removing the rear fan first. This is due to the fact that Thermaltake has kept the dimension of this chassis as compact as possible - too compact it seems. The second issue stems from that, as the Noctua U12P simply did not fit. So I used a mATX board with a reference CPU cooler instead.


The installed board fits fine, as does reference CPU cooler. The I/O cables are barely long enough for a mATX board, I really doubt if the audio one will reach on a full size ATX board.


The expansion cards are held in place by the exterior structure. A thumb screw is used to lock things down. It works surprisingly well for a small and light graphic card. So it should work for those not going for a large dual slot card.


Installing the hard drive requires you to remove the locks completely, slide the drive in place and replace the lock. While this does not allow the drive to slide back and forth, it does not hold things in place well at all. You are better off using traditional screws instead. The same goes for the optical drive bays.


Installing the power supply is done with the supplied screws. Nothing out of the ordinary here. It is even located in the old school location in the top of the case.


Once everything is installed, it becomes obvious how limited the cable management is. There is no proper way to hide anything really. I have installed the hard drive at the same height as the graphic card on purpose, to show how short a graphic card has to be so that the bay is still usable.

Finished Looks

Once all the hardware was in place and the side panels back on the chassis, the unit was turned on. The bright blue LED up front looks quite nice and fits well right around the power button. One aspect I cannot show you here, is the wobble of the entire case. It tips back and forth around 3-4 mm - that may definitely be a deal breaker for most who have chosen to ignore all the shortcomings up to this point.


The black drive looks good inside the WingRS 301 and all the rear connectivity is easily accessible. Picking up the chassis, it seems that the center of gravity makes it lean a bit forward. If Thermaltake would have chosen to place the PSU on the bottom, this center of gravity would have been at a slightly better point.