Thermaltake level X GT snow addition case review
Author: Andrew Jamison | Filed under: Reviews
Background
Thermaltake has made a name for themselves in the computer industry for creating innovative cases and other computer components. What I was looking to upgrade the motherboard for my desktop theater I started looking at cases and stumbled across the Thermaltake level X GT, thermal takes idea behind this case was to create cost-effective but still good looking alternative to their $700 are original level X case.
In my personal opinion I think that the GT version of the level X case series offers much more than the original, for one it certainly looks a lot sturdier and appears to have more room inside the case for bigger components. Without actually having got my hands on the original level X I cannot accurately compare the two other than what I have read and of course the price.
To give you little bit of background and to what led me to choose in this case I will briefly state what I was looking for in a case. It’s important to note that the motherboard was already decided on and set in stone when I began looking for case, so naturally I began looking for case the can utilize all of the technologies that the motherboard had to offer in terms of onboard headers. One particular technology that interested me was USB revision 3 support, now other cases offered USB 3.0 ports but required cables to be strung out the back of the case and connected to the I/O panel on the back of the motherboard, needless to say this looks bad and was rather a bad idea in my opinion. As the specification for USB 3.0 progressed and onboard header was designed similar to the USB 2.0 header that would allow cases to simply plug the cord into the motherboard ensuring that no cords were trailing out the back of the case from the inside of the case. With that in mind I began to narrow my search down for cases that supported USB 3.0 ports connected via motherboard header, surprisingly not too many of these existed at least on Newegg which is where I purchased my equipment from.Having you a USB 3.0 header connection as one of my requirements when searching for case I began to explore the other options on the motherboard. The particular motherboard that I chose which I will be reviewing in a related blog entry also supported a great number of PCI express ports. In order to utilize all of the ports on the motherboard for PCI express I would need a case that was capable of supporting the same amount of expansion cards that meant that my computer cases were limited to no smaller than a mid-tower case. However, none of the mid-tower cases I saw a particularly grabbed my attention and almost none of them had a USB 3.0 header connection. This left me with having to go with a full tower configuration encompassing a much larger case then I had originally anticipated, again surprisingly this narrow down my choices to basically two cases both of which were Thermaltake. Out of the two that were left the level X GT appealed more to me because of the amount of firm as well as the semi-hot-swappable drive bays.
That about sums up the general premise behind why I chose this particular case, now comes the good part the actual review.
Review
Firstly let me re-emphasize will probably every review you’ve ever read on this case as pointed out, this thing is HUGE!
The case itself is a pretty solid construction, composed of steel with a thin layer of hard plastic fused to the outside of the steel to give it a white finish. At first glance the case looks remarkably well-designed complete with a carrying handle which is very functional and with a fully loaded case. From what I have read the purpose of the handle is so that the case can be made portable or at the very least easier to move. When nothing is mounted to the case the back panel is removed and the front panel is taken off the hinges the cases remarkably light able to be picked up with one hand fairly easily. However, fully loaded with all compartments sealed and shut lifting the case with one hand for very long would be inconceivable.
As mentioned in the previous paragraph the front panel door can easily be removed from the hinges simply by opening the door and lifting it up right off the hinges, this is particularly useful when mounting the motherboard and is strongly recommended as the door will flap and continuously situate in the arm otherwise. The front panel door consists of a rather large intake fan which comes complete with an error direction switch similar to how the air vents in your car work to redirect air. Probably one of the coolest features about this case is that the intake fan on the door connects to a special contact point that allows the door to be removed without a cord hanging out the back of the door, the contact point on the door has to meet the contact point on the case in order for the fan to power up. This is brilliant engineering if you ask me in something that should be standard on all cases that have fans on the removable cover.
The rear exhaust fan on the case connects to a motherboard fan header; this is particularly useful to help you minimize cords hanging in the middle of the case trying to connect it to a Molex connector. There is also a spot at the bottom of the case for an additional intake fan, myself being a stickler for airflow decided to buy an additional fan to put in that spot. This leads me to another tip which might save you an extra 10 to 15 min. The bottom intake fan lies directly in the path that you have to slide the power supply through. In other words meld the power supply before installing the fan! In addition to the generous amount of fans there sprinkled throughout the case, all intake fans have removable filters to help reduce the amount of dust that actually makes inside the case. The one drawback to this however is that all the filters have to be removed from the back of the case, as mentioned above when everything is installed in this case it is heavy and difficult to move. But make more sense to put the filters on the front of the case, even the front panel intake fan has a filter that has to be removed from the back of the case. While this is in the showstopper for me at least it can be particularly annoying, however I haven’t yet had to clean any of the filters yet.
As mentioned above the case has two main panels one that is removed by simply unlocking it and hitting a button on the bottom of the case, this allows the door to swing open so that you can install expansion cards and other components. The other panel has three thumbscrews they have to be removed in order to take the panel off, behind the panel is where you would access the cable management as well as connected data cables and the one power connection for the semi-hot-swappable drive bays. The cable management features on this case are remarkably well-designed, there are small strips of steel have been pulled out and rounded off allowing you to slide cables behind them to keep them flush against the case. One drawback however to the cable management system of this case is that once all the cables are run, reinstalling the back panel is one giant pain in the butt. I’m sure there was a much more efficient way to do it but I even dented slightly the door trying to get it put back on, though it was such a small dance almost unnoticeable. My advice would be leave the panel off and tell you ensure that all the records are set up the way you want them and everything is plugged in and seated properly before reattaching the panel.
As I mentioned behind that same panel is where the power connections and data connections are for the semi-hot-swappable drive bays, I say semi-hot-swappable because they are not traditional hot-swappable bays. All of the power connections or daisy chained together using one set up our connection to power off five hard drives, five different SATA cables will need to be run as there is no fixed set of data cables. This is another time when I would strongly suggest leaving that back panel off, due to the sheer amount of cables that I had running through the back of the case several times I had to take the back panel off again and reattach a power connector to one of the drive bays. Yes you heard me right had to reconnect a power cable to one of the drive bays, they are all daisy chained together but only in the sense that there is one long cable with five power ports that you can connect to each bay. Once you boot your computer and ensure that everything powers up and that the cables are run the way that you want them, then it is safe to close the back panel.
The front side of the drive bays consists of five drive trays to which you install each hard drive, each inside this tray into each slot and tell it’s firmly in place. Once all the drives are in place you can lock the drive bays to prevent them from accidentally ejecting. All Thermaltake is traditionally a great company their owner’s manuals always leave you guessing as to just what exactly are the steps for doing specific things. An example of this would be when shutting the front panel it does not always catch and often times I found myself having to hold it closed by locking it; it was until a few days later that I discovered pushing the same button used open while shutting it will ensure that it latches properly. After you manage to get the door to shut securely I still would recommend locking it, if for no other reason than to ensure you don’t accidentally hit the button to release the latch.
In addition to core functionality there are several additional features that are there specifically for convenience, like the headphone holder. On the front of the case towards the bezel there is event that has a small rubber gasket, lifting this gasket up exposes two holes using the included headphone rack you can utilize these holes to be able to hang your headphones on the side of the case. While entirely for convenience purposes, this is still a nice feature to have though not at all practical for somebody who would be using this case for a server or high-end workstation.
On the top front of the case there is also a set of controls for adjusting fan speed between low and high settings, in addition there is also a fan LED control button allowing you to change between three different colors into color cycling patterns or simply turning them off altogether. I can appreciate this feature being fed there are some individuals that have no use for LED lighted fans. There is a drawback to this of course when the case goes into a low-power mode or shut down the LED control reverts back to the default setting of solid blue, this is not so much an issue for me being that I prefer the blue LED but I could see it annoying some people.
As with most high-end Thermaltake cases, this particular case is a liquid cooling ready. The top of the case just behind the bezel can be removed allowing you to take the top exhaust fan out and install the reservoir for a liquid cooling system. I personally did not invest in a liquid cooling option so I can’t attest for how well its liquid cooling readiness stands. I can tell you however that there are two holes towards the back of the case with rubber grommets that would allow for liquid cooling hoses to be used inside the case.
Possibly a vanity addition to the case would be a small window on the side of the case allowing you to peer down at the motherboard and it’s usually centered over top where the CPU will be located. I have yet to find any practical use for this I can only imagine it was put in place simply for aesthetic purposes. Admittedly however it is rather cool to be able to look in the window just to make sure that the CPU cooler is working properly, this is greatly due to the excellent sound dampening capabilities of the case.
I should probably make a specific note to mention that several reviews claim that this case is 100% quiet unless you put the fans on high. Out-of-the-box without any kind of fan control by the motherboard assuming every fan in the case is going 100%, the sound difference between the low and high settings probably only changes about 20%. Now take a motherboard manufacturers of fan management software such as Asus and you can potentially have a case that almost 100% silent on the low setting but this is a combination of the motherboard powering the fan down to the low voltage and speed as well as the cases low fan setting. So if you’re confused by reading reviews were some say that the fans are incredibly loud and others say that their whisper quiet, then most likely the ones who claim the cases are allowed are the ones who were not using any kind of fan management. Part of the reason for the loud noise when there is no fan management used is because these fans are incredibly powerful pushing an impressive amount of air through the case when set on the highest setting. Unfortunately I don’t have the numbers to give you as far as how much air they push at max settings, though I imagine such information exists one only needs to Google it.
Probably the last thing I can think of to mention is that the feet on the bottom of the case can be articulated in one of two positions, they can either be perpendicular with the case in effect hiding the feet under the case or you can fold the legs out for more stability showing them on either side of the case. I personally don’t have any reason to fold the legs out, if you’re using a liquid cooling system that causes a lot of vibration (again I have no experience with liquid cooling so not sure if they vibrate the case or not) then it might be beneficial to fold the legs out.
On a side note the show for which this site was originally created (remember we started as a fan site for them) Category5.TV is using the same case in their new server. When Robbie Ferguson gets all the parts for the case in he is going to build the server live on the air, so keep your eye on that and you can see the case in action. I myself was going to record this review via video however things didn’t work out and I had some technical difficulties that rendered the little bit of video I had useless. Anyway I hope this written review will serve to answer as many of your questions as I can regarding this case.
If you have any specific questions about this case I will try my best to answer them feel free to ask them in the comments below. If you yourself use the case as well, post some pictures of it (you have to use a third-party picture service like Twitter pick) below. Additionally if you use liquid cooling with this case please take a few minutes the comment about how well it works and how easy it was to implement liquid cooling into this case. Liquid cooling is something I’m strongly considering for the future I would like to get more information on it some always willing to hear what others have to say about it.
Tags: Asus, review, Robbie Ferguson, thermaltake
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