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Thermaltake Element G Case


Date
: 08/8/09 – 03:55:09 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cases

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer:
Thermaltake

We have had many pleasant visits here at Overclockers Online from the fine folks over at Thermaltake. While they make a wide range of products for your PC, they have been working hard cranking out a wide assortment of cases to fit every need.

Following on the heels of our review of their HTPC case, the DH101, we are switching our sights to one of their latest mid tower offerings in their Element series. The Element G (VL10001W2Z) case that we have on hand follows the Element S case in this series, though they may be brothers the Element G brings a different look to the table.

Page 2 : Package and Accessories

The Element G comes packaged in a black box with a photo of the top portion of the case on the front and plenty of pictures on the back of the varying features.

The sides contain a list of the specifications and a few features as well.

Opening the top the Element G is wrapped in the same cloth like bag that we saw with the Spedo.

Accessories included are motherboard mounts, various screws, zip ties, a keyboard/mouse lock, fan brackets, user manual and warranty statement.

Page 3 : Features and Specifications

I grabbed specifications straight from Thermaltake's product page here..

Specifications:

Features:

Page 4 : Exterior

We'll start our tour with the front. As you can see the front is all a mesh cover and hiding behind the front is a 200mm intake fan. There are three external 5.25′ bays on top. There is a fan controller knob on top that also toggles the fan LED color when you press it. To the right of this is power and reset buttons along with 4 USB ports and mic/headphone jacks. Situated along the top in back is a vent for a 200mm exhaust fan. Both front and top fans have LED lights.

The front bezel removes easily with the help of a small lever located behind the bezel at the bottom. Bay covers are easily removed and the whole front is covered in a foam filter that can be washed. Each external bay has a metal plate that will need to be twisted off first if you are going to use the opening. Here is a closer look at the front 200mm fan.

Both side panels are the same contour with the left side containing an additional intake fan, this one at 230mm and also contains LED lighting. There is also a plastic red piece that outlines each panel that helps to set it off from other cases.

On the backside the main items of note are additional mounts to install two 60mm fans to aid with graphics card cooling and two holes for water cooling hoses below these. Also interesting to note is that there is one PCI slot cover that is vented and is installed in the top most slot.

The bottom has four hard plastic feet and venting towards the back for the power supply.

Page 5 : Interior

Once the side panels are removed you get a closer look, and it's nice to see that Thermaltake uses their plug and play fan power connector in the side panel. No worrying about trying to hook up or unhook a fan connector every time you remove the panel.

With the panels removed our first glimpse reveals a painted black interior which is a nice touch.

As you can see there is no shortage of 3.5′ hard drive bays, the Element G packs in a total of seven. The entire module comes out after removing two thumbscrews.

Covering the PSU bay is a bracket that serves a couple of different purposes. First off is a mounting site for two 2.5′ SSD (one on top and bottom) which is nice to see included as SSD's are becoming more popular. The other two functions are for cable management and to also help brace your power supply. Oddly only one reusable PCI slot cover is included as the rest are disposable once you remove them.

Flipping to the other side, Thermaltake has already done a nice job of bundling most of the wires together and all of the wires aside from the front panel connectors are sheathed. There is decent space back here for cable organizing and hiding.

Front panel connections are pretty standard with two USB, HD Audio/AC'97, power switch, reset, power LED and HD LED connections.

Page 6 : Installation

Installation was pretty hassle free with a few bumps. Hard drive installation while not necessarily tool free can be accomplished as such since the screws that you use are large enough to use only your hands.

After some close calls with other cases, the Element G finally closed the gap and would not fit the Zalman CNPS9900 LED blowing back to front. I had to rotate it 90 degrees and even then it was pretty close but fit.

The only other issue I had was the PSU bracket would not fit with my full sized Ultra X3 1000W PSU so I had to remove it, which would have caused an issue if I was using a SSD. You'll also notice that the 9600GT has about three inches of clearance so full size cards probably shouldn't apply.

As I mentioned the front, side and top fans all have LED lights that can be switched. There are 6 different color options: off, blue, green, red, color shifting and then one that sort of mixes the colors together randomly.

Page 7 : Testing

The following system was installed and used to gather temperatures.

CPU: Intel E8400 w/Zalman CNPS9900 LED
MB: Biostar TPower I45
RAM: G.Skill PI Black PC6400
Video: Biostar Geforce 9600GT
PSU: Ultra X3 1000W
HD: WD 250GB SATA
DVD-Rom: Lite-On 18x DVD Burner – SATA
OS: Microsoft Windows XP w SP3
Ambient Temperature: 25-26C

Cases:

Thermaltake Element G

Cooler Master HAF932
Lian Li ARMORSUIT PC-P50

First up we'll do some testing to see how well the Element G keeps things cool. To get idle temperatures I started the PC up and allowed it to sit at idle for 3 hours with no processes running and recorded temperatures using Everest Ultimate. I grabbed temps with the fan controller set all the way to high and all the way to low.

At idle temps the Element G does pretty well and is not far off the temps recorded for the Cooler Master HAF932 or the Lian Li PC-P50. The biggest difference we see is in the chipset temperatures.

Next was to load the PC and get some temperatures with a little more heat involved. To get load temps, I ran Orthos blend along with 3DMark06 in a continuous loop for 3 hours.

Under load I was really surprised because there just really wasn't any difference between high and low settings of the fan. The Element G faired pretty well though it fell behind a bit with hard drive temps. I think this may be due to the hard drive module restricting the cross airflow.

Now as far as noise goes, the amount of noise you can handle before it gets annoying is really subjective. The good thing about the Element G is it has a built in controller so you can adjust it to your liking, but even at high speeds I found the Element G to be fairly quiet and have no problem leaving it on high 100% of the time.

Page 8 : Conclusion

Thermaltake has done a pretty good job with the Element G. It has enough small touches like sheathed cables, fan/LED controller and SSD mounting to let you know they really put some thought into the case design. If you have a need for storage, there is plenty of space for your needs as well. The styling can go from subtle with the LEDs turned off to flashy with them turned on, so it really gives you a lot of options to fit your tastes.

With all the good, there are a few of the bad like full size PSUs will cause you to lose the functionality of the support bracket. Also there is some cramped spacing towards the top that could cause issues with larger heatsinks and the top mounted fan. However the flip side of these is that they both involve the larger variety of their kind so may not be an issue to many.

All in all the Element G is a great little case that offers plenty of options sure to please a large crowd of varying tastes.

Advantages

• Fan/LED controller

• Black interior
• Plenty of storage options

Disadvantages

• Larger heatsinks may hit top fan

• Larger PSUs lose support bracket

Overclockers Online would like to thank Thermaltake for supplying the Element G case for review.