Thermaltake Armor A90 (VL90001W2Z)
Sep 20th, 2010 | By JaredInstallation went pretty smooth in the A90. As I mentioned before the power supply bracket adjusts far enough to accommodate larger power supplies like this Ultra X3 1000W unit. My only complaint about this feature is that to install the power supply requires you to flip the case over since the screws for this bracket are mounted through the bottom.
The A90 has room to fit larger heatsinks like the Frio at 165mm tall, though this is about the limit in height. The backplate cutout leaves plenty of room even for motherboards that have the CPU slots located towards the top edge of the board.
All in all installation was smooth and while I was able to keep it somewhat clean looking keeping the majority of the wires hidden will take a little bit of work since there really aren’t any holes in the motherboard tray for routing cables.
Now that we have the system assembled, here are the details the system used to gather data.
CPU: Intel E8400 w/ Cooler Master Hyper 212+
MB: Biostar TPower I45
RAM: G.Skill PI Black PC6400
Video: HIS HD 5870 iCooler V Turbo 1GB
PSU: Ultra X3 1000W
HD: WD 250GB SATA
DVD-Rom: Lite-On 18x DVD Burner – SATA
OS: Microsoft Windows 7
Ambient Temperature: 25-26C
Comparison Cases:
Thermaltake Armor A90
Cooler Master HAF932
First up we’ll do some testing to see how well the Armor A90 keeps things cool at idle.
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.
At idle the Armor A90 performs well, though the slightly higher CPU temperature did surprise me a bit.
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, again recording temps using Everest Ultimate.
As you can see the Armor A90 performs almost on par with the HAF932 in all but the motherboard chipset temperatures. This is understandable since the A90 does not come stock with a side intake fan though one can be added.
While noise is always subjective, I found the Armor A90 to be pretty quiet while under operation. There was no noticeable whine or any such noise from the stock fans.