Thermaltake Xaser Series Full tower ATX Cases Review Author: Alan Wong Date Posted: May 23, 2004 Xaser V WinGo V8000A - SLRating: Xaser V Damier V5000A - SLRating: Bottom Line: Thermaltake Technology recently released their new line of Xaser Series Full tower ATX Cases. SLCentral evaluated the external and internal structure of the Xaser V WinGo and Damier cases, we found both good things and bad things about the Xaser V read on to find out more........ Article Navigation Introduction Specifications Front Panel Door Rear End of Case/USB Internal Structure Conclusions >> Discuss This Article Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 >> Discuss This Article

Internal Structure

One noticeable highlight of the case is the fact that there are A LOT of tangled wires in the case. These come from the many fan wires in the case, along with the external USB, firewire, and mic cables, etc. This may or may not cause air circulation problems depending on how good users can clean up the wires.

Inside you can see that the 3.5" internal drive housing is faced sideways. The position of the housing makes hard drive maintenance easier but also restricts some of the airflow from the front of the case.

Inside the case are five 5.25" bays supported by drive rails. Nothing fancy.

There is, unfortunately, no removable motherboard tray.

By looking at the fancy expansion slot holders, one might think that makes everyone’s life easy when it comes to installing expansion cards. WRONG! Users with a video card that takes up 2 slots (e.g. GeForce FX5900, 5950, etc) will run into some trouble. To make a long story short, the tabs were meant to accommodate only one card per slot and basically there is something that separates the tabs, therefore when users try to slip in their two slot video cards in, it won’t go into the tabs, which leads to the inability to install a slot video card. I know this might sound confusing but trust me on this, it’s a pain in the ass. Basically you would have to cut the barrier on the expansion slot mechanism in order for you to get the video card installed. When installing single slot expansion cards, the tabs were sometimes hard to turn. The point is, the expansion slot mechanism in the case is terrible to say the least and Thermaltake should have stuck with old fashioned screws when it comes to expansion slots.

Case Temperatures

Case temperatures were not that impressive. When compared to an Ahanix dBox, the black Xaser Damier chassis did not even come close to beating it. Most of the time, the Xaser’s temperature was the same as the dBox. When it wasn’t, it grew hotter than the dBox.

When compared to an Aspire X-Pider Full Tower chassis, the aluminum Xaser WinGo lacked in cooling as well. This is quite disappointing, since the Aspire X-pider is a year old full tower model while the Tt Xaser V is the latest model.

Reasons for a lack of good cooling can be possibly contributed by these factors:

Lack of strong fans (especially at the rear of the case)

Numerous that came included in case, disrupting airflow

Blocked ventilation caused by front panel

Blocked ventilation due to position of HDD cage

Conclusions

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Article Navigation Introduction Specifications Front Panel Door Rear of Case/USB Internal Structure Conclusion

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