Thermaltake Computex 2015 Booth Tour
by Kristian Vättö on June 9, 2015 8:09 AM EST
Winner of Thermaltake's modding contest
As E., our case, cooling and peripheral editor, wasn't at Computex this year, I had the opportunity of meeting with most of the companies to see what's new. My first stop was Thermaltake, which had several new and upcoming products to show.
To start off with external storage, Thermaltake had a USB 3.1 Type-C enclosure on display, which will be available later this year.
The enclosure is accompanied by a USB 3.1 Type-C hard drive dock, which allows easy hot-swap capability for those who deal with several drives.
For liquid cooling Thermaltake showed off a prototype of a CPU block with an integrated pump. The design above is obviously not a final design, but the concept is certainly interesting since mounting the pump on top of the CPU saves space and allows for smaller form factors. Thermaltake also displayed a DRAM kit with pre-installed liquid cooling block.
The focus of Thermaltake's cases was definitely in modding as the WP200 has room for two complete builds, one on each side. There is also going to be a lighter W200 model that isn't as huge as the WP200 is.
The W100 is the mode desktop-like version that is made for a single system. The top part of the case is fully modular and can be placed either on the top of bottom of the main case, where it can house the radiators or other components.
For customization Thermaltake offers a variety of different fans with LED lights and as a new product Thermaltake is introducing an RGB version of the Riing series with 256 colors.
One of the most interesting products I saw at the Thermaltake booth was the company's new Poseidon Z Touch keyboard. Basically all the keys act as a touchpad and by using Thermaltake's bundled software the user can set up custom gestures, which can be handy in some games that require a large number of macros. Pricing will be about $180, which has a premium in it but I wouldn't consider it to be too bad for a relatively unique product.
To keep things short, I've only included the highlights here and made a gallery of all photos I took, so head to the gallery above if you're interested in seeing more products that Thermaltake had on display!
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MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Around 2000, when building silent high performance PCs was still a major challenge, I treid several TT products. Fans, coolers etc. I regretted buying most of them due to low performance and since then haven't seen anything to make me try them again. Flashy looks seems to be what they're best at.rtho782 - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
There are only so many ways to create a box to keep standardised computer components in. If you want to get upset about this you also have to support Apple's attempts to copyright a rectangle with rounded corners.How about the Termaltake Armor, from 2007:
http://www.thermaltake.com/db/pictures/modules/PDT...
Vs the Bitfenix Pandora, from 2015:
http://aphnetworks.com/review/bitfenix-pandora-win...
Very similar styles with the curved in front panels.
90% of PC cases are of the same basic design, drive bays at the front, motherboard with the slots on the bottom facing the back, etc.
bloodinmyveins - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I own the Thermaltake Armor (now broken, felt apart by itself - haha). The front curved panels have hinges while the Bitfenix curved panels are uniform with the chassis. The Thermaltake one has drive bay support and big feets while Bitfenix has none of both. The Bitfenix case has different features then Thermaltake's case.And yes, the look kinda alike but not similar.
check : http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis...
PS: The main issue here is that a big company (Thermaltake) is hurting a smaller company (CaseLabs), which emphasizes on premium-quality, flexibility, support and other great values while Thermaltake is MAINLY focusing on profit-maximizing.
sabrewings - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
But what TT is doing is blatant copying. It's not just a few similarities, it's only a few differences just to be different. The fan controllers alone are enough to prove it's a straight copying of styles.YouGeeElWhy - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
>Thermaltake also displayed a DRAM kit with pre-installed liquid cooling block.Of all the things to waste money on...
adamthepolak - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Nothing original, all I see is CaseLabs and Corsair replicas. Will definitely never buy another Thermaltake product after this blatant copying of designs.... Only used them for low end builds anyways.Kepe - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
My experience with Thermaltake products is that they are of inferior quality compared to other competing products. A friend has a huge TT case from a few years back and when we did some maintenance on it this year, we noticed that three of its four pre-installed fans were totally jammed and were hard to rotate even with hands. We have a working 286 PC from 1986 at my parents' place with the stock fan still alive and working just as well as it did 29 years ago...I had a TT cpu cooler years ago, the fan was super loud and it just wasn't very effective at cooling anything, except on full blast when it was so loud no one could tolerate the noise. Now that TT has blatantly copied their case designs from Caselabs, I'm just going to add TT to the small list of things I'm boycotting.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
The WP200 is an interesting concept, besides its horrible looks. But: why te **** do the place the mainboards back-to-back, accompanied by many "small" fans at the front & back? They should be facing each other, so they can share the airflow from fewer bigger fans.Kepe - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Building a system into a case like that would be quite hard. The case would need at least one removable motherboard tray, and you'd need to do the cabling of both motherboards, GPUs and so on before attaching the motherboard tray back in to the case. When the MBs are facing each other, both sides of the case are blocked by the motherboards and there's no way to work on anything inside the case.Also, the motherboards would be oriented so that the right hand side one is upright like in a normal ATX case, and the left one would be reversed so that the GPU(s) are on top and the CPU is at the bottom. Graphics cards on the reversed motherboard would be sucking in air from the top of the case, which is where all of the hot air tends to rise. You'd need a very odd airflow setup to cool a system like that. It would need air intakes at the bottom, top and rear, and then blow it out from the front. Unless you watercool the entire thing, in which case you can have the radiators pretty much wherever you want.
Having the motherboards' rear IO panels facing up like in Silverstone Raven line of cases would simplify things, as you could have the standard bottom-to-top airflow and it would work just fine. Still the problem of how to build your system with motherboards facing each other would exist.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Some valid points. Movable motherboard trays are nothing unheard of, but surely complicate things. In order to keep the power cables from messing with such a movable tray, one would want to put the PSU into the tray as well. Or use some power extensions mounted to the tray.. which might work well with a PSU shared between both systems, or be needed for that anyway.But don't worry about cooling this setup - cooling is the reason why I'd want it in the first place. Imagine a massive fan at the front, or 2 - 4 large ones. they'd be silent and work still in an energy-efficient range. They wouldn't produce much pressure & air speed, but the flow would be massive due to the sheer size. There would be no appreciable heat accumulation, so it wouldn't matter where GPUs suck their air in. The airflow would be simply from the front to the exhaust at the back.
Of course such a system would be a bit expensive. But if it saves you another case, saves you another PSU and provides better cooling there may be a market for this.