| Thermaltake Armor A90 VL90001W2Z |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Cases | ||||||||
| Written by Steven Iglesias-Hearst | ||||||||
| Tuesday, 07 September 2010 | ||||||||
Page 4 of 6
Closer Look: InteriorMoving on now to the interior of the Armor A90, let's see what's good and what's not.
This is the accessory bundle, there is a multi-lingual user manual, standard silver screws, two plastic grommets for the watercooling knockout's on the rear of the case, eight long screws for securing fans in the front of the case, four tiny screws for mounting a 2.5" HDD/SSD in the bottom of the case, and last but not least, four plastic spacers for installing a Thermaltake AF0046 200mm fan in the front of the Armor A90 chassis.
Thermaltake say that you can install a 200mm fan in the front of the Armor A90 but before you run out and buy one you need to know that they are referring to the Thermaltake AF0046 200mm fan (same as top exhaust), which is actually a 170mm fan, the mounting points are 200mm apart in a weird oblong fashion (top left to bottom right and top right to bottom left), confused yet? same here.
Moving on now to the inside of the Armor A90 case, the first thing that catches your attention is the fully painted interior, next is the CPU backplate cut-out and then the lack of cable management cut-out's. Don't worry though as cable management is taken care of, as we will see in just a minute. Thermaltake recommend a maximum CPU cooler height of 18cm which I agree with, but at the same time they advise a maximum graphics card length of 26cm, by my own measurements there is 30cm between the PCI back plates and the 3.5" HDD rack, which would increase that limit a little. There are also bumps on the motherboard tray in place of where you would normally install risers, in all but three of the nine locations needed to install an ATX motherboard, leaving you to install three risers in the remaining places. Either Thermaltake think it's difficult to install risers or it's to speed up install time, I'll leave you to speculate.
We get a better look at the cable management system when we remove the other side panel, there is a generous 5" (wide) x 11" (tall) x 3" (deep) area to the side of the 3.5" HDD bays in which to bundle your cables out of sight. There isn't a great deal of room behind the motherboard tray but there is room for your 12v ATX cable and fan power cable. You may notice there are no tool free securing mechanism's for optical and hard drives on this side of the case, I would only install a screw on this side if I knew I would be moving my case regularly, otherwise the tool free option on the other side is adequate for a static case.
The 120mm Rear exhaust fan looks like a black version of Thermaltake's red 120mm TurboFan although this black version spins at a slightly slower 1000rpm @ 16dBA according to Thermaltake's specifications. Below the fan we have a nicely vented back panel and expansion area, there are seven expansion slots with re-usable covers that secure in place without screws. There is no tool free option to secure PCI cards in place and user's need to revert to the good old fashioned method of using screws.
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Comments
How about measuring that distance? That way we can decide for ourselves how generous that space is.
I especially like how CM states that distance - 16mm - in their HAF 912 specs.
I have corresponded with owners of other Thermaltake cases, since many of them are quite wide. They all report cramped space behind the mb tray.
One last thing: I wish there was a consistent way to measure the cooling power of a case. Clearly, if we buy this one we'd stuff more fans into it. So how do you compare it with a case that has a bunch of fans? How do you compare it with another case that - like this Tt case - skimps on fans?
I actually thought about you as I wrote this very sentence, seeing as you comment on it alot, there was no point in measuring the gap as there are no cable routing cut out's.
There is a 1cm gap behind the mobo tray, which, like I said, isn't gonna do a lot.
Actually, there isn't really a need for additional mb tray cutouts, since the cpu window extends above the mb, as shown by the last photo on page 5. That extended cpu window provides all the function of a separate cutout. I wish more case manufacturers would do that.
But I get your point: it's real clear Tt has no plan for running wires up there beyond the ATX cable.