| Thermaltake Armor A90 VL90001W2Z |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Cases | ||||||||
| Written by Steven Iglesias-Hearst | ||||||||
| Tuesday, 07 September 2010 | ||||||||
Page 5 of 6
Detailed Interior FeaturesLet's look a little closer now at the interior features of the Thermaltake Armor A90.
Towards the front of the case, in the HDD rack there are raised bumps to secure a 2.5" drive, it is still possible to use the bottom 3.5" bay when you have a 2.5" drive installed here which is good news, giving you a total possible drive count of seven HDD's. You can also see the unrestricted cable management area.
Installed in the top of the Thermaltake Armor A90 is the ThermaltakeAF0046 200mm 12v DC blue LED fan with a max rotation of 800rpm @ 15dBa.
Looking now at the bottom of the Thermaltake Armor A90 we see the PSU mounting area, this is one area of the case that I am not keen on and I will explain why. Firstly it is vented and filtered which is great but the filter really wont be stopping much and it isn't easily accessible either. Secondly, Thermaltake use a supporting/securing bar (seen towards the middle) this makes installing the PSU a pain and time consuming, as this bar needs to be removed prior to installing the PSU and then re-installed after. Removal and re-installation is done by removing/securing two screws that are underneath the case - and after all this the bar really doesn't do anything other than prop the PSU up from underneath, which could be done much more simply with two rubber standoff's.
A look here at the drive bay tool free securing mechanism for both 5.25" and 3.5" bays. The only difference between the two is size, they work by sliding the latch to the right and the mechanism will swing open upwards, once your device is inserted you swing it down again and two pegs (one on each end) insert into the screw holes of the device to be installed, then you simply push the latch to the left to lock it in place. As previously mentioned these latches only feature on one side of the drive bays and so should only really be used in a static case that won't be moved around, otherwise it is recommended to also use screws in addition to the tool free locking mechanism's.
At first I was a little skeptical about the lack of cable routing holes and lack of space behind the motherboard tray, I really thought that I wouldn't get very good results by simply jamming bundles of cables behind the 3.5" bays. But as you can see above, with a little time and planning, you can get a really nice and tidy install. It would have been nice to have a partition to cover over the PSU and front panel header wires as seen in the HAF-X but it's not the end of the world.
This is where the cables you want hidden go, it is possible to do this tidier but they are hidden and don't matter too much once they are back here. Also, after talking about it so much, I finally decided to buy a premium 12v ATX power cable extension from NZXT, this allowed me to pass my power cable round the back of the motherboard tray rather than over the motherboard, making for a nice tidy install.
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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.