The Product

Here is the Tenor in all its glory…

The case is fronted by a brushed aluminium cover with the top and sides being silver coloured paint. The left edge has 2 USB and one firewire port within easy reach and these are positioned alongside the headphone and microphone socket. On the bottom left of the case front you can also see the power and reset buttons. Both buttons feel solid and have the right amount of resistance to ensure you know your press has worked. Alongside the buttons you can also see the power light and HDD activity light. The power light is blue and the HDD light is red and both are very bright and easy to see.

On the right side of the front panel is the drive bay cover. This is opened by a simple push which releases the door and it then opens vertically. As its vertically opening Thermaltake have the door running on cogs which cushion the fall and enables the door to “fall” open smoothly. Behind the door you can see there are 2 floppy drive slots and 3 CD/DVD drive slots which is more than enough for most people.

The final feature of the drive bay door is that the area covering the bottom CD Drive slot is cut out, this slot can be used for an LED style display in the drive bay which could then be viewed through the smaller opening rather than open the full drive door.

The rear of the case follows a pretty standard design with the PSU space being located on the left in the following picture. The centre of the case has 2 exhaust fans which are rated at 2500rpm (19dba) and are 60x60x25 mm in size. And the rest of the rear area is taken up with PCI/AGP brackets and the standard motherboard connection bracket.

By removing the thumbscrews on the back of the case you can then open the top of the case which just slides off. Here’s how things look inside:

It’s quite a unique design in some respects. At the bottom right of the picture you can see the drive bays for your floppy and CD/DVD drives and at the top of the picture you can also see the exhaust fans. Where the case differs from most is the support rods (of which there are 2). The right rod is there purely to provide extra support for the case and the hole you can see allows air to come in through the vent in the top of the case and down onto the CPU fan. The left hand side rod provides additional support and also holds the hard drive bays. At the front of the case beside the hard drive rod there is an intake fan which draws air in from the bottom of the case and blows it across the hard drives into the system. This fan is a 2000rpm (19dba) 80x80x25 mm model. Because the hard drives are suspended from the rod they are easier to install than in cases where the bay is fixed. You just unscrew the rod and lift it off, install the drive(s) and fix it back in.

When it came to installing the system it was a simple process and after you remove the rods there is plenty of space to work with. There was really only one minor issue on my build and its something that will affect very few of you. If you have a large heatsink then you might run into issues with the right hand rod. My cooler of choice is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 (Freezer64 if you use Athlon64’s). This is one of the tallest coolers on the market and when installed doesn’t allow the support rod to be installed. Not a big deal though, just a little inconvenient.

Here’s a picture of how the case looks with a full system running in it.

Now that we are up and running with a system its time to take one last look at the outside of the case. Once you power up the system you see that there are some blue lights on the front of the case which add some additional looks to the system.

 

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