Gadgetory

following the review of the relatively low end by a thermal takes level 20 standards level 20 Mt we're now looking at the 250 dollar a 500 and that would be this case here so at 250 bucks it's priced at around the same price point as the Coolermaster h 500m which comes in both a mesh or glass panel option includes both in the box and also the dark base pro 900 a highly regarded case that does well in both thermal and acoustic scenarios so it's got really fierce competition this price point it's not as empty as it used to be fan tax for example the Evolve EXA popular case this year is about 200 bucks if you're not factoring in the mini ITX a comedy event so the a 500 has a tough fight ahead of it and today we're gonna be looking at the thermals the acoustics and the build quality of thermal takes new $250 flagship before that this video is brought to you by us and the G on store one of the best ways to support us and get something in return is to grab an item from the G on store like one of our blue beer glasses with a gold halo featuring the popular tear down logo or one of our critically acclaimed mod mats with wiring diagrams and a GPU tear down grid we also have a brand new black and blue mousepad that many of you requested now available on the store we keep selling out of things thanks to you all but we've been working hard to get it back in stock go to store gamers nexus net to grab something today this case does some interesting veins it does some really minor stuff incredibly well and it does some kind of major stuff not that great and an example of the really small attention to detail in this case that we did like would be for example the way in this panel Mouse and when we go over the building notes I'll show you in more detail but it has uneven hinge pins which is a good thing they're not symmetrical at the top and the bottom and that makes it easier to just remove this panel by doing that and then when you mount it it's extremely easy to line it back up something that can't be said for all types of panels that mount in this fashion so really small stuff like that thermal takes done well another example also on the side panel would be there's no bolt or any kind of structural reinforcements on the right side to hold the panel flush to the case and instead they're using magnets which isn't that innovative but in addition to that the panel does not sag at all and it's a giant piece of thick glass so they've done well to keep everything really flush without going crazy by having a bunch of mounting hardware that looks ugly cost more money and if you design around it which they did you don't need so job well done there on that small detail there is this hinge but you don't need it it does mat just fine without it so overall externally the case looks not bad if you look at the front panel you might write it off instantly because it is a closed off front but we've seen this design work actually not bad in previous don't take cases like the view 71 the question is will it work well today does the view 71 we went into that review thinking it would be a horrible thermal reformer and it actually came out pretty okay it was in the top half of the results at the time which is damn good for a case that had I think two fans in it and it was just one in the bottom one on the top and that was it and it works fine because the rest of the case was designed around that and it didn't really need to brute force the cooling solution for this one there is a pretty wide gap here it's a little over an inch maybe but only part of it is perforated because the rest of it is filled with I think that's steel pretty sure it's just stamped out steel behind the aluminum paneling so there's not as much breathing space as it might look like from a profile shot which is unfortunate and also the fan positioning more importantly is just kind of odd by default now this is something you can easily fix so that's good but they've positioned two fans in here and one of them is in the center as you'll see there and the other one is in the bottom the question that I would ask you is what does that do what what does the fan down here doing because there's a power supply shroud like in most modern cases so you're really only getting maybe about 15% fan coverage above the hub that's actually able to potentially go over the shroud and the air that does make it over is instantly hitting a hard drive cage which you can also remove and we've done these tests for you today or we've removed the hard drive cages we've relocated the fans just to see how much it impacts things but just to give you an idea out of the box you're looking at a fan here that's blasting air straight into a metal wall and a pretty solid one at that because it's a hard drive cage so you remove that and if you do it's still blowing air basically only at the GPU the bottom fan is blowing some air at the GPU and then a whole bunch into where the cables are and those cables in that chamber are not getting hot they're not doing anything not connected to anything maybe an SSD so a couple of watts load and on a cable I can that can withstand many more watts than that so that the fans just not doing anything and stock should probably relocate it and you'll see why in our thermal section but it'll hit the GPU a little bit and that's kind of beneficial it's just there's nothing really going to the CPU here and that's a that's a design oversight something that seems to be a trend for thermal take for this week of case reviews unfortunately separate from that to give some positive notes here build quality on these panels is is very high and this is extremely sturdy construction it's thick aluminum on the front and the top it looks nice and I mean it's it's expensive material and it does feel like it and that's good because it's a 250 dollar case so if aluminum is your thing this has it it's just there are other aspects of the case of course that need to deliver as well and that's what we'll look at so let's get into the building notes the thermals the noise and then see if this thing's worth 250 bucks when it has so much competition in the market today the side panels are hinged and secured it at the front with both magnets and a large rotating latches the latches can be fairly stiff and difficult to operate without a screwdriver but they're also only really necessary for transport since the magnets are plenty strong enough to hold the doors shut otherwise they're also knurled so that it is possible to unscrew them by hand unlike similar latch is made by Coolermaster that we've criticized in the past the doors lift off of their hinges and the hinge pins are of uneven length which is actually good because it's very helpful for guiding them back into place mentioned in past reviews it's just a small attention to detail that thermal takes done well with the hinges are thick and strongly attached to the glass panels which are impressively well aligned with the edges of the case despite most of the weight being unsupported so it lines up well as you'll see in our b-roll shots since the panel's aren't screwed directly onto the chassis they have to be aligned entirely by the placement of the hinges and tolerances are tight but well executed the a500 is a heavy case that feels sturdy the top front and to some extent the bottom of the case are covered with plates of three millimeter thick aluminum and the sides with four millimeter thick tempered glass both the front and top panel snap into place with plastic ball and cup fasteners which is one of the more thoughtful and easy to use designs that we've seen although the pieces are interdependent the side panels should be opened to more easily remove the front panel and the front panel should be removed to get the top panel back off underneath the top panel there are several mounting points for fans but no removable fan tray which is a feature that we'd like to see in higher-end cases like this and one we've seen more popularly showing up this year the nature of the glued end filters means that they can't be removed without permanently altering the case so typical top exhaust configurations will be slightly hampered by the unnecessary obstruction and dust buildup top radiator mounting is extremely straightforward in this case the mounting rails are a 360 millimetres long and 5 centimeters above the top edge of the motherboard so there's plenty of space for any reasonable closed loop liquid cooler the front mount is nearly the same but radiators mounted inside the chassis must share space with the hard drive cages so placing a 360 millimeter radiator in the front of the case removes all 3.5 inch drive support the stock arrangement of fans hard drive cages and filters at the front of the case is suboptimal the least serious issue is the hard drive cages which can be removed or repositioned completely along a rail at the front similar again to some cases we've reviewed recently the stock configuration with two cages installed behind the intake fans is bad for thermal performance but it makes more sense to shift the cages pre-installed rather than loose and they're easy enough to move around and remove that this doesn't really count as a strike against Thermaltake this some extra testing in the thermal section as we tried to find the optimal case configuration by removing cages and shifting fans around many of the cases we reviewed don't support more than two 3.5 inch drive cages and having some extra hard drive cages on hand is more positive than negative anyway it's kind of the opposite of the DL C approach we've seen from other manufacturers the two stock intake fans are both positioned as low as possible on the front of the case so that both of them are pointed more towards the power supply shroud and GPU rather than the CPU to a point that it's a fault because there's really no reason to push that much air into the power supply shroud especially if it's breathing from the outside this especially if combined with those hard drive cages makes it unlikely that cool air will find its way up to the top of the case where you might have a CPU cooler or closed-loop cooler mounted the 3 120 millimeter case fans all spin at 1,000 rpm max which really isn't enough to effectively pull air in through the mesh strips along either side of the front panel although there's also an unfiltered hole on the bottom both side panels are transparent so KL management needs to be good which it actually is there velcro straps screwed into the chassis in a line that can handle the bulk of power and i/o cables there's three centimeters of space between the glass side panel and the chassis across its entire width so there's no need for a special cable management channel compare that to a more typical one point 5 centimeter gap in the level 20 MT and it's clear just how much space that is it's also reasonable to remove the hard drive cage underneath the shroud for extra cable space since there are 4 3.5 inch LEDs that can be mounted above the shroud yes there is a vertical GPU mount but no we didn't test it this time we don't recommend mounting air-cooled cards up against unventilated glass panels and we've already proven that it's a bad idea at least 20 times this year it should be fine for liquid cooled cards and thermal take has put a little more effort into their implementation than most by including a removable mounting plate for PCIe riser cable but this is again really something you need to use with an open-loop cooling card thermal testing for the a500 was exhaustive for this one and exhausting it included a total of five configurations alongside all the cases we normally show and those five are just for the a500 our testing configurations focused first on the stock a 500 enclosure then aims to improve performance to reach full potential by modifying the stock setup test variations offer a look at performance without any hard drive cages obstructing intake a test with the front pans shifted up for more balanced airflow attached with fans that moved up and the hard drive cage is removed and then a standardized test with the front panel removed let's get a CPU torture chart on the screen first to look at thermal influence of the thermal take a 500 case only against itself will add comparative data in the next chart stock the case didn't do too well it's at about 68 degrees Celsius over ambient for cbiit orders thermals we postulated that most of this poor performance was to blame on the fan positioning if you look at where they are it sort of makes sense nothing really straight lines up with a CPU cooler so we shifted the fans upwards for balance this brought thermals down to 57 point 7 degrees Celsius over ambient with idle temperature also dropped to 7 degrees from an impressively high 9.5 degrees over ambient not an impressive in a good way by the way removing the hard drive cages but keeping the stock fan configuration put us at 63 degrees over ambient enabling a noteworthy performance improvement just by removing unused hard drive cages we like that thorough all take includes them with this case so we'll just note that you should pull them out if they have no immediate use moving the fans up and removing the hard drive cages doesn't do as much since it also moves the air flow path above the cages we end up at 56 degrees over ambient with this setup removing the front panel entirely and leaving the fan configuration and drive stock we end up measuring a CPU temperature of 55 point 6 degrees over ambient about the same as the previous measurement and within margin of error comparatively with just the stock and best case configuration on the charge that puts the a500 near the land call 1 when its stock configuration both within margin of error of each other the NZXT s340 elite is similar in performance to the modified a 500 thermal takes view 71 in stock configuration outperforms the modified a 500 by roughly 1 degrees Celsius which is a massive improvement over the stock a 500 before sixty-eight degrees the dark based Pro 900 is priced about the same and ends up near the a500 performance just for comparison by price point the Coolermaster h 500m also deserves a highlight here and thermally decimates the a 500 while costing the same the a 500 in stock configuration is between the Enzo and the Walmart dtw which is impressively poor performance this speaks to limitations of fan positioning the front panel the hard drive cage obstructions and overall design fortunately two of these things are easily resolved as illustrated with the modified results if you're willing to remove the drive cages and you probably are most people don't have that many of these days and you're willing to move the fans up and you probably are or to add a fan the a500 does fine it's not impressive not for $250 it's not impressive or $100 but whatever but it's fine it's about average no better no worse just don't keep it in full stock configuration if you're adding closed loop or open-loop coolers those obviously will overcome many of the limitations but it's by brute force and he put those same parts in one of these other cases they'll still perform better it's just that if you really want the look yes you can brute force the performance and then you get the look moving on to GPU torture and starting first with just the a500 the stock configuration does better this time around stock performance measures fifty-two degrees over ambient for the GPU diode significantly better than CPU performance as a result of the fan positioning pointed straight at the GPU removing the front panel is the only means we improved performance over stock planting the a500 at 49 degrees over ambient that just shows that the front panel isn't as massive and inhibitor to GPU thermals at least as it was with CPU or we don't have any static pressure up there at all and that's because again both front fans are blasting the GP with air removing the hard drive cages doesn't impact performance here who are with in error margins so the results are functionally the same removing the cages and moving the fans up post a temperature increase of about 6 degrees over stock this is a better balance than the stock configuration we think but CPU temperature drops significantly with this layout as well GPU impact isn't nearly as large so if you want to run relatively stock we'd recommend this layout just moving the fans increase gpo temperature the most as expected because we now have obstructions and less direct airflow to the GPU comparatively the a500 stock configuration is about tied with the H 500 ppm ass a case which does reasonably well and GPU thermals and very well in CPU thermals in fact if you go in for thermals and a similarly sized case we just recommend the aged 500 people match over the a 500 it's about 100 to 150 dollars cheaper depending on when you buy it and has more balance to thermal performance for both CPU and GPU components the view of 71 is about one degree ahead of the a 500 just for another thermal take reference point it's really not bad just imbalanced to favor GPU thermals and even those are average at $250 to the a 500 we should also highlight the cooler master h 500 mm mash at 49 degrees which costs about the same and is also significantly more balanced for thermals 3dmark testing is next so this is basically a gaming benchmark so if that's all you do this is what you want to look at the therm will take 8,500 ends up around with a view 70 once it's rough way up 54 degrees over ambient for the GPU that said if you take a look at CPU thermals you'll notice that the 8500 runs about 10 degrees hotter the cooler master H 500 M mash runs at about 52 degrees over ambient for the GPU not a huge change but the CPU runs at 22 degrees which is a huge change overall gaming workload performance is represented well by 3 mark the results are overall average for the a500 blender render testing on just the CPU reduces the overall heat generation inside of the case instead of only running the CPU at maximum load the GV is not really doing much this is a realistic load and a common use case but one which stresses the a500 more than most as a result of its already detailed CPU cooling problem the a500 operates at around 42 degrees over ambience for the CPU it's fine it's not going to cause any damage but it's still nearly the worst on the chart the only case is worse than this or the BitFenix Enzo which has literally zero holes in the front panel the $50 spec Oh for that new egg recently struggled to give away and the Walmart dtw case which well you know for GPU thermals with blender the a500 ends up a bit above average the GPU does well with a 20 I point six degree results tie in with the H 500 ppm at the H 700 and the silent basic so want but the CPD result is hotter than most considering the CPU isn't really doing anything other than scheduling the GPU here it's performance is unimpressive to say the least and finally noise levels allow the a500 to be partially vindicated after it's embarrassing performance in the thermal section the a 500 ends up at about thirty five point one DBA right around the BitFenix Shogun the dark bass pro 900 and better than the cooler master H 500 mm at forty point seven DBA results although it's also better than cooling so it's a trade-off still as we recently showed in our airflow vs. silence testing having better air flow means that you can reduce fan noise to a point that you reach equivalent noise levels with a quieter case either way the a500 at least does decently a noise but this does teach us that its biggest inhibitors are first its fans and there's static pressure and then it's fan positioning and obstructions the answer to is it worth $250 is as it often is it depends and in general that answer is probably no but if you really like the look then there's not much getting around that you can make this case work just expect to either spend some extra on fans may be going with open loop or closed loop cooling in that case you brute force your way to success going to open or closed loop in a non performance binding scenario where you're not blasting overclocks you'll be fine the water will make up for any inhibitions in the front panel any obstructions the hard drive cage is all that stuff even if you fill the hard drive cages which would be actually very bad for thermals but even if you do going on with water cooling will make up for a lot of that so that's a point where if you like the look and you're doing liquid then it'll work it's not gonna be the best but it will work and it's hard to account for looks if that's really what you have your heart set on if that's not something you care tremendously about there is better competition from cooler masters age 500m which was a significant recovery from the age 500 P and the H 500 M will note has kind of embellishments on it that really aren't all that special so if you wanted to save a whole lot of money you can get the H 500 be mesh for a similar look it's just that it's it's white and it's doesn't have that full glass cover that the H 500 mm has now once you put the glass cover on performance isn't so great it's much better with a mesh front but it looks pretty good so that's good competition it's got a RGB features it's it's fine it's it's superior to this in many categories it's just that it doesn't look the same and there's not anything else you can do about that if that's what you care about other competitions dark Bass Pro 900 we did encourage looking at that one as well it is superior in a few categories it's huge it is pretty much fully modular and that you can invert the case although it's a pain a real pain in the ass to do it but you could do it and it's unique but it's a very different case in the design sense of of what it's trying to achieve so it just comes down to do you like the way this looks and if the answer is anything except for I don't want anything else except for this case next to my computer then you shouldn't buy it if that's the answer there's not much else you can get so the fan tax evolve X is probably about the closest and overall style to this one and that's about 200 bucks if you don't buy the Mini ITX kit and it's really not a terrible case once you go to the 400 dollar price point it's kind of rough in a few ways but that would be worthwhile competition to consider as well and we have review on that if you care so that's it for this one pretty pretty disappointed in these last tooth they're all take cases Thermaltake has speaking of the disappointment I guess we've got the right shirt on for it although it's gone so they can't buy any sorry they're sold out but Thermaltake has some really good ideas here and they did with the level 20 as well so like the company is capable of doing good thins and making good products it's just they they seem that consistently in the last two cases screw up on really small or a wealth really really obvious things like for example putting a dust filter in front of the fans not next to them that's an obvious thing it's a big thing to screw up but it's such a small basic concept to get right in designing a case that you almost overlooked a reviewer because who would do that apparently it's thermaltake and a good case that then I'll take makes would be something like the Corp III extremely unique very usable in different environments you have it standing up as a test bench or just the normal system you can have it as flat test bench you'd mount it to a wall that's a cool case and Thermaltake did that well but then you look at stuff like this or the level twenty mt and it's just it seems like it's completely reversed from the products they do well it might be different people different teams I don't know my understanding is that that HQ more or less is in charge of the designs and we're still trying to talk to someone at HQ who does the designs because a lot of these other companies we get the opportunity to speak to PMS and case designers and try and understand why do they do the things they do and with Thermaltake it's one of the few companies where we just we're left in the dark as reviewers as to why do you make these decisions is there a good reason to make some of these weird decisions that you've made and there might be but until they tell us we're never now so it's just a lot of big oversights on things that seems small in terms of the the level of complexity or the level of comprehension it requires to understand that thing that is being overseen like again filters in front of the fans or having a bit more of a gap for air to come through you can still have all of these design elements visually that Thermaltake has without just completely sacrificing performance or the value proposition in some instances I 250 bucks is a lot of money and at that price point for a computer case the cost of a CPU or GPU you really can't afford to make the kinds of mistakes that thermaltake has been making for the last couple of cases it's it's too much money to make mistakes can't get away with it the users won't have it if you're selling 50k she can get away with a whole lot of mistakes but that's not what this is so anyway subscribe for more hopefully Thermaltake will have some better stuff for us to see at CES we'll be there soon you're subscribed you'll see that coverage go to stored I cameras XS net to pick up a shirt not like this one because it's sold out but we're probably going to reintroduce just the front of this design and get rid of the 2018 part on the back because it won't be 2018 anywhere so thanks for watching I'll see you all next time