Gadgetory

we've covered at least one of thermal tapes level 20 cases before at least officially specifically the small form-factor at level 20 VT the level 20 MT is a mid tower in the same style pairing rounded silver edges with flat tempered glass panels where specifically reviewing the level 20 MTA RGB which comes with three 120 millimeter a RGB intake fans at the front and one non RGB fan at the back before that this video is brought to you by the MSI r-tx 2070 gaming Z video card which is a dual axial cooler and large fans reduced noise had to give an hour p.m. each running double ball bearings these sit atop a multi slot aluminum heatsink to create a two point eight slot card the gaming Z spins down fans to zero rpm went under low loads keeping the focus on reducing noise whenever possible custom RGB LED lighting is possible through MSI software with an RGB spectrum configured out of the box click the link below to learn more this is the case this is the one that's one of the - that's sneaking and at the end of the year after our best cases awards show but that's ok because it doesn't end up in the awards list anyway it's not the worst case we've looked at but it does have some flaws and first of all to give you some perspective on where it stands in the market it's about $90 maybe a hundred but 90s about where we've been told to expect it to fall and in the level twenty series it is a follow up to the original level twenty that we showed at Computex a couple years ago at this point and that case had something like 500,000 plus dollars invested into tooling so it was a really expensive series and that followed one of the original Thermaltake designs where they partnered with BMW design works to work on a case so level 20 has a very specific premiere branding stuck to it and then they'll take brought that brand down to the lower two your cases its traditional halo marketing effect as you might call it so this is one of those more affordable ones at about 90 bucks and right away you can see a few of the features on it that may be jumping out to you if you follow our channel one of which is the really thin sliver here for airflow there's glass panel the front Center small gaps on either side now we've seen this design work but it does take some specific design elements to make it work and one of those is typically higher static pressure fans another one is a bit of a gap between the fan and the glass so they have enough space to try and leverage that higher static pressure assuming that is the higher static pressure fan in the case in question and for this one we'll talk about that in the thermal section if it can manage to make this design work but there are still some basic flaws with it because even if this were enough of a gap to breathe and you'll see if it isn't in a bit the filtration for it is decorative so there's a dust filter off to the side and we'll talk about this in Patrick's filled notes as well where it's actually not in front of any air intake it's not in front of the fans it's next to them and not much air it's gonna go through there in fact most the air will go through the fans but there is no dust filtration in front of the fans and so all the dust is going to go into the case it's bit of an odd design choice because really what should happen is assuming you want a panel designed exactly like this should probably have the mesh here between the glass and this curved beam on the side right in the middle there so that it's actually in front of where your air is coming in because that's where the dust will come in so kind of odd design decision the glass we'd like to see boosted a bit more away from the fans you'll see why later and as for the rest so it is three fans in the front pretty standard layout but you could if you wanted to change it around and we do this in our thermal section for you so you can see what the difference is there's an intake here or exhaust if you prefer but intake makes the most sense you'd set up with the radiator or just with the fans that are in the case so we rotated two of these over to this side as intake and that one actually does have a dust filter right in front of the fans where it makes sense on the steel side panel it's kind of reversed it's like a weird bizarro where else where the side makes more sense for intake and we've seen this before we saw it with the leon leo 11 dynamic and when done right like in that well evan dynamics actually works extremely well the references that the 11 dynamics completely obstructs the front panel it doesn't even have these small gaps that this one does so all that's doing is taking your fans you know really having the front moving to the side and I mean the air will hit the side panel and then bounce off of it and go somewhere else so same idea as any other cooling system really it's just less direct but if you want to you can move over here and we'll do that in a bit top does have a dust filter so it's just the front that they've missed out on it which is so strange because typically if you were to leave the case in this setup for the most part this is a positive pressure setup and a lot of your air will exhaust out the top depending on the CPU cooler you have sort of put a dust filter up there but not on the front just seems kind of backwards now this can be useful because there is a rear exhaust fan and that fan does pull air through the top too because there's a big hole in the top right next to it so kind of makes sense but it's just it's an odd decision to skip on the front filter and not the top filter there's filters everywhere else too you can keep making the point with the bottom but I don't really need to as for the inside of the case so these are not captive screws but not a big deal really oh it's at this price point kind of expected so it kind of slides out like that not really genuinely hinged it's just that the case has these metal lips so the steel is stamped in a way that you get this overhang on the top and you get an overhang on the bottom and then the panel slots in between those the only reason for this to be there is if Thermaltake thought it looks worse for example for that glass to be exposed rather than having a piece of steel flush with the other pieces of steel so whether or not that's good is really entirely aesthetic and you can decide if you like that steel up or not it is pretty minor feature though but the panel comes out without much issue it's not it not fancy in any way but ninety bucks doesn't need to be inside we have a power supply shroud pretty standard at this point it does have perforation on the top which is something we generally like to see and it's got a cutout here on the side for your power supply logo and branding if that's the thing you're into on top of the power supply shroud there is a two and a half inch mount and then next that there's radiator gap for installing a large radiator and for the rest of this let's go through Patrick's build notes talk through the rest of the case internally will go through thermals as well the front panel is restrictive with tiny one centimeter strips of mesh on either side of the glass section deceptively these strips aren't in the path of airflow and don't act as filters there isn't any filtration at all in the front fans which instead pull air through the narrow gaps behind the edges of the front glass panel there's also a wider gap hidden at the bottom of the front panel typical for cases with sealed designs like this one the rest of the level twenty mt it seems to be an attempt to make up for that closed off front there are cutouts big enough for two fans on the steel right side panel of the case so that extra intake fans or radiator could be installed as long as the graphics card isn't too big this intake is filtered unlike the front panel there are also fan mounts along the top of the power supply shroud which is definitely a desirable feature and should allow for much better GPU cooling except a bottom to top airflow pattern is generally encouraged by a vent at the top of the case it's just that the bottom of this case is almost entirely sealed and any fans mounted here will have to pull air from the front panel instead there's almost no room at all for cabling either we're used to removing unused hard drive bays as a matter of convenience but in this case it was a matter of necessity it's hard to imagine where cables could possibly go with two hard drives installed under the shroud there's already very little clearance between the side panel and the chassis and since part of the case is taken up with the vents that's even less area available for them to exist this also makes it difficult to get the steel side panel in place since it's the old-fashioned kind with a steel lip at the front and tabs along the top and bottom that don't want to slide in if the panel is even slightly bowed out the faring controller is the biggest sticking point with this case for a couple of reasons for one it partially blocks the cable cutout that we would have otherwise used for the 24 pin power cable that can be solved by unscrewing the controller and reinstalling it once the cable is through but it's frustrating to have it in the way at all it also has the same weakness that the Lian Li of 550 ex control in that it uses special 5 pin connectors for combined fan and RGB signals so that the fans can't be plugged into standard headers or the motherboard these connectors that do cut down on cable clutter but at a cost unlikely and Lee's controller there's no PWM cable so there's no way whatsoever to control the speed of the three front fans other than soldering together an adapter there are cables for external RGB control and some credit is due here there are adapters for Asus MSI and gigabyte pin outs so the a RGB aspect should work well the rear exhaust fan is non RGB and just uses a standard three-pin plug which means that it can't be connected to the controller and set to the same speed as the other fans normally that might be a negative but the other problems mentioned with the controller cancel it out the lack of fan speed control is a big oversight especially for anyone hoping to install a radiator behind these fans because the single locked rpm is generally low a 360 millimeter radiator can indeed be wrangled into place at the front of the case as long as it can fit the gap in the power supply shroud it would also have to be installed tubes up to fit in general which we don't recommend for long-term use with closed loop liquid coolers almost everything mentioned so far in this review is negative so it's worth taking a moment to clarify that we don't hate this case the look the build quality and the ease of installation are fine but unremarkable it's in an unfortunate position where the features of the case that stick out happen to be the flaws let's get into thermals we've made testing cases without their front panel part of the standardized test suite now so that we can have an understanding of how much those panels are bottleneck in performance other than that the only additional test we perform this time was to move the upper and lower intake fans into the side intake vent on the side panel this actually caused some air to exit through the front panel which doesn't hurt performance in a huge way but is a waste of air that should instead be flowing backwards through the case realistically the options were improving airflow are limited it's nice that Thermaltake has included so many fans but it makes it less likely that customers will want to add additional ones so we only use the stock fans for testing we could emulate Lian Lee's or 11 dynamic by completely sealing off the front panel and putting two fans on the side intake but then we wouldn't be showing any of the ra RGB features through the front panel which is sort of the selling point of the case so there's a point of realism that we have to abide by even moving to to the side intake and leaving the one in the front is pushing the boundaries of what a user realistically would do at least from an appearance standpoint but it gives us some important insight to how the case performs we could leave the three led intake fans in place to keep air from leaking out of the front and install fans on the side intake but at that point there would be six case fans running just to get an acceptable amount of air moving at which point you have enough money in those fans just buy something else before looking at comparative data we'll look just at the level twenty mt against itself CB a temperature in the torture test was 58 degrees celsius over ambient for the stock configuration but dropped significantly by about eleven degrees by removing the front panel we'd like to see this closer to the six to seven degree Delta mark it's natural that a front panel will inhibit cooling but there are reasonable levels of that inhibition despite the air escaping from the front moving the two fans to the side intake lowered temperature by roughly four degrees down to fifty four point one over ambient removing the front panel completely was a more significant improvement down to 47 degrees the side vent can be used to mitigate limitations of the front panel while still enabling that argb front look though 58 degrees over ambience is relatively warm for the CPU and compared to the rest of the cases on our chart it's not yet in runway thermal territory but it's pretty high up there it's on the level of the dark base pro 900 version one similar to the stock defined C and defined s 2 which is unremarkable and a bit better than the Alpha 550 and in win 303 compared to a previous thermal take case it does worse than the view 71 regardless of whether or not the intake fans are blocked the 120 millimeter exhaust fan is decoupled from the fan controller and therefore capable of running its full 1400 RPM in the mt which keeps temperatures from spiraling out of control moving on to GPU testing we saw a stock TV a torture result of 59 degrees over ambient scene benefit from a side intake fans with a reduction to 56 degrees over ambient as GPUs are heavily reliant upon their thermal performance in terms of the clocks every few degrees to higher clock rate removing the front panel caused an even bigger drop in temperature on the GPU than it did on the CPU down to forty six point five degrees over ambient the stock configuration it seems likely that the intake fans are biased slightly towards the GPU since the largest available Inlet for air is at the bottom of the front panel but the rear exhaust fan primarily benefits the CPU any benefit to the GPU is by way of removing radiative heat off the backplate which won't really affect the GPU core temperature all that much here's a comparative chart GPU temperatures aren't the hottest we've ever recorded but they are nearly the warmest among the sampling of cases on our chart the BitFenix Enzo and Walmart cases chart higher for what it's worth but 59 degrees is about as hot as our GPU can get before throttling itself to keep cool nearby contenders would include the Lian Li 11 air which functionally requires removal of the dust filter to actually allow airflow another nearby item is the in--when 805 infinity one of the worst performing cases on our charts as it has literally zero front airflow this isn't great positioning for the MT going to side intake reduces thermals to a point of competing with a defined r6 and the original H 500 P so not great but at least it didn't advertise as being high airflow 3dmark raised temperatures slightly higher than the torture testing did it equals the BitFenix n so in this test which is an unpleasant place to be the perforations at the top of the power supply shroud might help a little bit to alleviate thermal concentration but our power supply shroud was crammed full of cables and a hard drive cage that blocked air coming in from the lowest intake been yours likely will be too because this is with a modular power supply but under CPU rendering with an average CPU temperature of 38 point seven degrees over ambient is a bit more reasonable without the additional stress of the torture workload and with relatively little heat being generated by the GPU the CPU torture fits comfortably into the middle of the chart between the NZXT age 500 and silverstone KL 0 7 GP rendering averaged 29 point nine degrees celsius over ambient also a better temperature relative to other stock cases than was indicated by the torture test the stock configuration isn't too bad for the lighter workloads or the trickle of air is still sufficient to drive heat out of the case 39.4 DBA has our noise result for the noise chart we have on the screen now and it's not excessively loud but it is when you keep in mind that every other stock case test is performed with fans running at full speed there's only one speed that the three intake fans can run at and that speed isn't ideal for either noise or airflow just to reiterate a point that was written earlier in this review there's a lot of criticism here there's a lot of kind of negative look at the case we don't hate the case at 90 bucks it's a sensible price especially for a case that has three argb fans than a fourth it's got four fans in it it's just that unfortunately those fans don't do a whole lot because of the panel design and the static pressure and that controller is really just just annoying because you can't plug those fans into really anything else this is a problem we had with Leon Lee's controller as well for the borer fans originally but at least there's had a PWM table with it so third we'll take make some odd decisions here it's not a ripoff of a case the price is completely fine it's just some of the design elements are not that great and if stuff that Thermaltake could relatively easily improve on so again you gap the front glass a bit if you're listening thermal tape take that front glass bit distance it from the fans it'll help significantly you could then move the mesh between the glass and the side over here it won't look as good but really does it look that good anyway I mean what Hugh what's the design goal I guess look at the design goal and figure out how to make basic features work within the confines of that goal because you can't in a case like this which is 90 bucks priced at the average computer bill there you can't get away with skipping on basic features like having enough pressure to bring air into the case and having dust filtration for dust if it were something like the whatever that Cougar case is called the conker something like that you can get away with not having dust because the whole concept of the case is that as exposed to dust but it's cool and that makes up for you can't really get away with that in a mid-tower like this so this is just it needs a larger air gap it needs a filter oh the fans and the fans could be controlled at all or it didn't use some fancy five pin adapter or it had an adapter from five pin to three pin then a lot of this would be completely fine actually the rest of the case the build quality is okay it's acceptable the inside is reasonable to work with it's not the worst it's a bit limited on cable space but it's not terrible and it's just it's it's weird it's popular to have LED fans behind the tempered glass panel yes but we've seen how that works in the past and there are ways to make it work well it's just they didn't use them here so if the fans can't pull the air in why are they there the answer is decoration it's there because RGB and because glass and that's it and if that's what you want and you like the way the rest of the case looks cool but just make sure you get a good cooler CLC or something you'll be able to brute-force it or run higher fan speeds for the internal components would also make up for it it's just that there there are a lot of places that Thermaltake could have done much better with this case it has the basics of an overall acceptable design the pricing is very competitive actually extremely competitive especially with for fans with three that have a RGB with glass it's got everything that needs to compete especially at $90 or $100 it's just it's missing those two critical things dust filtration and air and then I'll take we think you can you can do it you can make this design work we might just do it for you I don't know it depends on if we have time but needs a bit of work and hopefully they get there so that's it for this one subscribe for more as always go to patreon.com/scishow his access times that directly go to store documents exes net speak of a shirt like this one or one of our mod mats thank you for watching I'll see you all next time