Thermaltake's Xaser III Skull Series - A Case For the Tough Guy
by Purav Sanghani on March 11, 2004 4:20 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Motherboard Tray
The motherboard is held in place by clips on the removable motherboard tray. This provides for quick installations or replacements and again, the need for no other tools but human hands. Removable motherboard trays have become standard in most, if not all, new well-constructed enclosures. This case, in particular, comes off completely as a separate part. A much more efficient design would have been to manufacture the motherboard tray as well as the entire back side of the case as one piece, keeping add-on cards on the motherboard itself when removing the tray. In this situation, the add-on cards would need to be removed prior to detaching the motherboard tray, which is very time consuming.
Click to enlarge.
The add-on cards are held by sliding clips that snap in place, locking the card in its slot on the motherboard. There is room for a total of 7 add-on cards, each with one of these black plastic clips to hold them in position.
Click to enlarge.
Problems may arise when replacing the power supply while a motherboard is already in place. There is just enough room to install a power supply when the case is empty, let alone with the CPU heat sink along with wires and cables in the way. Swapping a power supply may require removal of the motherboard tray for easier access. Once installed though, the power supply is held in place by the machined out mounts on the right and backside of the case as well as a rubber stopper at the top.
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KristopherKubicki - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
Purav has been with us for a couple years, but this is his pilot review :) Congrats Purav - much better than my pilot ;)Kristopher
CZroe - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
"The Thermaltake Xaser III VM3000A's main feature is its completely screw-less design. Though it can be difficult to deal with some screw-less features, such as drive mounting rails, Thermaltake has done a great job with the design and construction of its chassis."Umm, I must know: Is it as "great" a job as the ThermalTake Xaser III chassis? I've already posted in the forums about it (See the URL below), but basically the chassis' screwless slot design prevented full-length PCI cards from being inserted even though the case had special slots to stabilize them (Full length PCI cards have a plastic handle which fits the slots).
There aren't enough pictures to tell if the case even has these slots, so I must ask :) Also, a better description of the "swing bar" is needed as well as an image. I'm still confused as to how it can stabilize a PCI card...
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=...
klah - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
Hey Purav, have any pictures of the interior with all of the components installed?sandorski - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
I got 1 of these cases 3 weeks ago, I really like it. The flashing light is kinda hokey, but overall the screwless design and appearance of the case really impress me. The case looks and feels solid.The review was entirely correct about installing the power supply, it is very difficult if the mobo, cpu, and cpu hs/fa is installed. I managed to get my old noisy 350watt Enermax in, but only after removing the rear fan shroud first.
tfranzese - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
Near identical to this SilverStone I looked at, but I dig the SST's looks far more. Anywho, I just wonder if the design flaws were fixed.Case I'm referring to is here: http://www.soundcardcentral.com/reviews/cases/sst-...