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
Expansion
The VM3000A was designed with a few things in mind. One of these is expandability. Hidden behind the front bezel are six 5-1/4" drive bays and four 3-1/2" bays. Since the top bay is used for the included instrument panel, five of the 5-1/4" drive bays remain to be utilized. There is a spot for a floppy drive and three 3.5" hard drives below that at middle height of the case's front end. The last three 5-1/4" bays are at the lower section. Another area where a hard drive can be mounted is the swing bar, which is new to this model. A spare drive can be mounted with screws via 4 holes. Being a desktop case, five 5-1/4" drive bays sounds excessive since 2-3 at most are used in a typical desktop rig. Instead, converting the lower 3 bays to 3-1/2" would make more sense, especially since hard drives are still the standard medium for storage.
Click to enlarge.
The swing bar also has a device that prevents the add-on cards from popping out of their slots. The casing that holds the 80mm fan in place also has 7 clips that, when the swing bar is in the closed position on the frame, holds full width add-on cards in place. Tiny features like this can help reduce many hardware problems.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
15 Comments
View All Comments
JKing76 - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
Cheese. 100% cheese.Orchid1 - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
Looks terrible, pc case design has come a long way since the beige box, but in this case I'd rather have a beige box any day.Skulls? is his being marketed at 15 year old Goth Rock fans?
nastyemu25 - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
guess i wasn't the only one who thought this thing was incredibly uglyaraczynski - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
that has got to be the single most butch ugly implementation of a side window in a case i've ever seen, obviously a last second throw in with no thought or planning. disgusting.CtK - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
why dont you show pics with the case fully installed with parts??BenSkywalker - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
Reading through everything in the review it seems like this is a lower end case then the original XIII line, was that your impression Purav?Less fans, less space and sharp edges- sounds like a step back for TT here.
diehlr - Friday, March 12, 2004 - link
This case is the most hideous thing I have seen in a long time. What is the deal with PC case designs? Nearly every one of them is tacky and looks flat out cheap.clarkmo - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
This is the same as the Enermax Titanium case. I don't know who the oem is. Mobo attaches with studs vey easily. Hopefully a new trend.Just pop it right in. It's only noisy if you have noisy fans. I have a 120 mm in the lower area. The psu is very tight buy my slk900a on my 8rda manages to fit. http://www.case-mod.com/store/product_info.php?pro...Adul - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
congrats Purv :)mostlyprudent - Thursday, March 11, 2004 - link
You mention the inconvenience of having to remove add in cards to remove the motherboard tray, but why bother completely removing the tray unless I'm replacing the motherboard - hence removing the cards anyway? Of course, I've never had a removable tray that was easy enough to remove to justify taking it out for memory or even CPU changes.