[section_title title=Performance]
Performance
Picking the case apart, the first thing to note is that it is solid – really heavy and very sturdy. With all side panels, storage bays and blanking plates removed I would have expected – and forgiven – a little bit of wobble but there was none.
With all the bays removed prior to the build it simply remained to decide what I was going to put into the case and decided on a fairly storage-intensive setup based on a Haswell ATX motherboard and processor, then put the bays back in that I was going to use.
I went with the following:
- CPU:
- Intel Core i7 4770k
- Motherboard:
- ASRock Z87 OC Formula/AC
- Memory:
- 32GB (4x8GB) Team Group 2666MHz
- Graphics Card:
- MSI Gaming G1 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti
- Power Supply:
- Corsair AX 1200
- CPU Cooling:
- Alpenfohn Atlas
- Storage:
- OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
- Western Digital Black 4TB
- Western Digital Raptor 160GB
- Samsung HD204UI 2TB
- Optical:
- None
- Cooling
- Noctua NF-A14
Something I wanted to test was the rear storage, and after a little bit of fiddling I worked it out… remove the toolless draws from on of the bays, insert the drive and it just kind of pops on the back and clicks into place. Tool-free rear storage – definitely a winner for me.
Wiring control has been handled well, with enough space for a bit of spaghetti round the back but giving very clean lines in the front, again an aid to airflow as without a window you won’t get to see inside very often. That said, Thermaltake do offer a version of this case with a generous side window if you want to view your components as they work.
In the end, though, I only put one drive on the back as I needed more space and I had discovered that there’s no real mounting point for an SSD apart from inside one of those drawers. Also, you can’t put a 3-drawer bay in and use it if you have a drive in the rear in the same place because the wiring pokes through so I popped the cage back in the bottom and used the top rear slot for my fourth hard drive.
Replacing the cage was simple – it’s been engineered very well with everything lining up perfectly which makes re-using the case for later builds or adding more storage a task that can be completed quickly and easily if you need to. With all – or most of – the bays removed, installing components was a simple affair. Plenty of room to move around inside meant no painful, awkward angles when using screwdrivers and the whole build was completed in record time.
Also, I would have usually put in an optical drive bay and used a DVD or BluRay drive, but since I was concerned about temperatures and airflow with all that sound padding I left the space for future fans if needed.
As you can see, the massive footprint of the Corsair AX1200 is dwarfed by the sheer volume of the ThermalTake Suppressor F51, even the enormous Atlas cooler looks tiny when viewed in this system.
Everything about the Suppressor F51 screams massive so it’s no surprise that it weighs a ton. This is not something you want to try and carry in a suitcase to a LAN a few times a year. The side panels themselves are incredibly heavy, due in part to the sound damping foam, but there’s not the slightest distortion or flex when holding them which again I would have expected even on a case in this price range.
The modular design of the blanking plates in the roof is a lovely touch, allowing me to add a fan to aid the CPU cooler and bringing those all important temperatures down while not impacting the overall quiet running of the case. Speaking of quiet, it’s an obvious feature of this case but when you first start up the computer you hear nothing. Even searching for files on the Raptor drive barely produced more than a whisper and almost no sound from the 980Ti when gaming. Having this case in your living room, office or any noise-sensitive environment where others want to work, relax, hear the television, etc. will make you a few friends… especially if they currently complain that the fans ramping up on your GPU are drowning out the latest episode of their favourite soap.
With all the included sound insulation, I expected rather high temperatures, but the motherboard remained around 30-40’C which is pretty average. CPU temperatures were also reasonably at idle, though when pushed the cooler struggled to control the extra heat. I did quite a bit of testing on this which confirmed that the cause was the CPU/cooler rather than the case. With all that extra fan support though I can confidently say that you can force enough fresh air into the Suppressor F51 to cover all your air cooling requirements so long as you’re willing to sacrifice some of the sound damping defences.
Watercooling support is here in spades. If I wasn’t testing on air I could easily fit in a massive radiator in the roof or the front, or both, and still have space left for the pumps and reservoirs.
The case is built like a tank but although I’ve only been using it for a little over a week and I’m not particularly heavy-handed, I managed to pop the power button out of position. I honestly don’t know if it’s a particular fault with this testing unit or something to be worried about across the range and it simply felt like a holding clip gave way, but because there’s a PCB underneath it when you remove the fascia it’s not a simple case of popping it back into position. Regardless, this kind of fault would be covered by warranty so if the same happens to you early on then you should not be too concerned.
