Thermaltake's V9: A Marvelous Gaming Case

At first impression the V9 is a nicely designed case. When looks matter this case certainly is a looker, in nicely and durably finished black steel, inside and out. Speaking of inside, opening up the case reveals a roomy and largely screwdriver-less design. As in most new cases the bay for the PSU is located in the bottom of the case. This case has five internal 3,5” drive bays and two external 3,5” bays, as well as 4 external 5,25” bays for DVD or Blu-ray drives. That's as good as it gets without stepping up to Full-Tower enclosure.

There are 4 fans in this case: two 230mm case fans and two 120mm case fans. The 120mm front fan has red LEDs that make the lower part of the front of the case glow.

Since we are talking fans: lets talk airflow. The V9's is excellent. With no fan smaller then 120mm the air flowing through the case is enough to cool down any hot and bothered CPU. The top and side panel fan are both huge 230mm units. The front and back fan are 120mm. The large fans can spin relatively slowly while moving as much air, so this case is pretty quiet for a tornado under your desk.

As said above there are 7 3,5” bays. Two of them are accessible from the front of the case (nobody uses floppy's any more why are these bays still included?). Five of them are on the inside of the case. Let me tell you why this section is rated low. The drive bays are fine, but the system to lock the drive into place isn't.

The top drive locks just fine. The drives below the first drive, however, are still loose in the bay after locking down the mechanism, which is located on only one side of the bay. The result is the drive can jiggling. I see this a s a problem because if I have to take this case to a LAN party the drives need to be locked down. Remember they classified this as a gaming case. Having play in something that spins at 7.2K RPM isn't a good idea even if it doesn't venture out from under your desk.

Strangely the 5.25" bays don't have the same problem. That makes me think the HDD bays' locking mechanism is not a deliberate skimp, but an unexpected design flaw or machining flaw. The optical drives slide in easily, and lock in solidly as they should.

Front panel USB ports and audio jacks are located on the top of the case. The top also has a convenient recessed tray for your iPods and other MP3 players, external 2,5” HDD's, flash drives, memory cards, and the other varied techno-clutter that is inevitably found on a computer desk.

I never judge a case without actually putting hardware into it. This case was easy to work with, well constructed, and very solid. I like the case apart from the one problem with the HDD bays. Which by the way can be solved by using a couple of good old screws and putting the drive in the traditional way.

At the time of writing this article this case is going for:

Amazon $89.99

Newegg $89.99

For that price this case is an awesome buy.