Normally I wouldn’t be posting an article about an aftermarket case. There are plenty of geek sites that specialize in that sort of thing. I saw this yesterday though, and Thermaltake has done such a nice job with the design on this one I thought I would throw a couple of words at it and bring it to the attention of our readers who haven’t seen it already.
Prior to buying my first Mac in early 2002 I had always built my own PCs. Back then there were a handful of companies making PC cases, and the good ones had decent power supplies, logical interior design, and easy access, which at the time meant you only had to unscrew two or three screws to take the side panel off. Your choices were white or beige, and maybe black if you were willing to pay a premium for it.
I remember looking longingly at Mac G3 towers and Sun UltraSparc towers, thinking that those cases were so cool and wishing that I could buy something equally beautiful and functional.
By 2002 I had bought a G4 Powermac, which came in the lucite white and graphite case. That case was good looking, and man was it sturdy. The design was very smart and not just concerned with appearances. Of course, by this time the PC case makers had started to offer something other than the standard white and beige boxes. You could now get a box with a transparent side door and colored interior lighting!
When I got my G5 Powermac in August of 2004 I remember thinking how cool it was to have an aluminum tower. On top of that, the interior design of that case was very smart. The hard drives were mounted in removable bays, the power supply was mounted in the bottom of the case leaving more room for everything, and the ventilation of the box was as good as you could ask for. By now the PC aftermarket was starting to catch on, and you could buy pretty much whatever color or material you wanted for your case. I looked at a couple of the aftermarket offerings of the time, and honestly, once you got past the shiny bells and whistles of whatever material or lighting they used, they weren’t really any different in construction than the old white and beige boxes.
Now it’s 2009, and my new-ish Intel Mac Pro is in pretty much the same case my 2004 G5 Powermac came in and aftermarket PC cases have easily caught up in design. Pretty much any color, material, and size are available to the home builder, and some of these cases have very solid, well thought out design.
The Thermaltake Level 10 case came to my attention yesterday, and I think it’s about the coolest PC case I’ve ever seen.
The Thermaltake Level 10 case immediately draws attention to itself with it’s open, asymmetrical design. Power supply, motherboard and cpu, optical drives, and hard drives all receive separate enclosures. In the case of the six removable hard drive bays, which accommodate 3.5″ and 2.5″ drives in addition to SSDs, the drives sit in a huge vertical aluminum heat sink, nullifying the need for fan cooling of the drives.
Individual bays swivel out for easy access to components, and the whole thing is lockable to prevent unwanted access.
About the only drawback I can see to this case is dusting all the nooks and crannies, and not wanting to hide it under the desk because it looks so cool.
I’ve been eyeing micro-atx and mini-itx cases for a while now, because I like the idea of a pint sized, passively cooled computer. This is the first full sized case I’ve seen that got me excited, and if I was in the market to build a PC I think I’d be trying to justify the 700 bones it costs to join the club.
