no customer support, ever

Author's Rating:

Pros: good looking, BIG, well designed and adaptable to evolving standards of motherboards

Cons: no customer support, ever, under any conditions

The Bottom Line: 
good case but now superceded by quieter and cooler models by Antec and others

Author's Review
This is a huge, well built and very flexible case, flexible in the sense that you can make many conversions--including adding an optional water cooling kit. It is also flexible in the sense that it accommodates several motherboard types, including BTX and micro ATX .

My primary concerns were cooling and quiet. The case is not on Intel's TAC list of approved thermally advantaged chassis. But the three top, front and rear 12mm fans provided ample cooling for my Intel D dual core cpu.

The noise level is below average but nothing like as quiet as I had hoped,even with an Antec Phantom 500 power supply which does not run a fan and with an Arctic Cooling heat sink and fan to replace Intel's cpu grinder.

There is no removeable motherboard tray. But the case is so big it is easy to work inside. You don't need tools for the most part.

Read the specs for details, but you will be hard pressed to find enough hard drives or dvd drives to fill all these bays. The drives just slide in, and you can move the cages from front to back and up and down.

Note that the black steel Armor case is exactly the same except not alu. The steel case is much cheaper and the idea that alu is cooler is a myth. So it is just a matter of cosmetics.

My problem came when I read the instruction book. It says you can just slide out the tray for the floppy drive. Well, in fact it is screwed in on both sides, the only tray that is screwed in. The other all slide out when you release plastic clips.

As you see in the pic, the left side of the case has a window. This panel comes off easily with thumbscrews. The right side is not mentioned anywhere in the manual. It appears to be non-removeable, as in many cases.

In fact you CAN remove it by taking off some screws in the back. You have to do this to get at the screws securing the floppy tray. Now this seems obvious and simple but it is NOT mentioned anywhere in the manual or on the web site and the manual says on the contrary that the floppy tray slides out just like all the other trays.

You would think this problem would be explained quickly by a call to customer support, or by looking at www.thermaltake.com.

Well, of the 155 documents on the ThermaltaKE site [as of July 2005 months after release of the case] not a single reference to the Armor exists. This case has no support.

I filled out the customer support email form on the site FIVE times. Never an answer. I phoned Thermaltake, spoke to a woman Chantal Lo who told me to email her and she [not a tech] would forward it to Taiwan for an answer. Never a reply. I phoned again and another woman, not a tech, gave me the email of a tech person to contact. Never a reply.