Thermal Take Level 10 Review

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

Nice review and damn sexy case, and props for getting the review on the front page as well!

If you don't mind my asking what's the total cost for your entire set up? I wish I could justify spending the cash for the dual video cards.... :(

The components i got last year , only the case is current, got everything off newegg and components are listed higher up but addition of 1TB Seagate, and 6GB Dominator DDR3

When I built it it was $1957, now no idea, but I'm shure its a lot less

[Boxster17]

Nice review and love the case though it's definitely out of my price range. Would've liked to see some larger pictures used as they're pretty small on my screen and hard to make out some details.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

Nice review and love the case though it's definitely out of my price range. Would've liked to see some larger pictures used as they're pretty small on my screen and hard to make out some details.

there is a link at the top for Skydrive where full size images are

[Rudy]

I don't really like the look of the case but the quality seems there.....but he price is killer :pinch:

[Boxster17]

there is a link at the top for Skydrive where full size images are

Read the whole thing yet missed the bold writing at the very start :pinch:

Thanks, checking them out now.

[Yakuzing]

Windows Live TM

Elementet er flyttet eller slettet, eller ogs? har du ikke tilladelse til at vise det.

In other words, it seems someone(me) can not access the big pictures.

[zeta_immersion]

I loved the case the first time I saw it, mind you 800+ is a lil too much, though I would not mind having a BMW ticker on it (on the side) ...

I do hope that a next revision (if there will ever be one), will be water cooling friendly because this case seems like it has great potential ..

Congrads on making front page .... take care of the big baby though ... :beer:

[DavidM]

The components i got last year , only the case is current, got everything off newegg and components are listed higher up but addition of 1TB Seagate, and 6GB Dominator DDR3

When I built it it was $1957, now no idea, but I'm shure its a lot less

While it's a damn nice rig, my wife would kill me for spending that much money on "just a computer" - in her eyes anyway, :)

[Tek Dragon]

As someone who also has owned this case I'd like to add a few things and my own thoughts on the case. Please keep in mind that one of things I place high priority on in a case is how quiet it is (mostly because I have to have my computer in my bedroom), along with cooling, ease of installation, looks, and how well it keeps dust out, so YMMV depending on your personal preferences.

Motherboard installation and Removable MB Tray

Installing the motherboard was fairly straightforward, there are ALOT of keyholes for various types of Motherboard, and each is labeled on a plastic like insert glued to the tray itself, A for ATX, MA for MiniATX, there are also P, C, and E.

I too appreciated the liner denoting stand-off placement, but for me it would have made more sense to just put ATX, Pico, ExtATX, etc., rather than abbreviations.

The tray itself is removable and is secured to the case via 2 posts on the top and 2 on the bottom, each secured via a tubular thumbscrews ( instead of lightbulb shape like on my LianLi PC60 ), and I don't see those interfering with operation or cabling, but the cables DID interfere with trying to get the thumbscrews on as the Tray fan cables are secured via twisty ties to the tray close to the upper post holes, minor inconvenience and easily fixed and retied.

Agreed. Another thing I would point out is because of the non-rectangular shape of the case, it's weight, and because there's a "door" for lack of a better word) instead of a detachable side panel, you pretty much have to install the MB tray with the case sitting upright. I have a very large/heavy after market air cooler (Cooler Master V8) and having it towards the top of the tray makes positioning the MB tray on the posts a precarious and mildly unnerving experience. I was worried that the CPU cooler may be too tall, but I didn't notice any clearence issues.

On the flip side, the opposite side of the case has a cut out so you can attach CPU cooler brackets if you are building from scratch. Since I was simply transferring my MB from my old case to this one, I wasn't about to hassle with detaching/re-attaching the CPU cooler. It's a nice thought, but I'm not sure how practical it is.

back plate opening

The tray fans are nice low RPM fans that are quiet big, i use Stock Air cooling on my stuff and the fans didn't interfere at all, ( I read on other reviews that it will interfere with Water-coolers and radiators so its a good thing to keep in mind ). The fans are also modded with red lights that illuminate with power via 2 Molex plugs, 1 for each fan.

For me the fans were fine, but the way they are attached to the MB tray, especially the intake fan on the right hand side of the tray, is a little cumbersome and in the case of the latter a little flimsy (although to be fair, given the design, other placement possibilities are limited).

There were some minor issues relating to cabling due to the cables having to be fed behind the case , my Power supply cabled feeding the bottom video card was to short, and the upper card was "just long enough", as a result i had to feed the bottom card with adapters/connector changers as thats what i had onhand. Also " just long enough" was the Motherboards P4/Aux connector. And when i say just long enough i mean it, there is very little slack on the power cables with the exception of the Main feed to the motherboard.

I had similar issues. I had to buy an extension cable for my 8-pin MB power connector. I have a 650W Ultra X-3 PSU, so if you have a longer one (say a 1000 or 1600W) you may not need an extension. The other cableing issue I had was that with my MB (ASUS Rampage II Extreme) the edge of the board is right up against the opening of the lower cable management slot and since ASUS uses the right angled connectors stacked in three columns of two, there was a lot of bend in the cable (especially the from the two that come from the top HDD cages), specificaly in the bottom row. It was tough to get them connected once the MB was attached with the placemnet of the intake fan.

SATA cable bend

Optical bays and installation

The Optical bay while nice and included a built in Psudo-stealth bay, has a decent sized gap between the said bay and the one underneath it, as i only use 1 optical drive I am unable to tell if it's just because of the blanks and will disappear once another drive is installed or not i don't know, but with 1 drive it's an annoyance and looks " unfinished ".

The optical drive cage is "removable", via 4 screws on the backside of the case and is necessary to install or remove drives as the bay does not open a full 90 degrees, but more like 45, also annoying. The cables feed through the back and to the MB enclosure, using a standard length SATA cable distance was not an issue, same with power length. The drives are secured using regular screws, up to 4 each side.

This area of the case was probably my biggest gripe with the case. As noted there is a large gap and I doubt it would disappear much with more optical drives as the clearence is necessary for the spring-loaded door to open. I second the "unfinished" look whole-heartedly. Furthermore, because the outer cover is aluminum, the area between the rest of the case and the opening for the optical drives bends easily (see pic) and I would recomend being very careful with it, especially since it will mess with the drive bay door opening properly if bent. While the outer cover only swings open 45 degrees, it is removable by lifting up where it is attached to the rest of the case. To re-attach you have to insert it back in the same 45 degree angle and it's a pain to line up. The aluminum cover also allows too much noise from an optical drive(s) to reverberate when it's closed.

If you're paying this much of a premium for design you'd better damn well get smart design on the inside as well as the outside, and not having tool-free optical/ 5.25" drive installation is absurd, at least to my thinking. That goes for at the very least having thumb screws for the card slots.

Power supply cage and installation/power cabling

The power supply cage is Non-Removeable, installation was decent to say the least because proximity to the optical cage, the length of my PSU I had to slit it somewhat into the optical bay then fully insert it into the PSU cage, it is secured via normal 4 screws on the back of the PSU, and also held in place via a front "stopper" bracket that is held in place via a screw from the top on a slide-able rail.

Actually the PSU cage is removeable. There are two very small screws (and I do mean small) at the top of the cage (see pic). The "stopper" bracket mentioned is appreciated though as it allows for varying length PSU's.

PSU cage screws

Disk Drive Bays and Installation

Each HDD bay is it's own separate enclosure each with a quiet fan/heatsink unit powered through the back of the case, and a light indicating an installed drive triggered by a switch that the HDD rests against when inserted. to trigger it with a laptop size hdd would require certain placement of the drive in the caddy.

The HDD area is my next biggest issue. First, why are fans included in only the top two slots? For what you're paying they should be in every spot since it's clear there's room to intall them. One might argue that having fans installed in-between each bay may affect cooling, but I would argue you could simply have them all running (although I doubt not running them would block much airflow). Not to mention, given the way the bays are stacked with the heatsink-like areas where the fans can be installed between each bay, my guess is installing extra fans would be a MAJOR pain in the arse. Similarly, why are there only quick plugs in the top two HDD bays? Again, at this price they should be included. And why have Molex connectors for power as opposed to SATA Power cables? I think it would have provided a "cleaner" look as would having right angles out of the back of the plug as shown on the SATA cables below (see pic). Finally, a HDD fits very snuggly into each cage, but like the optical drive cage, creates an echo chamber for your drive. If you have a high speed drive (10K/15K RPM) or a variable speed "green" drive, you'd better love the sound of a drive spinning because your going to hear it spining up and down pretty clearly. While there isn't really room for it, I would have liked to have seen vibration dampening screws and surrounds for the HDD in each cage. Again, good design shouldn't stop at the outside of the case.

You could go with all SSD's but storage capacity is limited there and you'd need a adapter to fit them in the cage and given the fixed position of the top two plugs, I don't think could use those slots without removing the plugs. On second thought maybe they should have just skipped the two plugs altogether.

Right angle SATA

The cables are routed behind the unit and along the side in a recess and held together with the rest of the cables for the front using twisty ties and "support bars" to keep them out of the way, my only disappointment was that none of the Sata cables are labeled and are bundled together, the 2 drives coupled with the ESATA on the front panel make it confusing if particular about what drive plugs into what SATA Channel on the motherboard itself (I am).

Amen to labeling the included SATA cables from the plugs. Perhaps another reason to have skipped the plugs from the begining.

Closing it up

The back panel was a pain to get on due to the power supply routing, but that could be due to the thickness of the power supply cables used.

As you can see my PSU cables are pretty flat and I had similar problems. Once again, the aluminum back panel feels flimsy and another area for noise to easily be conducted. I would have put a layer of sound dampening material on the back panel, but I don't know if it would have been able to close without a noticeable buldge where the PSU cables pass behind.

Closing the Motherboard bay has slight issues with the front fan being close to the bay wall and the grill wanted to catch on the edge of the fan requiring readjustment of the fan to get it to close properly.

Closing the PSU bay has issues due to the Modular cables coming out of the PSU, but that was more an issue of the cables being stiff there and not as much with then case itself, I can see an issue if a longer PSU is installed, but like the video card limitation, there is also a limitation to PSU size.

I agree with both of the above statements.

There was 1 MAJOR issue I had with closing the case. The HDD lock mechanism was in the Halfway locked unlocked position. Now because the keys are like vending machine keys, they have protrusions on both the inside and outside to prevent improper insertion and part of the security. Because of this they key would not go in to lock or unlock the mechanism. When the key matched the inner ring, it wouldn't match the outer ring. As a result i had to break off the outer protrusion so it would fit in and i could reset the lock, personally i find this a major flaw both with the QA for being asleep when it was done, and with the case for having vending machine locks, but it was fixed with no effects to the case, and no impact to locking and unlocking of the panel or bays.

This took me a while to figure out as well. You have to position the lock when placing the back panel on such that the lock lines up with the latch on the lock bar (see pic). It is a pain and again shows how design plan stopped at the front gate.

Latch

Final thoughts

The case runs quiet, and cooler compared to my previous case, so far I'm seeing a difference of 5-10 degrees cooler on the video cards, if this is because of the airflow or extra space compared to previous case, I don't know, but either way its a plus.

The light bar running along the outer edge is not uniform though, while a minor qualm, it's not really noticeable unless in low light. Also the glow of the fans in the motherboard enclosure is a nice touch, it would have been nice to have a color option along all the lights, or the ability to change said color, as if red is not your thing, your out of luck.

I do recommend this case, despite the small flaws I ace said above, it is still a good case, feels sturdy, but heavy as sin and large.

Personally i don't like it's $850 price tag, but if it wasn't on sale for $650 I would not have bought it. I loved the case in pre-renders, and it would have been nice for color options regarding the case itself and lights. But the $850 normal price is why I haven't bought it until now.

So my recommendation is along the lines of situational, i recommend it, but not for $850.

My Final Thoughts

For me the case is too loud. At least relative to my previous case which was a Cooler Master Cosmos 1000. I would be prepared to blow out the dust in this case very frequently. There are dust filters (non-remoovable; another design oversite) over the intake fan and on the cover over the power supply cage, but not on the slotted card slot plates. I know some are against dust covers because the reduce airflow, but I think that's neglible IMHO. I'd trade a reduction in dust accumulation for somewhat diminished airflow any day, but again YMMV.

The cable routing is pretty well done with some minor issues. I too would have liked to seen lighting run the lenth of the top of the case. Different color lighting would be nice, but hard to implement consistently, so I can't knock it too much for that. The outer design asthetic is futurist, but the poor interior design is pre-historic. I don't mind the price if as much went into the interior design as it did on the outside.

Overall, this case seems to me what it must be like to date a Kardashian. You'll get mad props from your buddies on how hot it is, but is that hottness enough to justify a serious commitment and make up for lack of substance?

For me it wasn't as I've replaced it with a SilverStone Raven RV-01 that I'm happier with and just put my Level 10 up on eBay.

EDIT: Not sure why my photos didn't upload, but have provided links to my SkyDrive pics instead. Here's what it looked like with MB intalled Front and Back

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

Thnx for the info regarding the cage, as well as the rest

I wouldn't have known about the PSU cage, cause I didn't RTFM that much, and cause everything is already installed, I wouldn't have read it again if it was even in there

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

As an update.

I added a second optical drive and the uneven gap that i described in the review, went away. Don't know of a poster commented about it going away as i don't remember, and didn't revisit each post.