Thermaltake Armor Revo Full-Tower Chassis Review

[siopao1984]

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Thermaltake Armor Revo Full-Tower Chassis Review - eTeknix


This week I’ve been taking a look at the Armor Revo Full-Tower chassis from Thermaltake. With their long history of making everything from servers, power supplies and cooling solutions all help in their knowledge of how to build a good PC chassis and with this full tower chassis sporting a long list of features and extras such as full USB 3.0 support, a whole range of connections on the front panel, room for upto 8 expansion cards, 6 storage drives and 4 optical drives as well as being capable of water cooling all add up to make this an exciting case.
The Thermaltake Armor Revo is on the market for around £130, which is quite high, but given that this is a premium product its price in line with similar products from other manufacturers.
While this case does have a “snow edition” that comes in white we will be taking a look at the all black edition today, with its tough looking exterior and heavy duty looking paint finish it certainly looks like it could survive a few knocks and bumps with ease, even taking it out of the box was quite an effort as this thing really is built to last, which makes it reasonably heavy for one person to lift.
So lets start by taking a look at what the Armor Revo has to offer and see just what you can get from this Full-Tower chassis for your £130.

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On the front of the box we can see that a bit of attention has gone in to the packaging, you can likely make out an armoured knight just behind those stickers as well as a cool blue flame effect behind the picture of the chassis, it may just be a box but the design certainly stands out and makes a good first impression.



Around the back we can see a quick run down of some of the major features of this case, such as its air cooling capabilities and optional water cooling ideas, which we will get into in a moment.



In the box we have a drive dock for either a standard hard drive or SSD that will fit the optical drive bays, a front panel cover to hold a card reader or similar drive, the usual assortment of nuts and bots, some cable ties to help with cable management, a power cable adaptor, system speaker and the instruction booklet.

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Front the front of the chassis we can see that the Revo has room for 4 optical drives, a huge air intake below that, a really nice logo stamped into the top and one of the unique features of the Revo are the curved wings you can see running down the left and right hand sides, these fold back on hinges and even after reviewing the case I’m not entirely convinced of their true purpose, fortunately they look really cool, so I’ll go with it.



Around the back of the case we can see there are three cut outs to help with installation of a water cooling system, a pre-installed 120mm fan, eight ventilated expansion slots and to the right of those a ventilation grill to aid with cooling, finally at the bottom you can see the cut away for the power supply.



Along the bottom of the case you can see am extra long air filter, which takes care of extra airflow for the powersupply, as well as providing an inlet for an additional fan. You can also see the 4 fold out feet which dependant on your needs can be folder out to help prevent the case from being tipped over.



The top of the case has all kinds of things going on, we have a 140mm fan space at the back, a further 120mm fan space in front of that, a hard drive docking back, the usual compliment of audio jacks, e-sata connection, as well as a range of USB 2 and 3 sockets. You’ll also find power, reset, fan speed and lighting controls on the left and right hand sides.



Along the side you’ll find another 140mm which comes pre-installed, a very cool window cut out on and a headset mount on the top right hand corner, and you can’t help but notice the very cool design that has been pressed into the side panel giving it a very menacing yet stylish finish.



The same design is carried over to the rear panel, things have been rotated but it does keep the theme flowing over the entire case nicely.

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While there may be a lot of things going on out side this case, all the really good stuff is on the inside, with the left panel of we can see there is a lot of room in this chassis, with 4 optical bays, plenty of cable management slots, a huge cutaway on the back plate and the same really high quality black finish throughout.



Taking off the back panel gives us an even better view of that huge cut away which really helps with fitting CPU coolers, as well as some sneaky cable management behind the motherboard should you need to. the first really major thing you will notice is that mass of cables, you’ll find a native USB 3.0 connection here, but if your motherboard doesn’t support this you will need to purchase an adaptor as one isn’t included here. But with so many ports, fan controls, the fans them selves, e-sata, audio etc on the front panel this is the price you have to pay, masses of extra cables.
Each drive hard drive and optical bay comes with a quick push release tray, giving you super quick access to your drives, and behind those you can see another fan in place on the back of the front panel to help keep those cool and bring in a good flow of air to the chassis.



The top of the case features a white 140 mm fan, and the back has a black 120mm fan.



Spinning around the windowed side panel you can see yet another 140mm fan there, certainly no shortage of cooling in this chassis.

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Now that we have the system built, we can really appreciate the size of this chassis, the GTX 560Ti looks lost in this case, unlike the Level 10 GTS Snow that we reviewed recently the Antec Kuhler 920 has plenty of room to breath in here, although of course it has replaced the pre-fitted 120mm rear fan.

The cable management is doing a great job too, there is definitely a clean airflow throughout this case.



With everything back in place we get a half decent view of our components, the fan on the side panel does mean there isn’t a lot of space to take a peek, but given that your only really loosing sight of the Power supply and the bottom of the GPU I don’t think that’s too much of an issue.



Taking a look at the back we can see everything is fitted nice and flush, with plenty of room for the MSi GTX 560 Ti to breath thanks to those ventilated expansion slots

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So how did Thermaltakes Armor Revo do overall I hear you ask, well given that Thermaltake already have a fantastic range of cases, such as the Level 10 GTS Snow Edition which we recently reviewed, I had high expectations of this case from the moment it arrived and with a price tag of around £130 this is far from a budget solution.

The over all style of the case is superb, everything from the side window, the paint job and even the armor panels that fold out on the front looks great and really give the whole thing a strong appearance, for an all black case this thing really stands out.
The build quality is perfect, with no rough edges, no rattles or squeaks when moving it around and every panel and attachment locks tightly in place, meaning there is no buzzing sounds from the chassis when in use, a problem that plagues a lot of cheaper cases.

There is enough room inside to fit the gargantuan Kuhler 920 and with plenty of free space remaining inside I don’t doubt that you could fit a fairly hefty water cooling solution into this chassis, along side a multi GPU setup and an array of storage and optical drives.

The cable management does a fantastic job and even with a complete system installed there is still plenty of room for a lot more cables, I would have preferred the rear panel to have a larger cut-away than it does given that a lot of the rear space is already taken up by the mass of cables from the front panel, but with a little care and perhaps even some cable extensions you would be able to prevent the rear of the case becoming a mess of wiring, although the principle of out of site, out of mind does apply here.
The build process was one of the most pain free and quick system builds I’ve ever done, with all the extra free space and the large cutaway to the rear there was plenty of room to work inside the case, changing components was a breeze and could be done confidently in around 30mins from taking the case out of its box.

Overall I am really happy with this case, thanks to its speedy installation, numerous pre-installed fans, fantastic styling and general build quality I couldn’t recommend this case enough, which it is a little pricey as £130 you do get a lot for your money. Thermaltake have clearly put in a lot of effort towards making this a premium chassis and that shines through in the final product, which is why I am happy to award the Armor Revo our Editors Choice Award.

[BrianBCBF]

ang snow edition ani akng ganahan..

[mr.nicejohn]

nc case....

[NapoleonBlownapart]

nice pero mahalon..