Your case is one of the most visible components of your system and can say a lot about who you are and what your computer is for. With so many different designs and styles available to choose from, you can say almost anything you want. Today Dan Wellman takes a look at the Thermaltake Shark case, a high end enclosure built to look good and cool well.Thermaltake has built a solid reputation as an innovative manufacturer of top quality cooling solutions, and their stunning range of high-end cases is no exception. The Shark VA7000 case is one of the more expensive cases in the Thermaltake range, so expect to pay somewhere in the region of $150 - $170 for one without a PSU. One with a PSU or liquid-cooling system thrown in is much more.
For a case that’s pretty expensive, but Thermaltake is giving you much more than just somewhere to put your motherboard and drives. Almost every aspect of the case is bursting with innovation and ideas that make working with the case a pleasure. Even the cardboard box that the case comes in is colourful and attractive!
Upon purchase, you obviously get the case itself. You also get a bagful of screws and whatnot for attaching your drives and seating the motherboard, etc. Thermaltake being the masters of cooling also throws in not one, but two 12cm 2000rpm fans (intake and exhaust) to ensure that a constant supply of cool air is dragged over the internal components and then pushed out as it heats up. It is also compatible with all current types of liquid cooling systems. The form factor is ATX or mini-ATX.
Beginning with the aesthetics then; the case looks incredible and is available in either black or silver, with the internal and front lighting in blue. It’s pretty big at 52cm high, 20.5 cm wide and 50cm deep, but it still manages to come off as an elegant and stylish full tower. For a case this size it is surprisingly light, weighing in at 6.8kg when empty which it owes to its aluminium construction.
Those of you that like to be able to look right into the case may be slightly let down by the fact that the side of the case is not completely transparent. It does feature a cut away section however that instead of being clear plastic is an uncovered grill to further help with air flow. EMI shielding is also provided by the side panel to help prevent noise or interference escape.
The front bezel is hinged and lockable, and the removable side panel is tool free and also lockable. There are also magnets into the door and front of the case to keep it firmly closed, and for added stability, four retractable feet sit at the bottom of the case. These can be removed if necessary.
Even the inside of the case is incredibly well engineered. The inner chassis is sectioned off into distinct compartments; a main one for the motherboard tray, a vertical drive bay shaft toward the front of the case, and a top section for your power supply unit. The inner frame takes up no more space than it needs to, leaving each of the compartments spacious enough to work comfortably in and there are plenty of spaces between the casing and frame to run cables through. This is probably the easiest case to build or upgrade a PC with that I have ever used. It was easy to get everything into it and next time I want to add or upgrade anything, the spacious layout and design means that will be easy too.
It is packed with features that make adding any of the core system components extremely easy. The motherboard is mounted onto a removable tray rather than the casing to make inserting or removing it a snap, and it is held in place with thumb-screws making adding or removing the motherboard tray a tool-less operation.
The PCI card slots at the back of the case can be quickly removed by the use of an ingenious bracket that holds the slot covers or PCI cards in place. Like the motherboard tray, this is also a tool-free component. As expected with a full-tower case, you get a nice amount of expansion slots, seven in this case (no pun intended).
The blanking plates in the front of the case actually contain rails that are screwed onto the side of your optical drives, which then slot neatly into the case. Once they are attached to the drives, adding and removing them to change jumper sittings or whatever becomes tool and hassle free. There are a total of five 5.25 drive bays.
The floppy-drive or card-reader (or both) are housed in a cage that once again, slots in and out of the case without the use of tools. This is also based on a rail system for your convenience.
Inside the case are a further five drive bays for your hard-drives; each of these bays provide a cradle that clicks out of the chassis and screws onto your HDD. Shock pads and EMI shielding can help protect your drives, provided you can correctly work out which of the screws provided you are supposed to use. There is a clear inch of space between each of the drive cradles that can help heat to dissipate, another clear sign of Thermaltake design quality.
I’ve described each of these products as tool-free and what I mean by this is that the various components, motherboard, drives, etc, are removed or inserted without using tools. To actually change the motherboard, you would need to use a screw driver to release it from the seating pillars. But all of these features are still excellent time savers because it is far easier just to unclip a hard drive and then unscrew it from the rails once it is free from the cage rather than having to get the whole case out of your desk and almost take the whole thing apart just to get to the drives retaining screws.
The case features two USB 2 ports, a firewire port and audio in and out sockets on the side of case. This is great because it doesn’t mean you have to have the door open when you want to temporarily connect a camera or plug in your headphones. The cables for the front access panel and also for the power-button and lights are clearly labelled; this doesn’t sound like much of a feature but it’s surprising how many low end cases still don’t do this. Another small but far from insignificant details that helps you to understand where those extra dollars went is the fact that the audio connections connect straight to the motherboard, instead of standard 3.5mm jacks that have to be routed out of the case and back in through the rear audio sockets, which again, is the all-too familiar scenario faced when you buy a cheap case.
The case does come with a very basic instruction manual that actually seems to provide more value in the humour content generated by the poorly translated instructions rather than actual useful information, but there are some pictures to help clarify certain points and it’s a nice touch to even include a manual with a case.
Performance-wise, there isn’t much I can comment on; generally cases don’t actually do much except house your components. One thing I can say is that the case fans in the Shark are a little loud. They aren’t deafening or anything but when it’s late at night and you’re trying to concentrate, the last thing you want is continual background whirring. I’ve had the case in use now for about a week so it may just be a case of them needing to be worn-in. Only time will tell if this is the case I guess.
For a case that’s pretty expensive, but Thermaltake is giving you much more than just somewhere to put your motherboard and drives. Almost every aspect of the case is bursting with innovation and ideas that make working with the case a pleasure. Even the cardboard box that the case comes in is colourful and attractive!
Beginning with the aesthetics then; the case looks incredible and is available in either black or silver, with the internal and front lighting in blue. It’s pretty big at 52cm high, 20.5 cm wide and 50cm deep, but it still manages to come off as an elegant and stylish full tower. For a case this size it is surprisingly light, weighing in at 6.8kg when empty which it owes to its aluminium construction.
Even the inside of the case is incredibly well engineered. The inner chassis is sectioned off into distinct compartments; a main one for the motherboard tray, a vertical drive bay shaft toward the front of the case, and a top section for your power supply unit. The inner frame takes up no more space than it needs to, leaving each of the compartments spacious enough to work comfortably in and there are plenty of spaces between the casing and frame to run cables through. This is probably the easiest case to build or upgrade a PC with that I have ever used. It was easy to get everything into it and next time I want to add or upgrade anything, the spacious layout and design means that will be easy too.The blanking plates in the front of the case actually contain rails that are screwed onto the side of your optical drives, which then slot neatly into the case. Once they are attached to the drives, adding and removing them to change jumper sittings or whatever becomes tool and hassle free. There are a total of five 5.25 drive bays. The case features two USB 2 ports, a firewire port and audio in and out sockets on the side of case. This is great because it doesn’t mean you have to have the door open when you want to temporarily connect a camera or plug in your headphones. The cables for the front access panel and also for the power-button and lights are clearly labelled; this doesn’t sound like much of a feature but it’s surprising how many low end cases still don’t do this. Another small but far from insignificant details that helps you to understand where those extra dollars went is the fact that the audio connections connect straight to the motherboard, instead of standard 3.5mm jacks that have to be routed out of the case and back in through the rear audio sockets, which again, is the all-too familiar scenario faced when you buy a cheap case.
Performance-wise, there isn’t much I can comment on; generally cases don’t actually do much except house your components. One thing I can say is that the case fans in the Shark are a little loud. They aren’t deafening or anything but when it’s late at night and you’re trying to concentrate, the last thing you want is continual background whirring. I’ve had the case in use now for about a week so it may just be a case of them needing to be worn-in. Only time will tell if this is the case I guess.
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