Thermaltake Armor+ MX Mid Tower Case Review

Interior Impressions

Before we take a closer look at the internals of this case, here is a good overall picture of it with its side off. As you can see, it is fairly well laid out inside but some things (both good and bad) do tend to stick out. In a moment we will zoom in and show you these but to get a good overall feel for the case, nothing beats a wide angle shot! Now, lets zoom in and take a look at the highs and lows this case has to offer.


When one first looks at the inside of this case the very first they are going to see is the 23cm fan. This clear 230 x 230 x 20 13 bladed fan is made by Hong Sheng and rotates at a nice and slow 800rpm. In testing this fan exhibited some vibrations and slop but neither were worrisome or very pronounced. The same can be said of the noise it creates, in that it makes very little noise and more importantly, the amount of noise is so little, you have to really be listening to hear it.


Even though the single intake and exhaust fans do not appear to be similar (as one is a 9 bladed affair and the other has 7 blades with a blue LED) both are in fact the same model fan. These fans are made by Hong Sheng (model A1225L12S / TT-1225). To make things even more interesting, and for all you eagled eyed viewers, yes this also the same model fan as the one which is used on the Thermaltake Big Typhoon, which we reviewed a while back. It appears the number of blades and even the case material make no difference in Thermaltake's nomenclature. On the upside, just like their Big Typhoon counterpart, both of these fans are very quiet and display very little shaft slop. Seeing these fans in action really shows how serious Thermaltake is about making a case with as small a noise profile as possible, even if 3 seemingly different fans can be all the same model.


In the end the fans of this PC case can be summed up by saying Thermaltake made a wise decision with the inclusion of the huge 23cm side fan, and the two 120mm fans should be more than quiet enough for most buyers. It is interesting to note that all 3 fans are wired for 2 pin connectors with 4 pin Molex connectors attached; we can safely say Thermaltake does not want you running these fans at anything less than their full speed, else it probably would mess with the case air flow. All in all the 3 fans are good products and have extra long sleeved wires, but we do wish there was room to mount a few more 120mm fans.


As mentioned in the exterior impressions sections, there are a grand total of 7 expansion slots (aka PCI slots). As you can see in the above picture, these slots have a very interesting tool-less design to them. In a nutshell, to install a card what you first must do is yank out one of these little plastic blocks which hold the PCI expansion slot covers in place. You then install your PCI / PCI-E /AGP/ etc card in like you normally would and then push the little plastic sucker back in place.

To be honest this has to one of the worst tool free designs we have ever seen. Even after reading the manual thoroughly, the first time we popped one of these plastics effers out we literally exclaimed “Oh CRAP! I broke it!”. Yes they are that tight when new and even after following the recommend way of pinching in and then yanking out it still felt and sounded like something breaking. This is not a good sound nor a good feeling and would be very off putting to a first time builder (one could go as far as saying morale destroying, but this would be exaggerating things a bit). We truly have to wonder about the longevity of such plastic devices as they do need flex to pop out; as like all hard plastics, they are not exactly a text book definition of malleable and thus are susceptible to fatigue.