Thermaltake Armor+ MX Mid Tower Case Review

Esterior Impresstions cont.

The hard drive bay is a 4 drive removable cage which can actually be mounted in the 5.25 drive bay section and is held in place with two screws and a plastic level-like mechanism. We will get into more detail about the removal of the hard drive cage in the installation section but for now it is suffice to say it is a tool free design which was very well done.

One very interesting design feature is that the cage sits perpendicular to the rest of the system. While this makes insertion and removal of a hard drive (and its locking drive caddy) easier, it does raise questions about the front fan's ability to circulate air in from the front panel. Similar designs in the past have shown the hard dives block nearly all the air from the front fan and in fact has a negative impact on case temperatures. We will see later if Thermaltake’s engineers were able to over come this by the inclusion of the huge side fan.


The 5.25 bays also feature a tool free design; one simply slides in their optical drive (for instance) and pushes it in until it clicks. In a nutshell, these black levers have one side which sticks into the back of the bay and as the optical drive pushes past it this levers the back end of the locking mechanism up and out of its way while driving home two pins on the other end of the lever into said optical drive. This freezes the optical drive in place and keeps it securely there until you wish to remove it.

Removal is as easy as pushing down on the black lever to remove the pins from the side of the drive and then yanking it free from the case. If you wish to add more stability you can always screw in the optical drive on the other side as you would in a normal setup. Either way, this makes for an easy, user friendly yet fairly stable mounting mechanism.


One thing which was very obvious to us is that unlike the full sized version of the Armor, this case does not have a removable motherboard tray. While this is not a big deal it will make installing the motherboard a bit more of a hassle as while it is not exactly a cramped interior, room is at a premium. As with most non removable motherboard trays, the brass pins have been laid out and marked for micro, ATX and full ATX. On the upside to having a non removable motherboard tray, this makes for a more secure and vibration free system; and it is not likely most users will miss this feature as they will only be installing a few motherboards into this case over the years.

Also on the positive side, you can give yourself a lot more room to work with by simply removing a few screws and taking out the Power Supply Bar at the top of this case. This will give you a lot more room to maneuver your motherboard into place and then you can reinstall the bar before installing the power supply.

Overall the inside of the case is a very user friendly mixture of old and new technology which blends seamlessly together. When taken as a whole one is left with a very positive impression of this case and if the installation goes as well as we think it will, this will be a very user friendly case to have.