Thermaltake Armor+ MX Mid Tower Case Review

Installation

As with any case install we like to start by installing the PSU first. It has been our experience that a slippery PSU which crashes into the motherboard area is only a smaller disaster when said motherboard is not there. Unfortunately, this is where we ran into a little snag, as not all four holes of the PSU lined up with their counterparts on the back of the case. Considering we have installed this Seasonic S12 in numerous cases over the past year, and not one of these cases exhibited this problem it is obviously a QA problem on Thermaltake’s end. On close inspection it became obvious the screw hole was half a hole too high (or conversely Thermaltake missed the mark by that amount) and no amount of cajoling would get it to line up; even with the other screws in place that little sucker was just too far out of alignment. If we were to hazard a guess we would say the PSU rails were installed slightly too high and this was what was causing the issue; rather than holes being mis-drilled.

Once this was accomplished we installed the brass standoffs following the stamped label system which told us which holes were necessary for our ATX motherboard. Here we ran into no snags and it installing them was very quick and easy with no bad threads.


After the motherboard was installed the next thing we installed was the video card. As mentioned in the Internal Impressions section this is a tool-less process. We gently and hesitantly snapped off the necessary slot, stuck are card into the motherboard and then reinserted the plastic block back into its location. While we though taking these things out was hard, reinserting them was even more difficult and only after much cursing, cajoling and threatening it with gross bodily harm (via a microwave) the prima-donna clip decided it have received enough attention and slipped into place. Luckily, Thermaltake must have forseen these and does provide the option of screwing in your cards just you normally would do.


So far we were 1 for 3 and we decided to tackle the hard drive next. This we are glad to say was extremely easy and went very smoothly. All one has to do is remove a hard drive caddy from the drive cage by pushing in on the front and letting the drive caddy arm swing out. When it was fully extended you simply slide the caddy out of the cage and install your hard drive. This is one area where Thermaltake engineers hit a home run, as even this stage was tool-lees.


You can insert screws to fuse the plastic caddy to the hard drive but a much simpler, easier and extremely user friendly way was by using the install clips. These two small clips fit into each side of the caddy and as they have small plastic pins which stick into said hard drive they in effect do the exact same thing as screws do.