Thermaltake Armor VA8000B

A PC case is nothing more than a housing for your PC parts but to many the case represents the PC by giving it personality. Today we take a look at the Armor from Thermaltake and the personality it comes across with is pure brute.

When you look at your PC you look at the skin first and then consider what’s underneath. How many times have you seen an awesome PC at a LAN party and spent 10 minutes gawking at the case before even trying to figure out what mobo and video card the guy’s running in it? If you’re like me it’s quite a few.

A good case can make you happy with your PC even if you’re running a P3-500 and GeForce 2 (Ok, maybe not but you’ll at least feel good before you turn the PC on) and a really good case makes things such as cable management simple. Case in point, the Ultra Aluminus I reviewed back in February. Nice case, good looks and excellent wiring options. I’ve had other cases that were just lousy for hiding wiring. The Antec 1040B was one that wasn’t so wiring friendly due to the drive cage layout.

This brings us to the next willing victim, err, product up for review ad that’s the Thermaltake Armor-VA8000BWS. The Armor is built on the same chassis as the Kandalf and features 11 front bays that can be pretty much setup any way you choose. You have 1 bay that has to be a 3.5" bay adaptor but that’s because it has the power & reset buttons plus the power LED and HDD LED. Inside the box we find the case wrapped in a cloth-like wrapping with fitted Styrofoam end caps. I’d really like to see closed cell foam used rather than Styrofoam since it’s green friendly and it’s more durable so if you end up needing to use the end caps more than a couple of times they won’t fall apart.