Thermaltake Armor VA8000B

To allow for great cooling the front of the case features perforated bay covers that are all filtered. This means that as long as you’re pushing equal or greater air into the case as you’re pulling out you will have filtered air in the case with less dust buildup. The material used is open cell foam that offers a good balance of airflow to restriction which means you’ll get decent filtering without losing a lot of airflow to the case.

The Armor also features top mounted Firewire, USB and audio ports and they’re long enough to easily reach the headers at the bottom of the case but they’re not long enough to hide beside the 5.25" bays. If you noticed in the rear quartering shot I took the mobo tray meets the side of the 5.25" bays with narrow slots for thinner wires to pass through. The power, reset and LED wires are long enough to go through that area but the front audio, USB and Firewire cables aren’t which means you have to either have them hang out in the case looking pretty sickly or route them down the mobo under any cards along the way. I think that’s a bit short sighted on Thermaltake’s part.

Also the holes in the top mounted blowhole trim are really small and restrictive. I ended up drilling the holes out with a 1/8" drill bit to open up the holes to nearly double their original size. This made a decent improvement to airflow through bezel as I was able to note by the drop in air being deflected through the fan. This is something that really needs to be addressed by Thermaltake to make the blowhole more than decoration.