X-bit labs

Thermaltake Soprano DX: Mainstream System Case Refreshed

Category: Other

by Vasily Melnik

[ 06/03/2007 | 10:23 AM ]

Restyling is a basic means of making a product’s market life longer. This word is known mostly from the car industry. In the computer case market, a life span of over 1 year is quite a long one even for such a good model as the Soprano was. After such long time a chassis modernization was needed to pull the system case up to the level of the best of the class again. Today we will find out what changes Thermaltake made to get its excellent solution back to the leading positions.

Table of contents:

• Exterior Design and Functionality
  
• Interior Design and Assembly Tips
  
• Test Methods
  
• Thermal Performance
  
• Conclusion
  

Restyling is a basic means of making a product’s market life longer. This word is known mostly from the car industry. It’s simple: if you’ve got a good product that has been selling for over a year, you can make a few changes to add new functionality or design features to it and maintain stable demand for some time more.

As opposed to the car industry where deep restyling is usually forced upon the manufacturer, makers of PC system cases can take it easy. Considering the situation with form-factors, the lifecycle of a good ATX case is far longer than that of an ordinary car. Moreover, the changes are usually limited to adding this or that function to improve usability or to altering the exterior design, which is not so difficult or expensive to implement when it comes to a system case. This is a reason why there are so many similar models in product ranges of leading PC case manufacturers.

Some year and a half ago we wrote about a Soprano system case in our roundup of Thermaltake’s then-new products (for details see our article called Roundup: Six System Cases from Thermaltake). A market life of over 1 year is quite a long one even for such a good model as the Soprano was. Interesting alternatives have appeared since then, the Soprano losing its ground step by step.

A chassis modernization was needed to pull the system case up to the level of the best of the class. The exterior design could be left as it was because it is top notch in the whole Soprano-Tsunami series – the classic style never is never outdated. Thermaltake didn’t limit itself to trivial chassis modifications. They also improved the ventilation, replacing the front fan.

Let’s check out all of these changes now.