by Vasily Melnik
01/15/2007 | 12:44 PM
Thermaltake’s Armor system case we once reviewed on our site seems to have appealed to many users. That’s not surprising as even after a year with something since its release the Armor suits perfectly for assembling top-end computers and is a leader in its class in terms of functionality. Yet it has one significant drawback. With all its advantages like a large interior space, two detachable cages for hard drives, and a modular design of the front panel, the Armor is also one of the biggest system cases in its class. When empty, it is heavier than any assembled office PC.
<%BANNER[article]%>This is indeed not a problem, but an advantage, if you were to stuff the system case with a few hard drives, a couple of top-end graphics cards, a modern CPU with a large cooler – the case would accommodate everything and you wouldn’t have to uninstall half the components to replace a hard drive, for example. But not all of us need such broad functionality and Thermaltake made a judicious marketing solution: if the Armor is so popular, why not make a seemingly identical system case, but smaller and cheaper? That’s how the Armor Jr. was born.
Trying to make it smaller, the designers had to change the component layout. As a result, we’ve got a midrange system case with a number of interesting features that should make the user’s life easier. Moreover, they turned it out along with an all-aluminum analog with a differently shaped front door. The two system cases seem to have nothing in common, but that’s not actually so. The Armor Jr. and the Aquila are indeed very similar and this review will tell you which of the two is preferable.
Let’s get started!
The system cases are shipped in prettily designed boxes with carry handles.
Despite the same chassis, the box with the Aquila is significantly larger, but about half lighter. The system cases seem to have nothing in common if you look at their front panels.
But the side view leaves no doubt they have the same chassis.
The shape of the window doesn’t resemble the original Armor. The only identical thing is the company’s logotype.
And the Armor didn’t provide for an installation of an intake fan opposite the CPU cooler as the new models do.
There’s no dust filter there. People who care about the tidiness of their computer won’t like that.
As usual, you’ll find the accompanying documentation and fasteners inside the case. There are few accessories here. Besides the system case with obligatory fasteners, rails for your drives and a manual, the box only contains a micro-fiber napkin. And the usefulness of that single accessory is rather dubious. You can wipe the side window with it whereas the other surfaces should better be cleaned with ordinary wet napkins for office equipment.
All the difference between the Armor Jr. and the Aquila boils down to three things: the color and the material of the case, and the shape of the decorative door. You can compare the color schemes yourself, and as for the material, the Armor Jr., being a true representative of the series, can challenge any top-class system case in the thickness and quality of the steel in its chassis. The Aquila is made of aluminum, which is the material typical of the most expensive system cases, yet we don’t regard this as an indisputable advantage. With all its low weight, an aluminum chassis is less robust than a steel one, their dimensions being the same. You can see it if you press on the mainboard’s mounting plate: it bends just a little in the Armor Jr., but in the Aquila it easily bottom out up to the right panel of the case and acquires the necessary stiffness only when the mainboard is installed. But mainboards are not to be used as load-bearing elements of a system case.
As for the shape of the front panel, the Armor Junior’s panel is almost an exact copy of the senior model’s. With the Aquila, the designers were not constrained at all:
So, the Armor Jr. will please all users who like a restrained style without fanciful elements whereas the Aquila is an example of an original and fresh design. Unfortunately, the only thing the Armor Jr. shares with its senior brother (besides the high-quality metal of the chassis) are some identical external features: the “wings” on the front panel and the characteristic brackets in the 5.25” bays:
Everything else had to be changed because such a small system case doesn’t provide enough space for detachable cages and for a modular design of the front panel. It’s easier for the Aquila – it doesn’t have a famous predecessor and is not to be compared with anything. So, it was impossible to make a modular front panel in the Aquila and the Armor Jr., and the front panel of these system cases is not very appealing in terms of functionality as well as aesthetics.
This is especially noticeable with the Armor Jr. because, unlike the Aquila, it has little of a decorative face panel, and the rightwards shifted intake fan doesn’t look too pretty. Well, we just can’t criticize the new component layout of these system cases seriously – this is a very lucky solution for this product class.
There’s nothing superfluous here: a detachable cage for hard drives and enough of space to accommodate any modern configuration, except for the most extreme ones. The case is ventilated with two 120mm fans on the front and rear panels. The Aquila’s exhaust fan features blue LED-based highlighting:
To the right of the fan you can see a PC Speaker on the side panel. That’s a queer position for it and its cable is short, making you put it under the mainboard. If you want to connect it at all, that is.
The decorative front door of the Aquila is designed in a most proper way. They didn’t just make it pretty-looking, as with the Thermaltake Shark, but paid attention to the ventilation factor, too. There is a metallic mesh in the top part of the door:
And there are cut-outs at its bottom:
Besides that, the door is shaped in such a way that there wouldn’t be any problems with air intake even if the top part wasn’t a metallic mesh:
The front panel is composite:
We’ve seen this before in the Tsunami Dream. The fan is somewhat queer:
A highlighted cooler is usually installed on the front panel. Well, some people just don’t like such an illumination.
The new system cases have borrowed good dust filters on the front panel from the senior Armor:
The filters are a kind of a coarse mesh:
Although it looks rather primitive, this filter does its job well – there’s not a trace of dust in the tested Armor after a year of use.
It may seem difficult to clean the filters, but there is a simple solution: just use your vacuum-cleaner on them without even taking them off the case. This works especially well with the exhaust fan’s filter:
You can only take it off together with the door. The feet are the same as the senior Armor has:
They are neat and properly made. Although they stick out of the case’s dimensions a little, you just can’t topple your Armor Jr. over by accident. It’s not so good with the Aquila due to its noble aluminum – the system isn’t heavy even when assembled. There’s a set of interface connectors on the top panel:
They looked more or less good in system cases like the mentioned Tsunami Dream, but can’t match the stylish block of top connectors of the senior Armor. The lid above them doesn’t look pretty, either. The rear panel has quite an ordinary appearance:
Surprisingly, there are no holes to put out the pipes of a liquid cooling system here.
That’s about all as concerns the externals. Let’s try to assemble a computer system.
The two system cases are identical in dimensions as well as chassis design, so we took the Aquila for our tests. Why the Aquila? Because there shouldn’t be any problems with assembling a computer in a high-quality steel system case – it is more than enough rigid. But there are may be certain difficulties with an identical case, which is made of aluminum. It’s not a Lian-Li with 2mm thick panels, after all.
First of all, you should clear up the mess with the heap of interface and signal cables inside the system case. It would be more difficult to do that after the system is assembled.
The cables from the Power and Reset buttons and from the Power and HDD indicators are way too long, about one third longer than necessary. This block of buttons seems to have been taken from the original Armor without any modification and now the user has to bother where to tuck away the extra length of cable.
Then, install your power supply. If you install your mainboard first, you will hardly be able to mount the power supply easily (and if the mainboard is installed with a CPU and cooler, it is downright impossible to put the power supply in its place). After that, you can install the mainboard and expansion cards. There is nothing unusual here – the mainboard is secured with screws and the expansion cards, with latches. Then, connect the interface cables. Next go your optical and hard drives. The manufacturer announced a screw-less fastening mechanism for 5.25” devices, but you can’t do without a screwdriver here. First you have to unscrew the bay bracket on the system case itself (it’s not an ordinary bracket you are supposed to tear off):
Then, take off the plastic faceplate with a filter on the front panel:
You should put the screws from the brackets back into their sockets – it’s the easiest way not to lose them.
After that, it takes less than a minute to mount an optical drive. Just attach two rails to it…
…and insert the drive into the bay against stop:
Close the front panel:
The rails come in pairs (a left and a right one), so don’t confuse them: you just won’t be able to put the drive into the bay with two right or two left rails.
It’s also simple with hard disk drives. Unfasten the single screw the HDD cage is secured with and pull it out:
The cage is equipped with rubber vibration-suppressing spacers:
The HDD is fastened with special screws:
There’s a groove at the side of the case to tuck away the power cable neatly:
The drive is inserted into the cage and fastened with screws through the rubber spacers:
And then the whole arrangement is pushed back into the system case:
What we don’t like is that the system case is just wide enough for you to connect the cables. The cables press against the closed side panel.
The system case should have been made 3-4cm wider as there may be problems with attaching the drives’ cables to some mainboards:
And it would be easier to put the cables neatly inside. Anyway, the assembled system looks good:
This system case proved to be rigid enough to be transported without problems with all the hardware stuffing inside. And it is very easy to carry about because it is just a little heavier when assembled than an empty Armor Jr. The only thing you should be aware of is that the Aquila must be protected against blows. An aluminum case gets damaged much easier than a steel one, and there’s a bigger risk of damaging the components than with a high-quality steel system case. You shouldn’t also lift this system case up holding it by its front part, especially by the decorative door. It can break off easily.
If you like numbers, here is a table with the specs of the reviewed system cases:
We tested the system cases as they were, i.e. without changing the default speed of the preinstalled system fans. The tests were performed with a closed and fully assembled case and at a constant ambient temperature maintained by an air conditioner. We also took care to lay out the cables and wires in such a way that they didn’t hinder free circulation of air inside the case.
The following system was assembled in the tested PC case:
We’ve changed the hardware stuffing a little. We’ve spent some time searching for a proper replacement to our late Intel Pentium Extreme Edition 3.2GHz on the Smithfield core, but now we can claim that our system is far ahead of any regular user configuration as well as of a lot of overclocked ones in terms of CPU heat dissipation. This should suffice for testing CPU coolers as well as system cases.
There were four test modes:
The temperatures of the CPU and mainboard were read with ASUS PC Probe which was supplied with the mainboard. The GPU and graphics card temperatures were read with RivaTuner. The HDD temperature was reported by HDD Thermometer. The temperatures were read only after they had fully stabilized. The ambient temperature remained constant at 22°C throughout the tests.
As for the noise factor, we’ll give you our opinion about the noisiness of the preinstalled system fans below. The system cases shipping without power supplies, there was nothing else in them to produce noise.
So, the system case produced the following results:
The temperatures are all normal. The graphics card becomes hot in the VGA Burn mode, but only due to its mediocre cooler:
Its efficiency is low. Otherwise, the results are excellent, considering that mainboards and CPUs of that class will hardly be installed into such system cases. The level of noise is quite acceptable. The default fans can only be heard when there’s a perfect quiet in your room (at night, with no external noises altogether). Judging by the test results, you can safely slow them down – this won’t affect the temperature of the components much – to get a virtually silent computer. The only drawback these two system cases inherited from the Armor is that they have a HDD cage in their front part. You should keep this fact in mind as you’re choosing your hard disk drive. If you buy a noisy one, you won’t have a means to quiet it down.
Summing everything up, Thermaltake has produced excellent system cases that should do very well in their price category. Each of these cases can even accommodate a top-end system, if you don’t plan to change the components sooner than once in a year. As for choosing between the two, the Armor Jr. is good if you don’t want to pay more for the aluminum and prefer a more conservative exterior design. If you want an aluminum system case of average dimensions and with a memorable appearance, take a look at the Aquila.