A great effort let down by some important flaws.
Thermaltake has this odd love affair with
what we can only call the single most insipid shade of blue known to humanity.
It’s the beige of blues, standing out just enough to be annoying, but not quite
being bold enough to be a piece of inspired design. Case colour is a little
thing, and for all we know it could be your favourite shade, but it’s always
been the one consistent thing that, for us, has let down Thermaltake’s case
design.
Thermaltake
Core V71 Full Tower Case
Thankfully, while that blue strikes again
in the latest Core V71 chassis, it’s only in the system’s internals. From every
angle but one, this new case is like a deep, wide, meshcovered monolith. In
fact, it might be one our favourite external designs from Thermaltake in years.
The front and upper surfaces are covered in cooling mesh, backed by a subtle
but striking hexagonal design, and with elegantly arrayed IO ports and controls
on the upper surface, either side of a responsive and well-engineered power
button. Speaking of IO, there’s a lot of built in connectivity, with two each
of USB2 and USB3 ports.
The Core V71 also features one of the
largest side-windows we’ve seen, and if you don’t mind that blue tone, it’s a
great way to show off your highend internals and cable management skills.
Alternately, it may well be a window into your secret shame at just not giving
a damn. We won’t judge.
The side panels hinge off easily to reveal
a roomy interior designed from the ground up for cooling flexibility. The eight
drive bays are split between three removable cages, allowing you customise your
internals to boost airflow or make room for large video cards, and the
tool-less mechanism securing these drives is fairly reliable. Thankfully
Thermaltake has stuck with screws to secure PCI expansion cards, so you won’t
be relying on a floppy clip or whatever to keep expensive items like video
cards in place.
V71
inside
The motherboard plate is surrounded by
rubber-grommeted cable runs, so there really are no excuses for bad cable
management (okay, we’re judging a bit). There’s also a very sizeable cutout for
the CPU area, making swapping out coolers and installing news a breeze without
removing the entire mobo.
And it is a breezy case, even out of the
box, with a total of three 200mm fans, and a rear-mounted 140mm jobbie. There’s
also room for radiators of pretty much any size, making this an ideal case for
water-cooling enthusiasts, especially given how easy it is remove the drive
cages.
V71
Full town case
Overall, the Core V71 could have been one
of the best cases Thermaltake’s released, except for how easy it is to damage
some of the internal IO wiring.
One of the V71’s features is the ability to
pop off the front and top panels, for easy access to fans and mounting points.
However, the top panel is more than a little stiff, and it’s easy to actually
contact the circuit boards and electronics for the IO ports, resulting in some
damage. After removing and replacing the top panel just a few times, we’d
already started to dislodge some copper wiring, and we’re sure it would simply
snap off if we continued – hardly inspiring for a case that not only costs this
much, but is designed for exactly the kind of users who will be tweaking and
upgrading their machine a fair bit.
It’s a case of almost, but not quite, in
this case. I’m sorry.
