Today for review I’ve got the new
Thermaltake Armor A90 gaming chassis. It’s a great case overall, and
the price isn’t too bad either coming in at under $100. It’s got
plenty of room for larger video cards and a lot of hard drives. The
A90 comes with three fans pre-installed, one of the them is a nice
large 200mm fan that’s located on the top of the case. The case is
well made and it’s fairly quiet and it does a decent job at keeping
your system cool. So read on to check out the newest addition to the
Armor series of cases from Thermaltake..
Product
Name: Thermaltake
Armor A90 PC Case
Author: Kristofer
Brozio
Sponsor: Thermaltake
Tech
Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
P/N: VL90001W2Z
Features:
-Black “bulletproof” armor
design with metal mesh elements
-Top and front blue LED-fan
enhancing combat ambiance
-Massive protective front door
for drive access
-Bottom based PSU for optimized
cooling
-Big triangular side panel
window & 120mm side panel VGA cooling opening
-LC ready! 2 x liquid cooling
punch out holes
Specs:
Case Type: Mid Tower
Material: SECC
Front Bezel Material: Plastic
Color: Black Interior / Black
Exterior
Side Panel: Transparent Window
Motherboard Support: Standard
ATX & Micro ATX
Expansion:
5.25″ Drive Bay: 3
Ext. 3.5″ Drive Bay: 1 x
3.5″ with 5.25″ converter
Int. 3.5″ Drive Bay: 6
(with 1 x 2.5″ HDD/SSD)
Expansion Slots: 7
Front I/O Ports: 4 x USB2.0 / 1
x e-SATA
HD Audio ports
Cooling System
-Front
(Intake) :
120 x 120 x 25 mm Blue LED fan,
1000rpm, 16dBA;
120 x 120 x 25 mm (optional) or
200 x 200 x 20 mm (optional)
-Rear (Exhaust) : 120 x 120 x
25 mm TurboFan, 1000rpm, 16dBA
-Top (Exhaust) : 200 x 200 x 20
mm Blue LED fan, 800rpm, 15dBA
-Side (Intake) : 120 x 120 mm
(optional)
Liquid Cooling Capable: Yes
Power Supply Supported:
Standard ATX PSII
Dimension (H*W*D): 502 (H) x
210(W) x 515 (L) mm / 19.8 (H) x 8.3 (W) x 20.3 (L) inch
Net Weight: 8.2 Kg / 18.1 Lb
Warranty: 3 Year
MSRP: USD : $99.99
Thermaltake is also running a
$20 mail-in rebate special:
Date:
June 15 to July 15 2010.
http://thermaltakeusa.com/Product.aspx?C=1325&ID=1957
USA nationwide – $20 MIR http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/pdf/VL90001W2Z_$20-0615-0715-TRM-8177.pdf
Canada nationwide – $20 MIR http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/pdf/VL90001W2Z_$20-0615-0715-TRM-8178.pdf
Consumer can purchase anywhere from
Amazon to newegg, online or brick and mortar.
{mospagebreak title=Outside of Case}
A
Better Look at Things -Outside:
As with any Thermaltake case it’s
packaged well.
The Armor A90 is black, pretty
much solid black inside and out.
The front has a triangular design,
and it comes with one fan installed, but you can add another.
Towards the top you’ll find a
small door, next to the door is the USB ports, audio ports, reset
button and the HDD and power indicators. Underneath the door you’ll
find a large triangular shaped power button. When you open the door
you’ll find three 5.25” bays and one 3.5” bay.
On the left side you’ll find a
very small triangular shaped clear window and below that a space for
you to install a fan if you want.
The right side of the case is
solid with the angular pattern.
The Armor A90 is all about angles,
on the top you’ll find two USB ports and an eSATA port along with a
cooling fan as well.
Moving to the bottom you’ll find
four rubber feet and a filtered space where the PSU would be
installed. You’ll also notice four screw holes near the front that
are to be used to install an SSD or 2.5” drive inside of the case
on the very bottom.
Moving to the back of the case
you’ll find the usual things, with a fan pre installed and there’s
four punch outs for water cooling tubing. There’s also a security
lock so you can secure your mouse and keyboard so no one can take it.
{mospagebreak title=Inside of Case}
A
Better Look at Things -Inside:
Ok, let’s move to the inside.
Taking the right side panel off you can see the back of the
motherboard tray which is cut out to allow for easy CPU Cooler
installations. You’ll also find plenty of room by the hard drive bays
to route or hide wires if need be, and there’s a large opening
between the tray and HDD bays to pass wires through.
Taking the left panel off we can
see everything else.
The hard drive and optical drive
bays are all tool-less, they’re flip up locks making installation a
bit easier.
Here’s a view inside of the bays,
and close look at the front fan:
Here’s the top and rear fans:
Then here’s the view of the PSU
area, the filter is there but it’s not exactly easy to remove it’s
just a wire mesh screen basically.
…and then here’s the all of the
connections and the accessory bags:
{mospagebreak title=Installation}
Installation:
Well
now of course I’ve got to put a system in it. This is my HTPC/gaming
system which basically consists of C2Q9650, Sparkle
Calibre GTX 260,
4gigs of Corsair DDR3 ram, bgears
b-enspirer sound card,
Physx Card and two hard drives and an OCZ
Solid 2 SSD for my OS.
Here’s a couple views of the
system installed:
The GTX 260 is a fairly large card
but it fits just fine. If I had the hard drive up farther though
there might have been a problem, so if you’ve got a lot of hard
drives and a large video card it might not fit. I installed my SSD
onto the bottom of the case, I guess this placement works well as
heat rises, and the front fan is blowing air across all of the
drives.
Here’s the view front the front
with the bezel off:
The front and top fans have blue
LEDS in them, I’m not too fond of that really as I use this as my
HTPC as well as my gaming system. The fans though are quiet, I could
barely hear them really. The fans also seem to do a decent job of
keeping my system cool. The case before this was an NZXT one with six
fans in it, and the Armor A90 kept the same system only a few degrees
warmer with less fans.
The LED of the top fan does light
up the inside of the case well, with the side panel off it’s really
bright and then through the window you can see the blue.
The case is very well made, it’s
sturdy and I like the fact that it’s black inside and out. I really
didn’t have any major problems with it regarding installation either.
As I mentioned there might be an issue with larger cards and the hard
drives, but most people aren’t going to fill all of the bays.
Summary
and Comments:
The Thermaltake Armor A90 case is
a great addition to the Armor series of cases truly. The case is very
well made with a lot of room inside for larger video cards and lots
of hard drives. The black on black and angular motif works very well
together, it certainly is a unique looking case. If you’re looking
for a nice gaming case then I can recommend you take a closer look at
the Armor A90.
The installed fans are quiet and
do a decent job at keeping the system cool, but personally I’d swap
them out for non-LED silent fans, and even add a fan or two to the
front and side of the case.
The case really has no major
issues, one might run into a problem with large video cards and hard
drives, but I don’t think it will be a problem for most people
The windows on the side is nice,
but it’s really small and rather pointless honestly in my opinion. If
you’re the kind of person that likes to show off your system with a
side window then you’ll be disappointed as you won’t be able to see
much at all.
DragonSteelMods gives the
Thermaltake Armor A90 PC Case a 4.5 out of 5 score and our
Recommended Award
Pros:
+Lots of room
+Looks great
+Well made
+Keeps system cool
+Fairly quiet
+Lots of USB ports
Cons:
-Small little window is rather
pointless
-PSU filter not exactly removable
-Hard drives could get in way of
larger video cards
review# 659
Disclosure: This product was given to DragonSteelMods for review by the company
for review purposes only, and is not considered by us as payment for
the review, we do not, never have, and never will, accept payment
from companies to review their products.
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learn more about our review policy, testing methods and ratings
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