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Thermaltake Damier CaseReview Date: April 16, 2004 Reviewed by: Cory Zerkee Sponsored by: Thermaltake The world of case modding is slowly dying as we know it. Case modding used to have to involve the Dremel tool and bleeding fingers along with some imagination. Now with the advent of pre modded cases that are flooding the market one does not have to hack up their own case, as it’s fairly safe to assume you can find a pre modded case that suits your needs fairly well, if not perfectly. These cases are widely available from quality manufacturers such as Antec, Thermaltake, and Lian Li. Today I will be only looking at one of the aforementioned manufacturers: Thermaltake. Thermaltake’s line of Xaser cases are well known amongst the computer enthusiast crowd as being built with quality and looks in mind. They have a full line of cases that is constantly growing. Today I am taking a look at their latest case offering, the Damier. This is the second in a duo of Thermaltake reviews I am doing this month. First of all, here are the basic goods on the Damier borrowed straight from the Thermaltake site. I will go over them as the review progresses.  The Damier arrived in a hefty cardboard box that once again was nicely mangled by the courier company, and I immediately noticed how heavy the case was; 34.17lbs to be exact. It measures 490 x 205 x 580mm, making it a lengthy mid tower case. The box is decked out in the Damier checkerboard pattern and boasts the features of the case as one would expect as well as pictures of the case itself.
 Click for larger view. I cracked it open too see what Thermaltake has included inside. The first thing you see is the case that comes wrapped in plastic and packed in foam for protection. I heaved the heavy beast out of the box and found the TT VIP pack that is also included with the package as well as the user manual, a set of keys for the case lock, a bag with some thermal tape for the temperature probes, a snap in rear accessory cover, quick install brackets for the optical drives and hard disk drives, and a bag of motherboard installation screws. The VIP pack contains tons of Thermaltake stickers, a mouse pad, and a CD-ROM containing a Damier themed screensaver and wallpaper. 
 Click for larger view. The case itself is bright blue with a matching blue front panel. It is made of 1mm SECC, not aluminum, which explains the hefty weight. The front panel consists of not one but two doors; an inner and an outer. The plastic inner door must be opened to install your optical drives (more on that later) and remove/clean the filter for the front intake fan, as well as lock or unlock the side panel. The outer door is made of aluminum which I really liked, as I have a habit of breaking cheap plastic doors with the help of my cats. The inner side of the outer door (lose you yet?) features a large aluminum X adorned with the Thermaltake logo. Behind it is a multicolor LED that I found to be rather pointless because you can barely see it glowing from behind the aluminum X. The outside of the door is a combination of aluminum and plastic. There is a large blue X sporting the Damier checkerboard pattern set on top of a ribbed aluminum panel. The center of the X has a flashing multi EL checkerboard Thermaltake logo that can be set to flash in four stages or just on and off as one.
 Click for larger view. This case is packed with fan controls, and you can see the two main fan speed control knobs set into the front panel, one above and one below the plastic X logo. I will go over them in more detail later in the review. The front also contains a 5.25” bay Hardcano fan controller coupled with 3 fan speed and 3 temperature monitors. Taking a look at the Hardcano itself for a moment, I will go over it in more detail. The 5.25” bay controller contains four rheostat type control knobs for accurate control of your fans. Oddly though, the fan speed monitoring portion only displays the speed of three fans, yet the controller will handle four. I am not sure why they did that. You can also monitor up to three temperatures via three contact type thermal probes that run from the controller to the inside of the case. The probes can be attached anywhere in your case using the included thermal tape. The wiring for the fan control as well as the temperature monitoring is all included, and there is a TON of it, as I will show you later. The controller is also very low profile, that is, it’s not very deep, which gives you an extra HDD mount if needed.  Click for larger view. The controller also has a built in maximum temperature alarm for all three sensors which is individually adjustable to 50C, 60C, or 70C as well as having a switch for C/F for those of you that don’t speak metric. The information is displayed on a brightly backlit blue animated LCD display. The LCD flips through the fan speeds and temps in order ever second, but you can stop it at whichever one you want to stay at via small buttons to the right of the LCD.  Click for larger view.
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