Thermaltake, the Taiwanese company that brought North America the highly colorful and brightly lit cases was at COMPUTEX 2008 this year with some new products, but also a new direction in design. Thermaltake has always been known to have a very distinct look which separated it from the crowd. However, it was also this distinct design philosophy that turned many of their products into love or hate relationships with the public.
The flashy colours and brightly coloured LEDs were not always a favourite with those of us that appreciated a somewhat more clean and understated design. In order to produce a product that would appeal to a more mainstream market, Thermaltake has hired some new design talent and have given them a blank slate to work with. We get to see the fruits of these labours here at COMPUTEX!
The Thermaltake SPEDO Chassis
Thermaltake was abuzz about the announcement of the new SPEDO chassis. Yes, I know what you’re thinking: Way too small swim trunks that adorn a few much to large asses. But I was corrected quickly by them, citing that the swim trunks contained a second “E” in the name. Giggles…
The SPEDO’s design is derived heavily from the automotive industry with its internal cladding that mimics the engine bay of most European luxury vehicles. This covers up the cables and gives the internals an extremely clean look.
Other distinctive features include a pull out tool tray, like a mechanics tool box for storing those extra parts that seem to go missing.
The case also features a drive bay design with a unique backplane for cable management and is tool free. Despite the hidden appearance, underneath it all, Thermaltake has included a cable management system that hides pretty much everything underneath the motherboard which was a key focus of this design.
Not left untouched is the cooling system which features a large 250mm side fan that features an ingenious “kill switch” that disconnects power as soon as the side panel is removed, allowng quick and easy access to the internals. Other cooling touches include an adjustable GPU fan located at the front of the case that can be aimed wherever you need it to go.
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Video Walkthrough of the SPEDO!
In order to give you a better idea of how impressive this case here, we enlist the help of Ramsom Koay of Thermaltake USA to take us through the features in this video…
The case should be available sometime this August but unfortunately, no pricing was available at this time. Ramsom did say that they will try to make this one very affordable so that enthusiasts will have a better chance of sampling the new direction Thermaltake is taking in design.
From the Thermaltake Skunk Works Division
In a private room guarded by Thermaltake’s own CEO, Kenny Lin, was a new weapon in Thermaltake’s cooling arsenal. Passage was gained with an exchange of information about ANTEC’s new Skeleton Open Concept Case and I was eagerly welcomed into the mysterious room.
To date, OCZ has been the only company to push to retail with their Cryo-Z cooling system which we had a look at back at CES 2006. Unfortunately, the huge honking size of the beast that sat outside your case made it difficult to transport and deal with despite the great performance. At CeBit 2008 this year, Thermaltake announced a self contained system built inside a case, but cannot be easily retrofitted to other cases. Leave it to Thermaltake to one up themselves and make Freon cooling inside your existing case possible and practical.
Kenny showed me a fully functional prototype of their brand new self contained internal Freon based cooling system. What makes this system different is that it fits into the space of four drive bays and is totally self contained. The system even uses standard DC power provided by MOLEX connectors on standard power supplies, unlike the aforementioned Cryo-Z which plugs in to your wall. Thermaltake has also solved installation issues by developing a special flexible metal piping that can be bent. In fact, the metal is so special that Thermaltake has applied for a patent on this material. This erases one of the major issues with Freon based coolers which is flexible installation.
The quad bay phenom known currently as the ExpressCar ACS (Active Cooling System) was teamed up with a second unit that was Freon cooling an ATI 3870X2 Video Card. CPU temperatures while running 3DMark2006 Demo were 36C for the CPU and 20C for the GPU, which remained constant for the 20 minutes I was in the very tiny little room. They wanted to create something that everyone could use with no maintenance and no danger of condensation dripping on something inside the case. In other words, an every-person’s high performance Freon cooling sysem. They are also working on making the system work with both GPU and CPU so that the four bay sacrifice would be worth it.
Thermaltake plans to officially unveil the unit to the public at CES 2009, and then follow up with a release, maybe in time for COMPUTEX 2009. Although officially, there is no pricing information, I was told that the price would be based on a premium of 30 – 40% over competing water cooling based systems.
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