[Porvalsh]

Well...the time has come to retire my old, old, Apevia case for something new. But...didn't you just mod the crap out of it to hold two radiators internally? Yes my friends, yes.



What spurred me to look for a new case is that my wife's case rattles really bad and its starting to **** her off. I took the opportunity then to upgrade my case, and she will be getting my old one. I will take the water cooling stuff out of it of course, and she will just run it on air. 2x120 intake on the front, 2x80 intake on the back and everything out the top through the 3x120. I hope that will be good enough for her (and not rattle and be very noisy). Typically I like to maintain positive pressure, so I may change up the fans a bit to put higher speed for intake, lower for out (since there are three out).

Anwyays, this thread will serve as an informational build thread as the Element G comes to life. I plan on a custom mount system for my two radiators off the back but we'll see how it goes. I really like the air-flow of the G and I could not pass up the price at Microcenter on it. Its cheaper out of pocket than Newegg even after the rebate. With rebate I'm looking at $89.99 for this bad boy.


Why The Element G?

I've always liked simple, sleek and stylish cases but more and more I've been turning into a heat freak. The more fans the better, so long as they are big and not too noisy. My system is water cooled these days anyways, so whats the purpose of negating the noise effects with crazy high speed fans right?



Top 5 cases I was deciding on


1.) Cooler Master Storm Sniper
2.) AZZA Solano 1000
3.) Antec 902
4.) Thermaltake Element G
5.) NZXT Tempest


Flexible Criteria


1.) Window

I like windows but there are some that I dont' like. A good example is the window on the Antec case. The reason why I like windows is so that you can see the insides, all the lights, the tube routing, and any cool effects the motherboard is doing. Plus...its good to know things like whether or not there is a leak and I can tell that if the reservoir is seeing riffles in the water then I'm good to go.

2.) Great Airflow with at least top Exhaust and side intake (for GPU's)

I'm currently folding 3 GPU's for Team 32. You guys should check out that forum and get folding. Gaming rigs are great because you've already got a nice powerful processor and graphics card which make for sweet points per day. Plus...how many hours is your system idle, wasting away. Might as well use that juice right?

The 3 GPU's produce a ton of heat and fresh air is important in order for them to keep cool. Thus, I'd like a slim side intake to help bring in fresh air for those suckers.

3.) Mid-stream level price range.

Yeah, I'm not ballin these days. I got bills to pay...so I can't go crazy and buy something like the Corsair 800D although thats a slick looking case. My price range is like $75-125.

3.) Sleek, pleasing look.

Isn't it amazing what people are doing with plastic these days. I mean just look at this case...

I can't tell if its a vacuum cleaner or a space ship. If you're trying to hide your computer from burglars, this may be the case for you. Me on the other, would like something resembling the power that the case holds, the raw gaming powa!!! Plus...I do enjoy drooling over a nicely built Lian Li aluminum case, boxy cases FTW.

On that note, no crazy cheesy colors, crazy formed plastic crap, airbrushed anime characters, nothing! Give me a nice black finish!

4.) Delight me with a few extras.


Enter the Element G




Price: $104.99, $15.00 Rebate. (Microcenter)

I normally don't do rebates, but my wife will take care of it, so we're good.


Airflow:

Intake: Side 230mm fan (GPU Airflow Check), Front 200mm fan.
Exhaust: Back 140mm fan, Top 200mm fan.


Look:

Black with a red stripe. I would prefer a blue stripe, or maybe silver but I guess red is ok. Its subtle but adds to the sleekness of the case, if thats a word. The case reminds me of the storm sniper...which I liked a lot but jumped in price since released. I should have bought it back when it was around 115!.

No Window - can't win them all. I can always mod the side and mount a window though in the future. I'm not too worried about this criteria as the case meets every other one well.

Extras:

There's the cool colored fan things...I'll probably leave them all on blue but its there for when you're bored waiting for a download to finish or screen to load.

It has a theft deterent thing to keep your peripherals where they belong. If someone breaks into my house, I bet they aren't going to take my keyboard ... of all things.

The front intake can be removed and 2 120x25mm fans mounted instead. This could be a possible place to mount my 120.2 radiator. I like the possibilities here.

Power supply on the bottom, sectioned off. I dont' have a modular PS so this is a good area to put my extra cables, mount my pump and hide everything so it looks good. I like the layout too, with cutouts for routing and of course, everything is black.

__________________________________________________ __________________



Stay tuned as this case comes to life!

[chevro1et]

Never looked at the Element G before, but it is indeed a fine looking case. Fairly well laid out internally, lots of airflow, cable management holes, cpu backplate access, black interior. Dunno if it would suit your watercooling ambitions, but you could mod the crap out of this one too heheh. On another note, I think the color-changing leds on the fans are kinda hokey.

[Porvalsh]

Guys I think I made a good choice here. I mean look at how much fun this father and son are having with the case!

[Porvalsh]

Packaging

This case has a lot to offer guys. As chevro1et pointed out, this case is often overlooked for the same old, same old king of the hills. Antec 900/1200, CoolerMaster Stacker/932HAF. Nothing against those but hopefully after reading this build thread you may consider this case because I think its got great potential for being a gem at this price point.

Exterior Packaging

Pretty simply packaging...a box and the case supported by styrofoam. But wait...whats this blue baggy? The folks over at Thermaltake seem to have heard a few of you guys complaining about a case being scratched somehow during packaging and shipping. Good news, this blue bag is going to keep the Element G from seeing the effects of a blemish before reaching your door. Now...its pretty thin and I'm not sure it would actually keep the sleek case from recieving a small scratch but in any case, its a nice thoughtful addition that gives the new owner a bit of awe factor. Its nice to know Thermaltake has taken steps to take care of the case as much as possible, knowing we're going to be doing the same thing for the life of it.

Out of the box


Look Mom, I bought a $100 blue bag!

As you can see in this pic, the bag looked like it got scratched somehow. No worries, the case is flawless!

The Case!

A few things here.

1.) First of all you can see that my camera is not very good.
2.) Secondly, you can see that I was eating meatloaf dinner at this point in time by the grease marks on the case.
3.) Thirdly, hopefully you can get an idea for the finish on this bad boy. Its a very nice finish, matte black with a small amount of texture. Although, I didn't feel the need to take a screw driver to it to see how durable it was, I felt confident I could make a few slips and come away unscathed.

Internal Packaging

I've also heard of a few gripes about the internal packaging of cases these days. A lot of these beauties come with painted or powdercoated internals which I think is awesome but if the internal components come loose during shipping you've got a scratched up interior! No worries here. All the hardware is secured in a box, cords routed and taped to the case, and two 120mm fan holders also secured by tape to the case. At first I worried there would be sticky residue left when I pulled the tape off but there was none.

Shot of the internals


Parts

See below for the included parts. One extra thumbscrew was added. I would have prefered two because I'm prone to losing things. Two 120mm fan holders were included which is nice. These can be used on the front panel for intake rather than the big dog fan there. Included a cable bracket holder which I didn't use. Also got a bunch of standoffs, and screws. Lastly, Thermaltake gave me some zip ties in case I needed them beyond their very good cable management. They only included three though...weak. DON'T WANT TO BREAK THE BANK HERE GUYS! Black zip ties are actually kinda hard to come by around here and it would have been nice to get a few more thrown in. [note: I did not use any zip ties with the build.]

Included Hardware/Accessories

[Porvalsh]

A Closer Look...

Exterior

The front is mesh/plastic. I think a lot of money was saved here. It could be easy to poke a hole in the front of the case if you were trying to grab it to lift it. Aside from the plastic its a pleasing front which does well at filtering incoming air.

The top holds the control panel and a 200mm exhaust fan. The grating over the top fan is punched steel, much more sturdy than the front mesh. The large oversize knob controls the fan speed and by pushing it you can cycle through settings for the system fans color and functionality. This knob controls the three large fans in the case but not the back exhaust one.

It looks like there would be room for another 200mm fan, possibly a mod for a 200x400 radiator? That would be cool but a lot of custom work!



Side panel - a couple of things to point out here. First of all, the side fan is 230mm in size...frickin huge! There is no window on this case, but I've thought about replacing the mesh with a window that has a hole for the fan but then I'm not sure what I'd do about a grill. Possibilities here going to keep it as it is for starters.

The red striping helps reduce vibration because its a rubber material. Although the case is recessed so that you can push the side panel off easily it still clears my large V8 heatsink.




Interior

Ok lets take a look of the inside of this bad boy because thats where things get interesting.

First of all, you'll notice that when you take the side off the case there are no wires to unplug. YES! This is awesome...the side panel is wired to work on contact. You can see the contact on the side panel in the blurry pic below. These make contact with a small panel mounted on the inside of the case so that you never have to worry about plugging and unplugging that sucker all the time. Nice job Thermaltake!

Side fan contacts



Here's a shot of the side fan with a 120mm fan overlayed



The case uses thumbscrews so that it can be called tool-less. By removing 4 thumbscrews you can remove both the bottom tray and hard drive rack. After removing the hard drive rack I realized that it could be rotated 90 degrees if I wanted to. Later in the build you will see that I've done just that to allow for better airflow through it and into the case.

You can see that the power supply cover has different holes in it for routing cables as well as a place to mount a 2.5" drive. The hard drive tower also has mounting for a 2.5" drive so this case can hold two of those suckers without adapters.

The middle tower has holes in it for routing cables. I would have liked to see another hole near the top for hiding the cables I used for my drive since I mounted it in the top slot. I would drill a hole myself but I don't want to mess up the nice finish! Bummer.

There also is a large cutout around the socket area. The back panel has indents for routing tubing but they are not completely cut out with grommets. Luckily I have some extra grommets that I didn't use from a previous build. If you're buying this case and you've got a water cooled PC bear in mind that you'll have to do some minimal modding to get it up and running.

The bottom of the case has mesh to help the power supply breathe and there is room under the hard drive are to shove extra power cables that you're not using.

Power Supply Cover and Hard Drive Rack Removed



The motherboard tray side of the caes has a cutout in the upper right corner for routing that pesky 4+4pin power connector that mobo manufacturers can't figure out how to put closer to the 24pin connector. The hole is a bit small though and I had a tough time getting the connector through it. Deliberation and patience was needed.

Also as you can see there are clamps available to hold your cables. I thought that this was nice but not necessarily functional for the size of anything other than a fan. These clamps snap open and closed very easily and lend to great cable management.

Back Side


The front of the case comes off very easily. Gone are the days of pulling and proding and hoping that you won't break off a plastic tab getting the front off. For the Element G simply pull at the bottom and the plastic lever will push the tabs out on the sides that hold the front on. Continue by lifting upwards and out. The case is not secured by any other tabs. This is pretty nice.

The Lever Action Front


Now, I usually run without filters on my fans. I'd much rather have the increased airflow and clean out the case every now and then, than reduced airflow and still have to clean the filters out eventually. The front panel is one big air filter and I did not see any way of taking the filter out without just ripping it from its position. In the end, I let it be.

Back of Front Panel


The front 200mm fan is easy to take off. In order to rotate the hard drive rack 90 degrees it must be inserted into place from the front, which requires moving the fan. The fan is not screwed in at all, just held in place by a clip mechanism.

At first I was thinking...man do I really want to move the hard drive rack like that? If I want to add another drive it will be a hassle pulling it out. Well, this isn't the case because Thermaltake made it so easy to have access to this area. Within a minute I could have pulled the front off, removed the fan and pulled the hard drive rack out. Its that simple. Kudos.

Last thing of note here, the encluded 120mm fan enclosures will snap into place if you ever decide to remove the 200mm fan here.

Front 200mm Intake




Alright, well thats about all I've got for the initial walkthrough. Next post will be specifics about the installation of my rig. I decided to build it air cooled for now and work on the water cooling mods later. Interesting results related to GPU temperatures to come.

Hoping this mini-review will help some of you out when you're in the market for a new case.

[chevro1et]

Seems like you are very happy with this case so far! Congrats on the purchase, and looking forward to the rest of the migration into the new case.

[visbits]

About time they add a quick connector for the sidefan. I always hate having to plug it in or unplug it to remove the panel.

[Automiketic]

Originally Posted by visbits

About time they add a quick connector for the sidefan. I always hate having to plug it in or unplug it to remove the panel.

+1 though I'd like to see how that holds out over time and is it only wired to work with the stock fan, or does it have a header on the door so you can plug any fan in?

Also it looks like the only way to remove that front fan filter is to fold up all those little mesh tabs and pull the mesh out and then pull the filter out and replace the mesh. Seems like kinda a pain when you do need to change them. Other then that I am impressed with this case thus far. would like to see some better shots of the hdd mounting system.

[Jolly-Swagman]

Very nice looking case, cant wait to see it with all your hardware installed

[Porvalsh]

Originally Posted by Automiketic

+1 though I'd like to see how that holds out over time and is it only wired to work with the stock fan, or does it have a header on the door so you can plug any fan in?

Also it looks like the only way to remove that front fan filter is to fold up all those little mesh tabs and pull the mesh out and then pull the filter out and replace the mesh. Seems like kinda a pain when you do need to change them. Other then that I am impressed with this case thus far. would like to see some better shots of the hdd mounting system.

Yes you'd have to bend back all those wire tabs but its pretty heavy duty mesh, unlike the drive bay covers. I'd be worried it would fatigue and break off though.

The side fan is soldered to the header. You could snip the wires and make it a molex or three pin connector but as it stands its not easily changed. It looks like the little pcb can be swapped out easily when it breaks...if it breaks. (hopefully not for a while )

I'll take a few more shots of the drive holder. There are two thumbscrews that hold it in place. Remove those then push down on two clips on the top and bottom and it will slide out.

As far as mounting drives there are specific screws used. You screw those into the drive, then slide it into place.

[JamesMore]

looks nice and nice chunky fan control on top ?

[Chowley]

I loooove the look of this case. Im amazed it seems to be so rare. Im guessing a lot of people cant see past a name. Will be buying this in the next couple of weeks for my new build. Would love to see the progress on this.

[Porvalsh]

Actual Build

First off, to anybody that has been following this build, I feel I need to apologize. I've not posted in 3 weeks! Yikes. I had completed the build but not had the time to get this last part up. If you guys have any questions or want to see anything specific, just ask and I'll get some pics for clarification.

The case has been running great for me though, and here are the results.

Hard Drive Mounting/Placement

As I mentioned earlier I decided to rotate the hard drive bay 90 degrees. I wanted the best air flow as possible and since I don't have tons of hard drives, and don't think I ever will, I figured a 90 degrees turn would do good. This required taking the front off (Easy), then taking the fan off (easy), removing two thumbscrews and rotating the hard drive bay.

Hard drive mounting is also pretty easy once you understand whats going on. Screws are supplied and shown in the pic below.

Hard Drive Screws (Tool-less)


You will use 3 screws, with the last one being a normal screw once the hard drive slides into place. I made the mistake of putting all four in at first, but that doesn't work too well. Instead of securing it with a 1 final screw, I decided to just use 3 of the provided screws so that I can easily take it out in the future.

Here you can see that I mounted it right below the fan profile. I'm hoping it will be cooled by incoming air without constricting flow.

Hard Drive Mounted Below Fan (Front View)


Note: Alternatively, you could swap the front out with two 120mm fans. The case comes with holders if you want to do this but I just kept the big dog up front.

Motherboard installation and Cable Routing

Next I got my motherboard in there. I'm into folding right now so I've got two 8800GTS (G92)'s and one 8800GT in there. I've measured the length of the case for those of you that are thinking about a hella long card and its about 11-11.5 inches. My cards are 9 inches and I've got 2-2.5 inches to spare. The Radeon 5870 reference is 28cm long, just over 11 inches so it would be a tight fit here but I think its doable. Remember you've got two different hard drive rack configurations to work with, one giving you more room than the other. If I were to turn the rack back to its original position, it would give me about half an inch.

Everything Installed


As you can see here the three graphics cards fit with room to play. I've routed the power through the case wall up from the bottom and the power supply covers the rats next of cords below it. Everything works fine except getting the cables up to my DVD drive mounted in the top of the case. There are no top slots to work with so the cables must come out about mid-high. The look isn't the cleanest but I didn't spend a lot of time here either. Also the motherboard power cable is a bit higher than the slot but its not too much in the way I don't think.

I'm using the V8 Cooler here and it does not interfere with neither the top fan or the side fan. Its not the biggest cooler out there but there seems to be plenty of room here.

Back of the Case


A little bit more cable management here but nothing special. You can see that the cutout around the CPU didn't quite get done right. Perhaps they had an Intel rig in mind when the engineers put that there? (This is AM3, 790FX-GD70 mobo) Also, there you can see my one twist tie used. This all gets hidden so I didn't need to spend much time here either. There is, however, a large enough gap to run your cords behind the motherboard tray. Sometimes I've had issues here.

Concluding Thoughts

I fired this baby up and can report these temps. I'm not sure what ambient is in my room but these are folding temps as I have my system folding 24/7.



Stock volts on processor with mild overclock. 8800GTS's overclocked slightly to 1812 Shaders, 8800GT overclocked to 1609 shader. All GPU's have a small bump to their Core too. I have set the graphics cards to different speeds manually to try and keep them from going over 70c. For the most part, I've succeeded. If you've got a single card your temps will be much better I'm sure.

I'm happy with the case so far. I haven't had any issues and it seems to keep my components cool enough during the day. I'm suprised that I can run the graphics cards at 65% fan speed and not have heat issues. This is all with the stock coolers too.

In the future I'd like to get this thing water cooling. I have the parts, just need the time to fit them in. I'm pretty sure I will try and go for a mount off the back with two radiators in some sort of V configuration. I'm not really keen on building the radiators into this case. I think you could put a 120.2 up front nicely but there is no place for a 120.3.

Questions?

[Jolly-Swagman]

Looking Great Porvalsh, The V8 seems to be doing an alright job for 3.5 Ghz OC Temp wise,

[clabszero]

Originally Posted by Porvalsh

Actual Build

First off, to anybody that has been following this build, I feel I need to apologize. I've not posted in 3 weeks! Yikes. I had completed the build but not had the time to get this last part up. If you guys have any questions or want to see anything specific, just ask and I'll get some pics for clarification.

The case has been running great for me though, and here are the results.

Hard Drive Mounting/Placement

As I mentioned earlier I decided to rotate the hard drive bay 90 degrees. I wanted the best air flow as possible and since I don't have tons of hard drives, and don't think I ever will, I figured a 90 degrees turn would do good. This required taking the front off (Easy), then taking the fan off (easy), removing two thumbscrews and rotating the hard drive bay.

Hard drive mounting is also pretty easy once you understand whats going on. Screws are supplied and shown in the pic below.

Hard Drive Screws (Tool-less)


You will use 3 screws, with the last one being a normal screw once the hard drive slides into place. I made the mistake of putting all four in at first, but that doesn't work too well. Instead of securing it with a 1 final screw, I decided to just use 3 of the provided screws so that I can easily take it out in the future.

Here you can see that I mounted it right below the fan profile. I'm hoping it will be cooled by incoming air without constricting flow.

Hard Drive Mounted Below Fan (Front View)


Note: Alternatively, you could swap the front out with two 120mm fans. The case comes with holders if you want to do this but I just kept the big dog up front.

Motherboard installation and Cable Routing

Next I got my motherboard in there. I'm into folding right now so I've got two 8800GTS (G92)'s and one 8800GT in there. I've measured the length of the case for those of you that are thinking about a hella long card and its about 11-11.5 inches. My cards are 9 inches and I've got 2-2.5 inches to spare. The Radeon 5870 reference is 28cm long, just over 11 inches so it would be a tight fit here but I think its doable. Remember you've got two different hard drive rack configurations to work with, one giving you more room than the other. If I were to turn the rack back to its original position, it would give me about half an inch.

Everything Installed


As you can see here the three graphics cards fit with room to play. I've routed the power through the case wall up from the bottom and the power supply covers the rats next of cords below it. Everything works fine except getting the cables up to my DVD drive mounted in the top of the case. There are no top slots to work with so the cables must come out about mid-high. The look isn't the cleanest but I didn't spend a lot of time here either. Also the motherboard power cable is a bit higher than the slot but its not too much in the way I don't think.

I'm using the V8 Cooler here and it does not interfere with neither the top fan or the side fan. Its not the biggest cooler out there but there seems to be plenty of room here.

Back of the Case


A little bit more cable management here but nothing special. You can see that the cutout around the CPU didn't quite get done right. Perhaps they had an Intel rig in mind when the engineers put that there? (This is AM3, 790FX-GD70 mobo) Also, there you can see my one twist tie used. This all gets hidden so I didn't need to spend much time here either. There is, however, a large enough gap to run your cords behind the motherboard tray. Sometimes I've had issues here.

Concluding Thoughts

I fired this baby up and can report these temps. I'm not sure what ambient is in my room but these are folding temps as I have my system folding 24/7.



Stock volts on processor with mild overclock. 8800GTS's overclocked slightly to 1812 Shaders, 8800GT overclocked to 1609 shader. All GPU's have a small bump to their Core too. I have set the graphics cards to different speeds manually to try and keep them from going over 70c. For the most part, I've succeeded. If you've got a single card your temps will be much better I'm sure.

I'm happy with the case so far. I haven't had any issues and it seems to keep my components cool enough during the day. I'm suprised that I can run the graphics cards at 65% fan speed and not have heat issues. This is all with the stock coolers too.

In the future I'd like to get this thing water cooling. I have the parts, just need the time to fit them in. I'm pretty sure I will try and go for a mount off the back with two radiators in some sort of V configuration. I'm not really keen on building the radiators into this case. I think you could put a 120.2 up front nicely but there is no place for a 120.3.

Questions?

Nice choice on the case

[Chowley]

Bloody sexy case. I'll say it again it needs recognition, funny how reviews of this are ignored due to reputation.

Very nice build, i love the black interior. Still waiting for my hdd and monitor so hopefully will get my build sorted next week. I was slightly worried about clearance with the side fan, put my mind at rest there. Although its a 162mm height limit for the heatsink i think.

Have been looking for a Silverstone FM123 fan for my cooler but no joy, cannot find it in europe (well that will ship to Ireland). Looks like ill be stuck with crappy stock tuniq fan for the foreseeable future.

I will say though, the case looks better in the flesh, the flash on cameras make the plastic look..... meh. I was pleasantly surprised when i got my case.

One question though: Are you finding the airflow better with the rotated hard drive cage? The last time i built a pc i had a Silverstone Temjin TJ06 so im not used to this new fangled technology

[Porvalsh]

Originally Posted by Chowley

Bloody sexy case. I'll say it again it needs recognition, funny how reviews of this are ignored due to reputation.

Very nice build, i love the black interior. Still waiting for my hdd and monitor so hopefully will get my build sorted next week. I was slightly worried about clearance with the side fan, put my mind at rest there. Although its a 162mm height limit for the heatsink i think.

Have been looking for a Silverstone FM123 fan for my cooler but no joy, cannot find it in europe (well that will ship to Ireland). Looks like ill be stuck with crappy stock tuniq fan for the foreseeable future.

I will say though, the case looks better in the flesh, the flash on cameras make the plastic look..... meh. I was pleasantly surprised when i got my case.

One question though: Are you finding the airflow better with the rotated hard drive cage? The last time i built a pc i had a Silverstone Temjin TJ06 so im not used to this new fangled technology

I can't say if its better or not because I've never ran it the other way. I think the airflow on this case is pretty dang good though. Loading in the 44c range with a slight overclock, and 3 GPU's seems pretty good to me. I really don't regard the V8 as on par with high end air cooling. It just has never done it for me, but I've got water waiting to be deployed here so its just a stop-gap option until I get time to build it.

Pics do suck, very much because of the flash/lighting but I can't do anything about that. All I have is a point and shoot, not like some of these peeps taking case pics with an 800 dollar SLR cam.