Thermaltake Core P3 TG Pro Case Review

A Closer look – It’s a Box of Bits!

Oh, woe is me! I love Thermaltake cases for the most part, and I think the Core P3 series is really freaking cool, but… they do come flat-packed, and they’re a fair bit more work to build than a typical PC case. While I can cope with that, I would suggest first-time system builders or those who aren’t particularly confident with a screwdriver (very few of you, I would hope), you may want to look at a more traditional PC case.

The box is pretty large on the side, but overall, fairly slim. What is surprising is the weight, as all of these components are surprisingly thick steel, and while that means it’ll be great for build quality, it’s not so great for my lower back.

Unboxing this thing is a mess, there are huge unwieldy components just piling up all over my office. Here you can see the GPU tray, feet, and radiator mount.

Water cooling bracket, rear covers, mounting plates, and some supports for the PSU too. Coffee and fight stick are not included, sorry.

These chunky beasts are for mounting the glass, and my god are they heavy. Don’t drop one on your toe, and don’t ask me how I know.

More Components – The Big Stuff

Now we’re getting onto the real big stuff. This is the largest single part, and there’s a lot going on here.

There are mounting holes seemingly all over this main part; it’s riddled with holes! All those components that were in the box need to be mounted to this main section. However, where you put them is not a fixed thing. You can adjust them for larger or smaller hardware, move things around to suit your needs, and that’s what makes the Core P3 so unique, well, one of the things at least.

There are cable routing holes dotted all over the place too. While some of them have large rubber grommets, the ones that don’t are nicely rounded, with rounded edges and that way, no cables should snag up on them.

There’s a huge cut-out behind the motherboard, so making changes to the CPU cooler while it’s installed is possible.

One big change with the Pro is the fan and radiator mounting. This huge section supports both 120mm and 140mm spacings, up to 420mm if you want to go all-out on liquid cooling.

However, it’s now heavily recessed, meaning you can sink your fans and radiator deep in there. This is a big deal, as before some configurations would stick too far out and could limit GPU length. GPUs ain’t getting smaller, so having more room is a big deal.

Around the back, you can see there’s a huge dust filter, allowing airflow to pass right through this case.

What are these holes? Well, you can actually wall-mount this case. Honestly, I have seen people do this on reddit, and it looks bloody awesome. However, don’t think you’ll get this up on some drywall, this case is f***ing heavy, and throwing a liquid-cooled PC in there will only make it heavier, so you’ll be going into thick timber or brick with some truly hearty-looking screws to wall mount this monster.

On the front edge, it features all the usual power controls, and since this is the pro model, the old USB 2.0 ports are gone and in comes a pair of USB 3 ports and a Type-C.

Finally, the other large part is a huge sheet of thick tempered glass. Guess what? Yeah, it’s also pretty heavy.