Thermaltake Core X31 Mid Tower Chassis Review

A Closer Look – Interior

With the size panel removed, we can see that there’s definitely a lot of room to play around with on the interior. Especially for those who require room for extra-long graphics cards. There’s a large cutout behind the motherboard for the CPU cooler mount, and there are extensive cable routing grommets dotted around to help keep your cable management in check.

In the front, you’ll find the two 5.25″ drive bays, which can be easily removed via thumbscrews, meaning you can open up the full height of the front panel for water cooling hardware.

There’s a large opening in the midsection, so those wanting more room for large expansion cards certainly won’t be left feeling sold short.

A fully removable hard drive bay with tool-free 3.5″ drive trays, although these can also accommodate 2.5″ drives if you need them to. There’s another neat trick to these drive trays too, which we’ll show you shortly.

A 2/3 length shroud covers the PSU area and will also hide a decent amount of excess cables. On the top, you’ll find two dedicated 2.5″ drive mounts and another cable routing grommet for passing through PSU cables to your expansion cards; awesome if you have side-loading power connectors on your graphics card.

There’s a vast amount of room here for expansion cards, and it’s unlikely width will ever be an issue, even if you’ve got a lot of water cooling tubing routed around the build.

The rear fan is a 120mm, but you can easily install a 140mm fan or radiator here if you wish. Those elongated screw holes are great too, as it means you can adjust the height of anything mounted to prevent hardware conflicts.

Around the back, there’s an almost embarrassing amount of cable routing space, so you’ll have no excuses for excess cables being on show in the main compartment.

The extra depth here isn’t just for cables, however, there are some special mounts where you can suspend the 3.5″ drive trays behind the motherboard. This is great if you’re using the whole front panel for water cooling, as it means you can stealth mount the big ugly 3.5″ drives behind the motherboard.

One 3.5″ HDD in the bottom rear (above) and one towards the front (below).

Aside from the extensive cable routing grommets, you’ll also find a huge amount of cable tie loops and plenty of cable ties included in the box, so once again, more reasons to get perfect cable management.