Thermaltake CTE T500 Air Black Case Review

Interior

The front panel is mounted on push pins, so you can remove it without tools. Behind it, you’ll find a flush-mounted dust filter, ensuring the airflow design doesn’t just clog up your system with crud and pet hair.

There is room for 3 x 120mm or 3 x 140mm fans in the front, and you get one pre-installed here and one in the rear. Thermaltake sell these fans separately too, and they’re rather good too, check out my review of them here.

The top panel has two optional thumbscrews holding it shut. However, it’s also mounted with push pins. Pull it up, and you’ll find yet another enormous dust filter on the interior.

Below it, there’s the back of the motherboard mount! Here you’ll find a 140mm exhaust fan, with room for another 120/140mm fan should you want to exhaust more air from your graphics card too.

So all your cables come in through the back of the case, and all your USB ports, dongles, display cables, hook up to the PC out of sight under the top panel.

This will help keep them neat and tidy too.

So what about the inside? Well, there’s certainly a lot of it, as I feel I could walk into this case and show you around. It’ll support… well, just about anything I can think of really. E-ATX, RTX 4090, and large air coolers? No problem.

The airflow design is just awesome. With ventilation in the front, back and bottom of the case to draw in significant amounts of airflow. Pair this with a load of low RPM 140mm fans and you can get a lot of cooling with a very low acoustic level. The PSU shroud is all mesh, so heat can’t get trapped in unwanted spaces, but it also allows airflow from the full-length bottom dust filter.

There’s an additional 120/140mm fan mount here too, to help better direct the airflow throughout the case.

The front panel will easily support a massive 420mm radiator, which is ideal for your CPU cooler.

There’s an additional mount behind the motherboard, which could provide added stability to overclocked systems. Plus, there are large cable-routing grommets where you’ll need them most, so getting a tidy-looking build should be a breeze.

In the rear, there is room for more fans and radiators, which will provide you with all the cooling options you’ll need for your graphics card(s).

With the motherboard rotated, your GPU will hang vertically from the top of the case, which will not only look cool but ensure your GPU fans are pointing at those rear fan intakes for optimal cooling performance.

Behind the motherboard, there’s a hilarious amount of space for cable routing. You could be a perfectionist and use all those cable straps, and get it looking great. However, if you wanted to cram fist fulls of excess cable back here, there’s certainly room for the lazy option too.

There is a removable mounting place for HDD/SSD installations here, and there’s a removable HDD cage under the PSU shroud too.

And a removable plate for mounting more storage or cooling behind the CPU socket too.

Overall, the fact that you can strip this case down to its component parts so quickly and easily and that it’s so large, it means that it’s going to be a breeze for first-time builders and pros alike.