Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow Edition Chassis Review
Luke Hill / 13 years ago
A 200mm ColorShift LED fan is located in the front mounting position, behind a dust filter to effectively cool the HDD/SSD drive bays. This fan isn’t the standard 25mm depth but is actually 20mm, so be careful if you decide to change it with another fan.
The direction of air flow from the side 30mm deep, 200mm LED fan can be easily directed thanks to a simply designed row of directing fins that are manually manoeuvred via an external lever. Thermaltake understand the annoyance that an awkward-to-hide side fan cable can cause and have thoughtfully used a ‘wireless’ method which relies on contact from 3 pins fitted to the door.
The extremely roomy interior features an all black finish and strategically positioned cable management grommets. The standoffs are pre-installed for a standard ATX motherboard user but a variety of motherboard sizes are supported, from mini-ITX to E-ATX.
Thermaltake have even included a cable routing grommet aside the 5.25” bays for the front panel connectors to ensure they don’t diminish the clean looks of a super-tidy build.
The 200mm roof fan is identical to its brother on the side panel. They both share the same 30mm depth, blue, red and green LEDs, translucent blades, 13-15 dbA quoted noise output and 600-800 RPM operational speed. Removing the 200mm roof fan reveals access to mounting holes for a 240mm radiator such as the Corsair H100.
A standard non-LED 140mm Thermlatake fan is attached to the rear mount. As with every other fan included with the case, the cable is covered with a black sheath to ensure it doesn’t interfere with the internal appearance.
8 black, ventilated PCI shields are used on the Level 10 GT Snow Edition. As previously mentioned, they aren’t the indented standard that we prefer to see but instead are flush with the case’s external metal and require a hold-down bracket, which is an inconvenience.
The bottom mounted power supply sits on 2 metal brackets to ensure that the fan receives sufficient airflow. We think that the long dust filter is a necessity when you have a bottom mounted power supply and 120mm fan mount in the case. 2 cable management grommets located just millimetres from the PSU are invaluable in the task of building a tidy system.
Even the internal USB 3.0 header is all black. Thermaltake really haven’t messed about with the aesthetics by discovering each interference and making it integrate.
Moving to behind the motherboard tray, we notice the huge CPU cooler backplate cut-out; something which proved to be useful and appropriately sized. The 5.25” drives are secured in place from behind the motherboard tray as opposed to the standard location near the left side panel. A tool-less design is incorporated with the HDD bay which relies upon a single power cable and the drive’s respective data cable. Although there is a huge amount of room behind the HDD bays, the rest of the case isn’t quite as impressive in the cable management department with around an inch of room thanks to the extruding side panel design, no recess for the fat 24-pin cable and very few cable tie points to secure unused cables in place.
