Thermaltake’s original Level 10 chassis was a remarkable collaboration with BMW DesignWorks in which the companies fundamentally restructured the PC chassis into a series of isolated compartments suspended from a central load-bearing wall. It was stunning, cost $800, and wasn’t actually that practical to use. With the Level 10 GT, Thermaltake has taken the basic look of the Level 10, slapped it onto a more standard full-tower frame, and slashed $500 from the asking price. The end result isn’t quite as sleek as its progenitor from an aesthetic perspective, but far outstrips the original in ease of use and practicality, and is not without a certain sci-fi flair of its own.

At 11.1 inches wide by 23 inches high and 23.2 inches deep, and weighing 28 pounds empty, the Level 10 GT is a hefty case. The case’s frame and right-side panel are made of black-painted steel, and the right side has a ridge with a handle cribbed directly from the Level 10, although it’s not part of the central pillar as on the Level 10. The front panel is made of plastic and contains four mesh 5.25-inch optical bezels and one 3.5-inch external-drive bay. The optical drive bays are toolless, with the latching mechanisms on the right side of the bays.

The left-side panel is where the action is. The rear two-thirds comprise a hinged-door panel that locks with a barrel lock, featuring a 20cm color-shifting fan (with directional shutters like a car’s heating vents) on the bottom and a clear plastic window on top. The front third of the panel is devoted to drive trays: five slide-out plastic 3.5-inch trays (with 2.5-inch mounting holes, as well) mimic the solid-aluminum drive trays of the original Level 10, but feature hotswap SATA pass-throughs, prewired with a five-head SATA power cable.

The 20cm color-shift intake fan on the side panel is matched by another on the front panel, as well as a 20cm color-shift top exhaust fan (which can be replaced by a 240mm radiator) and a 12cm rear exhaust fan. All intake fans, as well as the PSU intake, feature slide-out dust filters.

The Level 10 GT includes two USB 2.0 ports and audio jacks on the front of the right pillar, with two USB 3.0 ports, fan controls, and one eSATA port above the optical bays.

The Level 10 GT features a much easier install process than its predecessor—almost on par with the Corsair 800D. Its motherboard tray includes eight rubber-grommeted cable-routing cutouts, plus a large CPU backplane cutout. It has eight PCI expansion slots and supports ATX, microATX, and E-ATX motherboards. The motherboard compartment is sufficiently spacious to make installation of even the bulkiest systems a breeze, and the case easily accommodates 12.2-inch GPUs.

Thanks to its plethora of fans and capacious motherboard compartment, the Level 10 GT’s thermal performance was the second-best of any case in this roundup, bested (only slightly) by the Silverstone TJ11, which retails at $600.

If you admired the original Level 10 but couldn’t stomach its asking price or performance compromises, you’ll find the Level 10 GT more to your liking. It’s less sleek and, well, design-y, but in every other aspect it’s the superior case.

Fractal Design recently released a new chassis, aimed at the people who like a small desktop PC and well, don’t want to spend too much money on a chassis. As such Fractal Design released the Core 3000, an all black, quite stylish mid-tower chassis.

This ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX ready tower chassis can house a pair of external 5.25-inch drive bays, for ODDs (optical disk drives) or anything else that uses that form factor of course. Then on the inside Fractal Design made sure you can house a lot of internal 3.5-inch HDDs as the bays allow six of them to be installed with the top bay being removable, which will allow you to use long graphics cards, and thus create enough space.

The chassis comes equipped with three fans, two 140mm and are placed on top and at the front and a third fan is located at the rear, and is a a 120mm model. For some regulation even a small fan controller is included with the chassis.

The Core 3000 has plenty of cooling options, up to 7 fans in various sizes can be installed. The front panel is easily removable and pre-fitted with fan filters to ensure a dust free interior. The sleek black interior is matched and contrasted with white expansion slots and HDD trays. Similar to the Define Series, all the HDD trays are fitted with anti-vibration silicon grommets. The upper HDD cage is removable and rotatable, which enables support for the longest graphic cards.

Key features

Simple elegant front panel with mesh and filter
Optimized for performance with multiple cooling options
A total of 7(!) fan slots (1x 120mm + 1x 140mm in front, 2x 120/140mm in top, 1x 120mm in bottom,
1x 120mm in rear, 1x 120/140mm in side panel)
Three fans included (1x 140mm in front, 1x 120mm in rear and 1x 140mm in top)
6x white painted HDD trays, with silicone mounting grommets
Upper HDD cage is removable and rotatable
Easily removable front panel with clip on fan slots
Specifications

6x 3,5 inch HDD trays, compatible with SSD!
2x 5,25 inch bays, with 1x 5,25>3,5 inch converter included
4x USB 2.0 and Audio I/O – mounted on top of front panel
Removable filter below PSU (PSU not included)
M/B compatibility: Mini ITX, Micro ATX and ATX
7 expansion slots with sleek white painted brackets
Supports graphic card lengths up to 270mm when removable HDD-Bay is in place
Supports graphic card lengths up to 420mm without removable HDD-Bay
Supports CPU coolers with height of 160mm
Supports PSU’s with a depth of maximum circa 160mm, when using bottom 120mm fan location.
When not using the bottom 120mm fan location, the case supports also longer PSU’s, typically 250mm
Case size (WxHxD): 200x430x480mm with front and top bezel in place
Net weight: 7,1kg
There’s more though, an I/O panel that comes with four USB 2.0 ports and hey there is even room for some liquid cooling a we spot two pre-drilled water-cooling. Now the crucial part, you just read the primary specs… but this chassis is only 200x480x430mm making it a very small chassis. And that makes it interesting, let’s hop onwards to the next page and review the fracker shall we?

The move was prompted by the overwhelmingly positive feedback the company had from its April fools press release, which stated that the company was going to start manufacturing a range of pink cases, PSUs and fans.

The run will be strictly limited, and only a handful of the cases are likely to make it here to the UK, so you’ll have to be quick if you decide you fancy a quirkily coloured case.

The company was also showing off a pink PSU with the pink case, although we were quickly told that there were no plans to put this into production in the same way as the Phantom.

(Note: The pink Phantom Case photos above is started life as an April fools joke.)

The bay can accept either GoFlex compatible drives or, with the swap of an insert, standard 2.5″ SATA drives. With a standard 2.5″ drive in place, the bay can also accept another 2.5″ drive internally.

The GoFlex or standard SATA drive plug into a PCB backplane which connects to your SATA controller via a standard SATA cable. No word whether or not Antec’s solution will support 6Gbps SATA at this point or how well tested it is with SSDs.

Antec expects GoFlex to debut in cases by the end of the year, perhaps on the new Solo II.