Thermaltake CORE P5 Open Air Mid Tower Case Review
With the CORE P5 Assembled we can now take a look at what makes this case different then any other on the market. There are other open air cases, but they are primarily directed towards the test bench market and not to concerned about style, but more about ease and functionality. The CORE P5 has some how been able to combine everything in to their stylish design.
Of course the first thing that grabs your attention this the fact the case is thin and the hardware is out in the open. The exposed hardware aspect is much more than just seeing your hardware in a window. This does bring in a few factors that most people never had to address; colors and cable management. With a normal case you could hide most of your cables and it really did not matter that much if you power supply might be a different color or that your green memory modules did not go well with the highlights on the motherboard, but now it does. If your thinking about updating your system then it might be a good time to think about what colors you want, then again it may not matter to you so go ahead and use you old hardware for now.
The I/O port/graphic card support can be installed in two configuration. One is in the normal vertical rise or now you can place it in the horizontal position. Do it this way will allow you to show off the hard work that the designers spend their time on that no one normally gets to see.
To help keep the CORE P5 thin the power supply also changes position. Moved from being at the bottom of a case it is turned 90 degrees making it much more thin. A support bracket is used to help keep the power supply tight against the panel and in the correct position.
Shown here is where the the motherboard will be attached. Behind the access hole you can see two of three hard drive holders while a third one is behind the the two grommeted pass-through holes. If you want to have easier access to a hard drive – maybe you switch them out often- you can install one on the open air side of the panel. There are a total of five grommet pass-through holes with three more smaller holes. The holes have been places that do make sense, but what is behind them did not and gave me some issues during the install of the power cables.
