Thermaltake CORE P5 Open Air Mid Tower Case Review
It is time to look at what you normally do not see and that is the back side of the Thermaltake CORE P5. This is probably the most important part of the case as all the stuff you need to route and hide from the plan view of the open air side of the case will be here. Lets hope that Thermaltake took some time to do this right.
First looks show us that there appears to a lot of room to run all the cable and wires you might have. There appears to be more room in this non-case than in a normal case.
A series of three hard drive cradles that can hold either 2.5 or 3.5 drives are placed at the upper top corner right behind where the motherboard mounts. Logically this sounds like a great place for them and I would agree, but the first cradle one the left is right where one of the pass-through holes are. With a drive there it gets totally blocked off. A lower mounting bracket for the drives is also in a less than desirable locating as it blocks off access to yet another two pass-through holes. This bracket was also in the way when trying to run the cables. Is this bracket removable? Yes, a few screws will allow this bracket to disconnect from the case but you now have to remove the three drives. While we are here, right in the center is a strong box that has mounting holes. This is used when you want to make the CORE P5 a wall mounted PC. This is a cool idea but what is not cool is that this bracket is right in the way of more pass-through holes and makes it hard to route the cabling. A better idea would have been to make is an “Optional Install” piece instead of finding out after you have your hardware mounted and find out that it is in the way and that some of the screws to remove it are located behind the motherboard.
Installing a 3.5 drive is quick and simple with this pinned setup. Line up the holes of the drive with the connection holes an snap the holder into place. The cradle has holes in the base to allow you screw mount 2.5 drives.
As you can see it was very easy to mount two different types of drives. The cradles are held in place with two tabs at the bottom and a single thumb screw at the top. You can also see where the wall mount bracket got in the way.
A full shot of the back/inside of the CORE P5 lets you see how the cables might run and that there is plenty of extra space.
Room for cables and wires is plentiful! If you cannot run and hide you cable on this case then you might need to think about a new hobby. What I do not understand is why don’t manufactures do this to ALL case? Make the case just an inch wider or move the motherboard panel just a bit more to the center of the case and give us that much needed and desired space for cabling, PLEASE!
The large opening to the left is where you can mount fans or many different size radiators for water cooling setups.
A magnetic filter that is large enough to cover the entire opening on the back of the case helps keeps your fans and radiators free of dust and pet hair.
