My expierience with the Thermaltake Damier

[QuickSilver]

Overall, it's passable.

Quality of construction: Top notch

Apperance: Too cluttered IMO

Engeneering: What the heck were they thinking!!!!

This thing has very good overall construction quality, but there are a few things that just ruin this case. I personaly think that the front panel on the Damier is just too cluttered, but a case can't be judged by taste, since everybody likes different things.

You will first start to get annoyed with this case when you go to install your MOBO. Rather that supply you with the standard standoff/screw method of mounting, they give you push-pin type connectors that can be very hard or almost impossible to get pushed in all the way. If you get one of these, ditch the stinkin' pin things and just use the standard stand offs. You will save yourself a lot of time.

The second major annoyance would be the ten billion wires coming from the fan speed controller. This thing makes figuring out something as simple as fan hookup a real chore. There is a total of 11 molex connectors coming off this thing, and it only has 4 knobs. There are also 3 temp probes, and 4 more connectors that hook to the two large knobs on the front panel. This is ludicris. Expect it to take about an hour just to get your fans to do what you want.

The snap and slide driver rails work great. Good and solid, and drive swapping is a snap. Thumbs up on this one.

Wire management, forget it man! It will take you hours just to get the wires routed in a decent fashion! There is no way you will be able to hide all the wires, there are too many, with too many space hogging connectors to make any kind of a decent wire routing job.

There is one more stupid, stupid, realy stupid thing about this case. Look at this picture. The bottom fan on that side panel is behind the glass, with no vent of any kind whatsoever. It is good for nothing but looks and blowing air around inside the case. Why it has a filter on it, I have no idea. There is no air path to this fan.

Would I buy one of these? Heck no. I'd get a XaserIII or II.

[Jester]

The Xaser III has the same wire organization problem. I have tried numerus times and it aint happening. Thats tand the Tooles stuff for the AGP and PCI cards doesn't work, at least not with ATI cards. IMHO you are better off getting a case form somewhere else other than thermaltake. With the exception of there lan fire case. I hear it is a good one cause it doesnt have all the junk in it.

[gosu mike]

that case is an abomination along with just about every other thermaltake.
i just dont understand whats so appealing about that checkerboard pattern that shows up on xasers now.

[QuickSilver]

They would be good cases if you tore the wires out and redid them yourself, but who wants to do that?

[Jaggannath]

Exactly... way too much effort
I won't touch Thermaltake's because I've heard the wiring is a nightmare

[FLG]

I have a Xaser-III and for a quick wire routing it came out pretty good, if i take more time out to fix it up even more then you wont even see the wires. People have trouble with the Hardcano, the hardcano is sleeed on the fan wires, if you unsleeve it and run the wires individually it comes out mutch better.

[Propain]

True that on that on the removale of the sleeving . Also what I did is I disconnected 3 of the connections for the case fans. I noticed that they are pretty quiet and didnt notice any decibel difference on high or low.

[QuickSilver]

Also, whatever comes on the Damier is not a Hardcano 9, it's some other variation with a bunch of extra BS attatched.