Thermaltake CHASER MK-1 ATX Build-in HDD/SSD Hot Swap Color shift LED Fan Full Tower Gaming PC Computer Case

If you are reading this review to see if this is your case, than let me be the one to tell you, this is. I was in the market for a new sweet rig, and I wanted a case that was just as sweet as the internals… Well, let me tell you, this case doesn’t disappoint! I couldn’t believe how big it was when I saw it! WAY Bigger than my old case That’s good for me) Lots of room for cable management – It has plenty of space behind the motherboard, as well as cool holes in the motherboard mounting wall to hide cords! Love it- more room for air flow / accessories. The hard drives mount in these plastic sliding mounts… love it! Just the touch I wanted in a case at this caliber. The SATA cords hide behind the motherboard mounting wall, and that’s great considering I will fill every one of the six hard drive bays!

NewEgg says good things about this case as well. Check it out on Newegg.com

I have 3.5 hard drives laying all over the house… haha that’s because I get lots of free hard drives from my work… And let me tell you, that’s a ton of space I never utilize… Good thing this case has a 3.5 / 2.5 SATA hard drive docking station on the top! That’s probably one of the biggest plusses for me… WAY cheaper to buy drives out of enclosures than to buy them with them, so a big plus for me!

Another plus- some of the cases in the market today are not USB 3.0 capable in the front- well, this one luckily supports 3.0 ports! It has 2 in the front, (or top if you want to be specific) so that’s a plus- that was one requirement I had for my build.

Also, conveniently for me, it has a head phone “hanger” which is really cool- it’s on the side of the case… I can’t even believe it has this- i was looking for SOMEWHERE to hang my headphones- I even had my guitar mount on my wall being used as my headphone holder- but it was conveniently out of reach for frequent use and hangs… Then I saw the youtube video on the case and saw it had a headphone dock- Icing on the cake!

If you’re a gamer, and your looking for a case to spank your friends and drive envious eyes to your pc, than this is it. The LEDs in the fans change colors and it really adds to the feel of dominance over your PC building counterparts.

Also, this thing will fit a large SLI or CROSSFIRE configuration if you so desire, so no worries there. The longest card available right now will fit. G2G there!

THE FEET: If you were looking at the feet as a con for buying this, no worries – they rotate in for a low profile look, if you had a spot that you were trying to put the case. Plus, you want the feet: they keep the case elevated and allow ventilation through the bottom: also, it has a few air filters! This is nice to prevent dust buildup inside your case! The makers of this case thought of everything in my opinion- Quality build!

OK, but I will say this: It is made out of lots of plastics- it still feels like a quality product. I know cheap plastic when I see it, and at least this FEELS solid- no worries on quality control. If it had any more metal parts it would probably get extremely heavy and it’s already got some weight without my motherboard and parts inside.

Ohh, and I don’t know what it is called- but if you have one of those small drive bays for a floppy disk or a SD card expansion for the front- it has a front bay cover to accommodate and a metal bracket to mount it in- that’s a plus! I thought of getting an SD card reader and they all come in a small “floppy drive” size. Comes with the case.

Anyway, hope I was helpful!

I really like this case and I’m very pleased with my purchase.

My Rig consists of:
4-200mm Fans (2 included, 2 after market COOLER MASTER Megaflow 200 R4-LUS-07AB-GP); 2 top, 1 front, 1 side
1-120mm Fan; bottom (in front of the PSU)
1-140mm Fan; rear exhaust (included)
1-Asus Maximus IV Extreme P67 Motherboard
1-i7 2600k CPU
1-Mushkin Enhanced Chronos 240GB Hard Drive
1-Seagate Barracuda 7200 3TB 7200RPM SATA3 64MB Cashe
1-Seagate 7200 1TB SATA2 32MB Cashe
4-Mushkin Enhanced Redline Ridgeback, 4GB, DDR3 2133MHz RAM
1-LITE-ON Blu-ray Burner with 3D Playback SATA iHBS212-08
1-ASUS DVD burner DRW-24B3ST/BLK/G/AS
1-Scythe Kama-Panel 3 SCKMPN-3000 Controller Panel
1-Kingston HyperX KHX-FAN-B Fans (for the RAM)
1-AOC FC-2000 PCI Slot Case Cooler
1-Hauppauge Colossus PCI Express Internal HD-PVR
1-Cooler Master Silent Pro M1000 Series Modular 1000W 80 PLUS Bronze Certified PSU
1-Zotac GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 Core 1280MB GDDR5 PCI Express
1-Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler (CWCH100)

Pros:
+ It looks good to me!
+ It is very large.
+ Has great air-flow.
+ Is sturdy and feature-packed. (multi-LED switch, fan speed control, 2-USB 3.0, 2-USB 2.0, 1-eSATA)
+ Nice tight fit space for PSU.

Cons:
– Had a little trouble with the auto-locking 5.25″ bay when placing the Scyth Kama-Panel 3 inside the case. I ended up using something to hold the auto-lock/release up on the back side so that the drive would say firmly in place. It isn’t a full size drive; it’s just a panel with a couple potentiometers and a display on it. Not really a big deal, and I also used screws on all the drives as well as the auto-lock (I’m not going to be swapping drives out all the time so there is no real use for a short-cut feature like that).
– Would have been nice if the case had more space between the side cover (next to the motherboard) and the motherboard mount… I ran lots of cables under the M.board and I was worried that I overcrowded that space.

Other Notes:
* This case doesn’t just support ATX, it also supported my Extended ATX (12″ x 10.6″) M.board. I was thought I had made a big mistake after I ordered the case because it didn’t say that it would support a board that large.
* My PSU came with a couple cool little silicone thing that goes over the inner and outer edges (I’m assuming to dampen any vibrations that might occur). I got the one on the inner side, but the one on the edge touching the outside just would not fit. I tried talcum powder on the rubber to keep it from gripping so that I could slide it on, but nothing worked. So I pulled off the rubber and installed the PSU without it. It was still a nice snug fit so the silicone wasn’t needed anyhow.
* My M.board came with SATA cables that are bent at a 90′ angle on one side… that is the side I use for connecting to the drives. I am unable to utilize the lower 5.25″ drive with that style connector because of the design of the lower bay… the metal base goes deeper than the drive so the angled SATA cable hits the base of the bay.
* It’s not aluminum. This is very negligible, so I don’t count it as a con because due to the very open design, aluminum might bend and misshape whereas steel will not.

A Couple Notes About Me:
I’ve been building computers since I was 12 (I’m now 28). It has been a while since I’ve had a chance to build one; I’ve been over-seas in Kuwait for the past 6 years. The last rig I built was it 2005 [1 x Thermaltake SHARK VA7000BWA Black Aluminum, 1 x MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum 939 NVIDIA nForce4 Ultra, 1 x connect3D 3038 Radeon X800GTO 256MB 256-bit GDDR3, 1 x AMD Athlon 64 3800+ Venice 2.4GHz Socket 939 89W Single-Core, 1 x Western Digital Raptor WD740GD 74GB 10000 RPM SATA 1.5Gb/s]. That computer still runs great after all these years! POST to Full load (Win XP Pro 64bit) is roughly 12 seconds. I had a small business (very small) building personal computers and O/C computers for a few years, I built maybe 50 rigs from 2000 to 2005.

End Results:
This is my favorite case of all the rigs I’ve built for myself, friends and customers. It suited every need of mine with only a couple minor issues. Those issues are found on the competition as well I believe. I have O/C’d my CPU from the 3.4GHz to 4.8GHz (48 multiplier at 1.25V). I ran burn-in with Prime95 for over an hour, 100% CPU use on each core… Temp never went above 71’C (with an ambient temp of roughly 23’C). I’m pretty happy with those results!

Hope this review helped!

Over the years, I’ve both bought and built computers for myself, and the Thermaltake Chaser MK-1 is easily the best I’ve experienced. The layout is extremely well thought out, cable management system out the backplane is excellent, and I don’t I’ve ever had a case with ventilation this good at such a reasonable noise level.

Every part was there where I needed it, and I had the system assembled to about a 90% level in just a couple hours the evening I finished getting all the parts (completed assembly the next day). The Chaser MK-1 is a fine looking full tower case, both inside and out.

Pros:
– Huge, lots of room both for components and the airflow necessary to keep ’em cool. Very easy to mount a water cooling system in there.
– Straight out of the box was set and ready for me to drop in the power supply, motherboard, and other components
– Super easy to install drives; possible w/out screws but I used both their clamping things and screws for the hard drives
– Nice quiet fans provided with the case, front and top, with the ability to add more (I added another Coolermaster fan to the side of the case… plus my water-cooler needed the back of the case, so I repurposed the one that came with the case to double the top ventilation)
– Elevated, so you can pull in air from the bottom and out the top, which just makes sense.
– Built-in cabling for USB 3.0 out the top front, and for the rest of the USB 2.0 and eSATA ports.
– Love the drop-in hot-swap bay. Made transferring stuff from my old system really easy, plus now I have a handy backup system available using all the older, smaller drives I have in storage.

Cons:
– Despite saying you can put this on a carpet and not have to worry about airflow, I don’t recommend it (unless your carpet is really thin) because it will tend to pull up dust and dander into the system… and in my case obstructed the airflow by pulling up the rug I use under the computer to keep it from dirtying the actual carpeting. Instead, I used some cardboard under the system.
– The Reset switch is dangerously close to the headphone and microphone jacks; I’m probably going to rig up some kind of cover for it, or else install a switch elsewhere on the case.
– Wish there was some way to make the power LED just stay on, rather than pulsing and going off. (On edit: When installing some replacement CPU cooler fans (DeepCool, much better), I popped the front header and applied a little electrical tape to the power switch LED. Now it’s just a very dim and easily ignorable glow.)
– Be careful when carrying the case, and pick it up only by the metal part. You could be in for a nasty surprise and drop it if you depend on the front bezel (which is removable) or the top (also removable). I understand Thermaltake’s design decision: They wanted to make it easy to clean dust off the front filter and off the top fans, but they still could have, in my opinion, added a few optional tie-down screw points.

Would I recommend this system to others? You bet. Would I buy it again? Just might, since my spouse will be needing a new system before long, too. (Update a week or so later: Great case, still would get it again.)