Thermaltake Level 10 GT: Monument to Excess
by Dustin Sklavos on July 26, 2011 11:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Thermaltake
- Full-Tower
Conclusion: Works Great, But With Caveats
If you're looking strictly at performance, it's fair to say the Thermaltake Level 10 GT comes out a winner. Thermaltake's design marries strong heat management with some of the quietest acoustics we've tested, and that's something most of us can get behind. It proves that the enthusiast can have a case that performs well and does so without drawing attention to itself--or at least, drawing attention to itself by way of noise.
Thermaltake's aesthetic is undoubtedly going to strike some of you as being pretty ostentatious and I'm not sure I disagree. If you were interested in the way the original Level 10 looked but were unwilling to shell out the mad duckets to actually purchase one, the Level 10 GT is at least a more affordable (but still expensive) alternative. Yet the resulting case still seems to speak to a "gamer aesthetic" I'm not even sure actually exists in the marketplace, at least if our readership is anything to go on. There's a switch on the top of the case that lets you toggle the LED lighting in the fans between blue, red, green, or off, which is at least a concession to both personalization and to the users that want their enclosure to be neither seen nor heard. And while the external connectivity is fantastic, the arrangement is at least a little perplexing.
There's also the assembly. While a lot of it is painless and appreciated, like the standoffs for an ATX board being built into the motherboard tray and a decent amount of space for routing the dreaded AUX 12V line, securing external drives is more fraught than it should be, and I can't fathom why the hot swap drive bays don't have both data and power leads coming off the back of each. In-Win pulled it off in their $100 BUC and the Level 10 GT is almost three times as expensive. And then having an extra piece when you want to mount an expansion card is just a bit more irritation thrown into the mix.
Finally, there's the price tag. At $279 the Thermaltake Level 10 GT is basically a luxury item. Does it perform effiicently and quietly? Yes, it does. Does it perform to the level of $279 of efficiency and quiet? That's up for debate, and it's really going to depend on your needs as an end user as well as your personal tastes and aesthetics. Personally I find it to be a bit too heavy, ostentatious, and unwieldy, but I'm also tiny and frail, and your mileage may vary.
We have the SilverStone Fortress FT02 coming in soon, and that monster is five pounds heavier than this beast. I think that will wind up being the real test for the Level 10 GT: the FT02 is an older case, but it's also established. We'll have to wait and see, but for now we can at least give the Level 10 GT a nod of acceptance, if not outright approval.
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Skott - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
Performance wise it may be good but its not what I would call a sleek case. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder though. It looks rugged however. More like something you would take out and carry around every day in a work environment. Not that I would want to carry it around every day. It may look rugged, be rugged, but it would also be very heavy and impractical for that.jsbiggs - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
Nice review, but I have a problem with the graphs. Maybe it's just my eyes, but I absolutely cannot read the white text on the bright yellow bar representing the Level 10 GT. The darker yellow is fine, but when the brightness goes up, I just can't tell what the numbers are. You can easily infer the performance relative to the other offerings, but would be better if you could read the number.tzhu07 - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
I still prefer the simplicity of something like a R3 Define case or Lian Li. The Level 10 is incredibly tacky.Tetracycloide - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
I can't say I've ever seen a steel and plastic enclosure that was worth over $200 before reading this article and afterward. Still no.StickyIcky - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
Am I the only one that thinks this thing looks like a severely mutated Playstation 2?danjw - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
If you are going for air cooled, I personally would go for the Silverstone FT02. If liquid cooled, I think the HAF X would be my choice. Personally I don't really like the looks of either the HAF X or Level 10 GT, but from a utility standpoint the HAF X wins in my book. It would be great if you guys would do a review of it.Kevin G - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
Having purchased on of these a few months back, I can say that it isn't perfect but pretty good.First the negatives. Unlike this review, I took advantage of the fact that an EATX motherboard will fit into this case. Fitting such a large motherboard into the chassis isn't easy. I was further hampered by needing to remove some of the standoffs which wasn't that big of a problem. However, I discovered that the paint on the motherboard tray is a bit thin as I scratched a spot near one of the stand offs. Getting the IO panel properly mounted with an such a large motherboard is pain. Similarly, mounting a large PSU is also a pain. Another oddity is that the rear 120 mm fan doesn't match the rest of the fans which color changing LEDs. The feet rotate 90 degrees which is generally a good thing overall but they're very easy to move and feel like they're break if some one stubbed them while walking by. The USB 3.0 ports are nice but to use them on most motherboard you'll need to have them plug into the rear IO panel instead of a header on the motherboard. I wish ThermalTake included a USB2.0 header or USB3.0 header adapter so that keeping the USB 3.0 cable internal was an option (I have such an adapter from elsewhere and it works rather well).
Now for the good news. It is very quiet and it manages to keep my build cool. The ability to adjust the air flow of the side fan is a very, very nice feature to help keep a high end GPU cool. The side panel uses a novel approach to cable management with regards to the side fan: opening up the door turns off the fan due to a series of pins that don't connect when open. Speaking of the side panel, it locks independent of the hard drive bays. There is no actual back plane for the hard drives which for a consumer case works rather well. You can use you own power and data cables to each individual drive if you so choose while retaining removability. The case is large but the face that it has a handle makes moving it relatively easy. Overall I do like the case as it is functional, quiet and good looking in my eyes.
etamin - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
With that many mesh panels, it looks like a nightmare to dust out. I didn't see anything in regard to filters either.Call me shallow, but if a case doesn't look good (exemplified by this one), it doesn't matter how user-friendly, upgradable, cool, and efficient it is...it sure as hell isn't going in my room.
mlosee222 - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
I'd be interested to see how these new fangled cases hold up to the classic Antec 900. Often imitated but never duplicated.Money Loo - Tuesday, July 26, 2011 - link
Loved the article, per usual. However the choice of yellow for the bar graphs makes it difficult to read the numbers in them. Sure, I can sort of ascertain what it might be by looking at the other numbers above and below it, or by holding ctrl+mouse wheeling up to make them bigger. Just a small nitpick in an otherwise great write up.