Thermaltake Armor A30 Case Review: Opening the Puzzle Box
by Dustin Sklavos on September 24, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Thermaltake
- MicroATX
Noise and Thermal Testing, IGP
Ordinarily I have a pretty clear idea of what I expect from an enclosure, but with the Thermaltake Armor A30 I honestly had no idea how I expected it to perform. The trio of small fans (two 60mm and one 90mm) without any kind of fan control led me to believe this case would actually be incredibly loud, but I wasn't sure if airflow was going to work out since the arrangement of fans felt strangely haphazard. As it turns out, for all of their foibles in assembly, Thermaltake definitely got the cooling right.
The A30 was tested with an ambient temperature of about 24C.
The A30's thermals are basically competitive with the best of the other cases at our relatively unstressful stock settings. The CPU temperatures are actually pretty impressive; I was expecting the heatsink's fan to be competing with the intake fan on the PSU for air, but that turned out not to be the case.
Fan speed on the CPU's heatsink was also very competitive, with only BitFenix's Prodigy besting it and not by a particularly significant amount.
Honestly this is what impressed me about the A30. Despite having three tiny fans, the A30 is able to run with impressively low noise levels. The A30 is a hair over the noise floor of the sound meter under load, and certainly tolerable.
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mattgmann - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link
Sorry, but this case looks like it was pieced together from scraps of b-movie props and legosPerformance Fanboi - Monday, September 24, 2012 - link
Fugly as hell, and don't call it a LAN case if you don't put a handle on it.espaghetti - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
Exactly what I was thinking!I'm sitting next to my 900 wondering why they chopped it in half and reversed the window and fan intake on the side panel.
Grok42 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
I really appreciate any and all reviews of SFF cases. Even when they don't turn out to be the perfect case like the A30, it really helps those looking for SFF cases. Reviewing them gets more people thinking about building a SFF system and drives adoption forward. We have plenty of top notch mid-ATX cases, we need better mATX and mITX cases.Also, as someone who works for an electronics manufacture myself, I can tell you that reviews like these are read and can seriously change the course of future products. I know I read every review, user review and forum post on the product we make and I'm sure cases manufactures do the same.
Geekgurl82 - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
I won a Thermaltake Armor A30 a couple years ago from a PDXLAN, I already had a ATX box so I was pretty excited for my new case. It was NOT easy to deal with however it is still running and going strong. It is now technically modded and pretty awesome if I do say so myself!Core I7 990x
Thermaltake water 2.0
MSI X58M mATX
6gb DDR3 1600
1.5 TB Standard HDD's
Radian 6970 Crossfire
infoilrator - Wednesday, September 26, 2012 - link
The A30 does show "could be better" aspects. You always come to "the cooling works, and it fits a decent mATX rig.Sometimes it is "not how well it works" but that "it works at all.
Several newer cases do not cool near as well.
Bought one used from a reviewer, I like it.
True, I've rebuilt industrial machinery in my day, lol.