Thermaltake Armor A30 Case Review: Opening the Puzzle Box

Noise and Thermal Testing, Dedicated GPUs

While the Zotac GeForce GTS 450 I typically add to smaller cases for testing tends to not cause too much of a racket or an increase in thermals, the GTX 560 Ti I've taken to using to test the more ambitious designs can create a very notable change. Given the pleasant surprise of the Thermaltake Armor A30's thermals and acoustics, I was curious to see if it would hold up under the increased stress. It did.

Once again, thermals in the A30 were competitive with the best of the smaller cases we've tested. It's clear the GTS 450 isn't adding a tremendous amount of stress to the situation.

That sentiment is echoed when we look at the fan speeds; only the Prodigy and its...err...prodigious intake fan is able to best the rest of the pack.

Under load the A30 is the second quietest behind the Prodigy; Thermaltake continues to impress. It's obvious an i3 and a single-slot, low-power GTS 450 aren't enough to really push this case, so let's see what happens when we install the much beefier GeForce GTX 560 Ti.

Things begin to separate but again, the A30's performance isn't bad at all. The SSD continues to experience very little heat due to its distance away from the heat-generating components; it doesn't get much airflow, if any, but doesn't need it as so little heat is really being trapped where it is.

The A30's cooling design continues to be a pretty big winner. While the GTX 560 Ti isn't getting too much active airflow from the case itself, it has access to enough open space between it and the wall of the case (plus the ventilation near the top) to perform reasonably well.

In my opinion, this is the A30's big victory. Acoustically it's still reasonably quiet, and though it can't compete with the Prodigy's size and thermal design, it's plenty competitive with the other cases we've tested. That said, it's important to keep in mind that it's also substantially bigger than the SilverStone SG05 (though I'd argue it doesn't make as efficient use of its space as SilverStone's design does).