Thermaltake Chaser A31 Case Review

Thermaltake's mid tower Chaser A31 chassis is built to compete in a mid-range war zone that is laden with gamers. Can the Chaser A31 case's features allow it to shine in an overcrowded market? Designed for gamers, Thermaltake's Chaser A31 supports standard ATX hardware and multi-VGA configurations. Cooling is covered by support for up to six fans, and storage fanatics have an equal number of drive bays available. With a large side panel window and baby blue accents, can the Chaser A31's gaming-orientated style and feature set prove a success? Specifications: Motherboard support: ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX. Expansion slots: 7. Included fans: 1x 120mm front intake, 1x 120mm rear exhaust. Fan mounts: 2x 120mm front, 1x 120mm rear, 1x 120mm bottom, 2x 120/140mm roof. 5.25" drive bays: 3 (1 interchangeable for an external 3.5" bay). Internal drive bays: 6x 2.5/3.5". Dimensions: 501 x 212 x 495mm (19.7 x 8.4 x 19.5 inch). Thermaltake ships the Chaser A31 in the company's standard black box that features an image of the case. The Chaser A31's bundle consists of mounting screws, two cable ties, a diagnostic speaker, and a 5.25" to 3.5" bay adapter with faceplate. It's nice to see a modern case being supplied with a diagnostic speaker; they're always helpful when troubleshooting. Thermaltake has decided to place all of the screws in a single bag, rather than separate ones of a similar type. This is very frustrating and slows down the build procedure. Make sure that you own a set of power supply screws as Thermaltake does not supply them with the Chaser A31. A user manual and product warranty are also supplied. Thermaltake positions the A31's large side panel window directly above the motherboard area, but wisely cuts it off as soon as the drive bays are reached. This helps to conceal the largely uninteresting storage area that can sometimes be laden with cables. The right side panel continues the Chaser A31's gaming-inspired angular style. A protruded side panel is used to extend cable management clearance behind the motherboard tray. Showing similarities to the colour scheme of a Tron movie, the Chaser A31's front panel uses eye-catching baby blue borders around each 5.25" drive bay shield and the identical 'mimic' covers. Comprised of plastic, the front panel feels strong and exhibits a well-thought-out style that will appeal to gamers. Recessed PCI slots and IO shield help to prevent unwanted interference with large cables exiting a graphics card or motherboard. The Chaser A31 case's plastic top panel is easily removed by putting one's hand through the gap and pulling the cover away from the case. The roof is also comprised of plastic, but as with the rest of Thermaltake's Chaser A31, the design should appeal to gamers. A filtered mesh panel prevents the entry of dust via the A31's roof area. It also serves to protect any fans that may be installed in the roof mounts. An indented holding area can be used to rest portable hard drives or media devices that are making use of the front panel connections. Thermaltake deserves credit for continuing to support this convenient design feature when many other case manufacturers remove it in favour of a uniform appearance. Two USB 3.0 ports, audio jacks, and power and reset buttons form the front panel IO connections. A blue LED is located inside the power button to show when the system is active, and a red LED indicates HDD action. Four plastic, non-rubberised feet lift the Chaser A31's bottom edge above the ground. The feet don't feel sturdy; they easily flex when a moderate amount of pulling or pushing force is applied. For users who keep their build in a single location, the plastic feet shouldn't be a major issue, as they are designed to enhance lifting capacity in the vertical direction. It's users that move their chassis from side to side who may get caught out by the fasteners' and plastic material's lowered strength in horizontal directions. The lack of rubberised feet is a cost-cutting decision that isn't necessary. Rubber tips would have increased the Chaser A31's production costs by a barely-noticeable margin. Plastic feet will transmit less sound than metal versions, but rubberised tips would have still managed to eliminate a greater amount of the noise-causing vibrations. A large filter acts as the dust prevention mechanism for both the power supply fan and bottom 140mm unit, if installed. The Chaser A31's interior is what we would consider to be around the 'standard' size for a mid-tower ATX chassis. Three well-positioned grommets should assist when users are attempting cable management. We would consider an all-black interior to be a necessity for a mid-range gaming case with a side panel window. Thankfully, Thermaltake also shares this view and gives the Chaser A31 a black interior. A large CPU cooler cut-out should provide quick and easy access to the rear side of a wide range of motherboards. Cable management clearance behind the motherboard tray is a measly 12mm. Add this to the right side panel's 7mm protrusion in most areas, and users are still only provided with 19mm of space. Thankfully, the room behind the 3.5" drive trays does increase to a far more useful 30mm, plus a proportion of the side panel's 7mm extension. Thermaltake positions the Chaser A31's hard drive bays directly behind the front fan mounts, ensuring that storage devices receive sufficient cooling during the heat of battle. The upper drive bay can be removed, in a tool-less manner, to extend graphics card clearance from 285mm to 400mm, for the top five expansion slots. Or, if preferred, the cage can be removed to allow a clear airflow path for a 120mm fan that may be installed in the front panel's uppermost mount. All three of the 5.25" bays utilise Thermaltake's tried-and-tested tool-less mechanism. A plastic fastener clamps down on a 5.25" device's mounting holes when it is positioned correctly in the bay. Power supplies up to 285mm in length can be mounted in the Chaser A31. A 160mm-long power supply unit can be used while maintaining clear access to the bottom 120mm fan mount. Four metal mounds lift a power supply off the Chaser A31's floor, but as with the case's feet, none of them utilise rubber vibration dampers. Not only would rubberised tips helps to damp noise-causing vibrations, they would also secure a power supply in position while its screws are being attached. Thermaltake includes a 120mm rear exhaust fan that spins at 1000 RPM and features a blue LED to emphasise the gaming style. All seven of the expansion slots feature a vented cover. A tool-less installation mechanism, such as some cheap thumbscrews, is omitted from the Chaser A31. This is a very disappointing feature and forces users to ensure a screwdriver is at hand when an expansion card needs to be removed or installed. A pair of 120 or 140mm fans can be mounted in the A31's roof, although clearance above the motherboard is very tight at around 23 millimetres. Don't expect to fit any of the market's 240/280mm AIO radiator and fan configurations internally without having to worry about major interference problems. Tall memory modules or VRM heatsinks will almost certainly block an AIO CPU cooling unit and its 25mm-thick fans when housed inside the Chaser A31. Due to the tiered design of the Chaser A31's roof cover, a pair of 120/140mm fans can be mounted between the summit of the internal compartment and plastic top panel. Clearance is almost exactly 25mm in the tightest location, so positioning any fan there will be a very close fit. This makes using a 240/280mm AIO watercooler a possibility. The fans will have to be mounted between the roof and top panel, while the radiator is fastened to the summit of the internal compartment. A 120mm, 1000 RPM front intake fan cools the bottom hard drive bays and forces air into the chassis. Each 5.25" drive bay panel and 'mimicking' cover is given its own individual piece of dust-filtering foam. When each piece is combined, the front panel acts as a full-length dust filter for the Chaser A31's front intake fans. Removing the top panel can help to ease the process of working with fan and power cables which reside towards the Chaser A31's confined upper area. Two removals of the front panel and our sample's plastic magnifier for the HDD activity LED had fallen off. We managed to tape it back in position, but this gives an indication that build quality isn't up to the standard of Thermaltake's higher-end cases such as the Level 10 GT. In fact, even a case that targets a mid-range gaming audience should not have its components falling apart after such a small amount of usage. 3.5" hard drives are easily installed into the tool-less trays and held securely in position. 2.5" drives require four screws to hold them in place. The drive trays are made from a strong plastic material and feel up to the task of securing storage devices in place. Building a mid-range, ATX-sized system into the Chaser A31 can be a tricky procedure at times. The mid-tower interior makes connecting and routing cables a difficult task when the destination is a restricted area, such as the motherboard's upper edge. Cable management did take longer than usual due to the Chaser A31's mid-tower form factor, but a fairly clean build can be achieved with the correct combination of hardware, namely a modular power supply. The Chaser A31 features a good amount of cable tie-down points behind the motherboard tray which helps when securing wires in their designated positions. Unfortunately, the measly 12mm of clearance makes routing cables a procedure which has to be carefully planned, even when the side panel's additional 7mm of clearance is added into the equation. For the most part, we were satisfied by the positioning of the three main cable management grommets, but upon connecting the front panel and audio cables, it became clear than another cut-out was necessary. An additional grommet to hide front panel connectors is one thing, but when Thermaltake makes the Chaser A31's front panel audio cable a needlessly-short length, a direct route almost becomes a requirement. We just managed to stretch the audio cable to its intended location on the bottom-right edge of our ASRock 990FX Extreme9 motherboard. Given that the majority of motherboards for at least the previous two Intel and AMD generations place front panel audio headers in the bottom-right area, we cannot understand why Thermaltake would decide to use a cable which is barely long enough. An extra five centimetres on the length and we could have routed the cable neatly along the motherboard's bottom edge, rather than have it sprawled across a number of expansion slots. Directing the 8-pin cable through its designated hole is a tight squeeze that is barely possible with a motherboard installed. The small cut-out is positioned towards the upper corner of the Chaser A31's interior panel - a position which causes it to run directly past the IO shield and part of the motherboard PCB. Users with large hands would be wise to remove the top panel to gain access to the 8-pin cable from above. This is a needless but necessary procedure that could be avoided by using a slightly larger 8-pin cut-out in a better position. Due to the less-than-generous 12-19 millimetres of clearance behind the motherboard tray, we were forced to store some of the cables in unused 5.25" bays. While this isn't a major inconvenience for single 5.25" device users, people with more than one piece of equipment will have to re-think their cable routing procedure. Thermaltake states CPU cooler clearance as 160mm, but our 165mm-tall Frio was able to fit inside the Chaser A31 without problems. Any CPU cooler taller than 165mm however is going to interfere with the left side panel. There was just enough room to squeeze some roof fans into the chassis while using the Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler. With a wider cooler such as the Thermalright Archon being used, interference with roof fans is highly likely to occur. Our hefty Seasonic Platinum-1000 power supply managed to fit inside the Chaser A31 without any issues, although the bottom 120mm fan mount was well-and-truly blocked. Routing cables through the adjacent grommet did become trickier due to the fact that Seasonic's large power supply blocked a proportion of the cut-out. With room for graphics cards up to 285mm in length, our Sapphire 7850 Dual-X had plenty of space to spare. Dual-GPU configurations can easily fit inside the Chaser A31, although it will take a great deal of cable management prowess to effectively route the power leads. An optical drive in the uppermost 5.25" bay blends in with the black plastic front panel. Thermaltake's tool-less 5.25" installation method is very simply, but the drive security is far from the best that we have seen. Thermaltake doesn't supply the Chaser A31 with power supply screws, forcing users to fasten the unit using the hardware supplied with their PSU. The large side panel window shows off a significant proportion of the Chaser A31 case's internal area. I feel that it would have been better to reduce the window's size by a small margin as to conceal the messy area near the cable management grommets. When viewed from an angle, the side panel window gives a fitting peak at the installed hardware. Most of the blue LED rear exhaust fan has its line-of-sight blocked by a large CPU cooler, but the light that it emits helps to illuminate the Chaser A31's internal area by a very modest amount. Fully built, the Chaser A31 makes for a good-looking gaming chassis. I am especially fond of the blue accents that span the length of the front panel. To put this case through its cooling paces we will be using a test system consisting of an AMD FX-8350, Radeon HD 7850 and multiple storage drives. This system allows us to produce a substantial amount of heat and effectively test the Thermaltake Chaser A31's cooling capabilities. For stress testing we use a mixture of Prime95 and FurMark to create the maximum heat output. Prime95′s ‘Small FFTs’ setting allows us to stress our CPU. FurMark’s ‘GPU Burn-in’ mode creates the maximum amount of load our GPU is ever likely to see. Test System: Processor: AMD FX-8350. Motherboard: ASRock 990FX Extreme9. CPU cooler: Thermaltake Frio (100% fan speed). Memory: 8GB Patriot Viper 2133MHz. Graphics card: Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 1GB Dual-X ('auto' fan setting). Power supply: Seasonic Platinum-1000. Storage drives: 128GB OCZ Vertex 4 (OS), 320GB Seagate 7200.12. OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. Thermal Performance Test Procedures: The case’s default fan configuration is used to give an accurate interpretation of the out-of-the-box performance. The Thermaltake Chaser A31's default fan configuration is: 1x 120mm front intake, 1x 120mm rear exhaust. The fans are operating at full speed. We allow the system to idle for 15 minutes and record the stable temperatures. We allow the system to operate under extreme stress for 15 minutes and record the stable temperatures. Room temperature was maintained at 24°C. Cooling performance is sufficient enough to tame a mid-range, gaming-calibre build. With just one intake and one exhaust fan, Thermaltake's Chaser A31 can't match the cooling performance of NZXT's Phantom 630 when a heavy load is applied to the system. Purchasing an additional 120mm fan for the uppermost front mount will help to improve cooling performance. We would recommend purchasing a 120 or 140mm unit for positioning in one of the roof mounts, but make sure that there is enough clearance in the confined space above a large CPU cooler. Acoustic Performance Test Procedures: We placed our Digital Sound Level Meter one metre away from the case. The case fans are set to maximum speed. The CPU cooler’s fans are deactivated. The Thermaltake Chaser A31's default fan configuration is: 1x 120mm front intake, 1x 120mm rear exhaust. Please refer to our KitGuru noise guide for a comparison between the noise levels of this case and everyday scenarios. KitGuru noise guide 10dBA - Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves 20-25dBA – Whisper 30dBA – High Quality Computer fan 40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator 50dBA - Normal Conversation 60dBA - Laughter 70dBA - Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer 80dBA - City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal 90dBA - Motorcycle or Lawnmower 100dBA - MP3 player at maximum output 110dBA - Orchestra 120dBA - Front row rock concert/Jet Engine 130dBA - Threshold of Pain 140dBA - Military Jet take-off/Gunshot (close range) 160dBA - Instant Perforation of eardrum Thermaltake's 1,000 rpm, 120mm fans exhibit very good acoustic performance levels. Even at 100%, we would have no problem sitting next to the Thermaltake Chaser A31 all day long without becoming irritated by its noise output. Lacking a fan controller or any type of hub, as soon as additional units are added to the chassis and a motherboard's speed-variable fan headers are saturated, noise output is likely to increase rapidly due to the fact that certain fans will be glued to 100% speed. The Thermaltake Chaser A31 is an eye-catching case with some unique features that will appeal to a gaming audience. Designed for housing mid-range ATX hardware, working inside the Chaser A31's confined interior is likely to increase build time. We managed to fit a large CPU cooler, hefty power supply and mid-range graphics card inside the Chaser A31, but this did cause a few inconvenient interference issues, especially with fan mounts. Additional graphics cards are a possibility, but larger CPU coolers or power supplies will only increase the interference headaches. While we do expect some unavoidable interference issues in mid-tower cases, leaving 23mm of clearance above a motherboard to mount 25mm-thick fans is a questionable design choice. An extra few millimetres would have had a negligible effect on cost but they would have reduced the interference possibilities of real world performance oriented gaming builds, most of which will use a large CPU cooler. On the topic of cooling, the only way that a 240/280mm AIO watercooling unit will mount in the Chaser A31 without causing major interference problems, is by having the fans positioned beneath the top panel. Perhaps with low profile memory and short VRM heatsinks an AIO unit will be able to fit internally by overlapping the motherboard's upper edge without being blocked. It is not ideal however. The Chaser A31's cable management routes are generally good. Three grommets located in close proximity to the power supply and motherboard's right edge make routing cables to the rear side a simple task. The 8-pin cut-out could use a size increase and a clear route for front panel and audio connections would be beneficial. With a maximum of just 19 millimetres of clearance directly behind the motherboard tray, it's hard not to feel like the good cable routing system is somewhat wasted. Securing the door over a fat 24-pin cable, PCI-E connectors and SATA leads requires a large amount of muscle. Add another graphics card or more hard drives and the cable management difficulty is only going to increase. An extra 5-10mm of space behind the motherboard tray would have eliminated most of the clearance issues. Expansion options for Thermaltake's Chaser A31 users are good. Six 2.5/3.5" storage drive bays are plenty for a clear majority of gamers and mid-range users. Three 5.25" mounts, one of which can covert to an external 3.5" bay, is also a good number. Clearance for large graphics cards, power supplies and CPU coolers extends the Chaser A31's expansion flexibility. Thermaltake has done a very good job of designing the Chaser A31 with an eye-catching design that will appeal to gamers. The front panel's blue accents are a great design feature, as is the general non-linear style. Some people may be put off by the widespread use of plastic, but Thermaltake actually does an admirable job of making it sturdy and good-looking. At £79.99 from OverclockersUK, the Thermaltake Chaser A31 is situated in a cut-throat segment of the market. Given that cases such as the NZXT Phantom 410, Fractal Design R4, Corsair 400R, and Cooler Master CM690 are all priced within a few pounds of Thermaltake's model, the Chaser A31 is going to have a tough time competing without any type of price reduction. Pros: Eye-catching gamer design. Quiet fans. Large side panel window. Holding area for portable devices. Good GPU, CPU cooler and power supply clearance. Cons: No fan controller. Limited cable management clearance. PCI slots not tool-less. Layout can causes interference, mainly with fan mounts. Some cost-cutting build decisions - no rubber dampers, plastic feet, short audio cable. Priced too closely to very tough competitors. KitGuru says: An eye-catching, gamer-orientated chassis with room for large components, but it is not good enough to compete with similarly-priced options.

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Thermaltake Chaser A31 Case Review

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