Thanks to our friends at ThermalTake we have some first look photos. Due to events unknown to us, the photos are a little late, but better late than never right? I do not have a whole lot of information on the case. Thermaltake says the case should be going into production in late summer or early fall. I have tried to put the photos in the order that I would have taken them. So here we go.

BMW and Thermaltake put their heads together and came up with an evolutionary case design. While it is pretty radical, I feel that this is the next stage of case design, no one can be sure what the future holds in store for case designs.

Pretty much all computer cases have the same shape, some have different decorations that adorn the case but for the most part they are all rectangular in shape with all the components fitting into one compartment. The level 10 challenges this way of case design by truly separating components. The motherboard and add in cards are in one compartment, as is the hard drive, power supply and optical drives.

The design appears that the components hang off of the main tower like structures. The power and reset buttons, HD Audio in/out as well as an eSATA and four USB ports are on the front of the spine. The motherboard compartment is pretty standard from the rear. There are numerous vents in each compartment as well as underneath and all inlets have filters on them.

let's take a look at the insides

Each compartment opens up and the covers swing out of the way and the covers are removable. The motherboard and add-in cards are housed in one compartment. Additional cooling to the video cards is provided by a fan located towards the front of the case. Wiring management is provided and we will go into that in a bit. As you can see the optical drives receive the same treatment as all the rest of the components and get their own compartment. The power supply also receive the same treatment, but don't fret the power supply compartment is vented towards the bottom to provide fresh air to the internals. 

 

The hard drive area is really interesting. Each hard drive is housed in a separate compartment and each compartment is cooled by it's own fan. Since the hard drives are completely covered it may be an issue to see where you have one installed. Thermaltake thought of that too. The hard drive when installed in the caddy and slid into the slot presses a button located at the back of the slot. This activates the LED on the front of each hard drive compartment. 

Wiring Management is next

For this case design wire management is a must and Thermaltake has taken care of it in a big way. The back side of the tower serves this purpose. As you can see the cutouts for the cables to run through have been taken care of and to ensure that no sharp edges fray the cables plastic edging has been used.

Another feature of the case is security. We have shown how easy it is to get into the case, but what about keeping those parts from prying eyes and five-finger discounts? The left panel has two locking mechanisms. The locks on the panel lock all the compartments so that they cannot be opened.

I cannot wait to get my hands on this case. I am really interested to see what effect on cooling this design has on the components as well as what acoustic management properties this case possesses. From the glimpses we have here I can see a few options for modding it, but at $700.00 USD which one of you has the guts to take the Dremel to it.