Review on 💻 Thermaltake Core X71 Tempered Glass Edition Full Tower Case with Pre-Installed Cooling Fans - Perfect for Gaming PCs! by Matt Kovacevic

I think I'm a bit spoiled by the Caselabs SMA8 case for one of my machines, which utilizes all the generous space the SMA8 offers while being surprisingly light, which is best Housing of all time is made. in terms of design and functionality. This replica Caselabs Merlin case is a poor replacement but there aren't any others that fit my needs as I need to make the case as light as possible due to a back injury so those super bulky tempered glass cases are no good. I need a 5 1/4" drive bay for a custom loop control fan controller as if it detects an error and turns off the relay I need an indicator to see what the error is and also to avoid falling into a case too gigantic for a large radar and fitting in the limited space next to my desk, I need two 360mm radiators to keep temperatures down while smoothly managing 4k resolution (all current 480- mm cases are too heavy / don't fit in the space I have) , while keeping the noise level at an acceptably low level. Unfortunately, with the loss of Caselabs to Trump's aluminum tariffs, the good original Merlin case is no longer made and is nowhere to be found on the open market. The first Core X71 case I received looked good when the box arrived. It appears that a slight overload during shipping caused the fragile base to buckle and warp beyond repair. The second shipping carton appears to have withstood heavy G-shocks on the front and top and was generally quite scratched, but the top and front of the case are strong enough that the bottom doesn't appear to have taken any stress from rough handling. So it looks like it's good enough to use. Actually I need casters to use the body to roll it over the body but its not designed for casters so I drilled 1/4" holes where the legs went and put casters with washers in to to stabilize the wheels.I found that even with the empty case is too flimsy and only flexes and deforms under the weight of the fully empty case (all detachable parts are moved, including the side panels, just the bare frame) which is sad, so i built a wooden skateboard in the bottom, trailing bolts go tight through a plank of wood for their mainstay and then into the body. The wheels i found had barely long enough bolts to work with all the nuts and it needs washers , but it also seems to work with a fully loaded body for satellite computer game rig (just use m.2 solid state drive for data storage) The layout in this case is a verb Improvement over some case designs in that the extra drive bays can be removed, but you can still have the 5 1/4" drive bay I use for my fancy fan controller which can cut power should circuit conditions be over safe parameter then have an indicator for me so I can see which parameter has been exceeded if it's not obvious (eg. B. Clogged circuit). I can easily fit my thin 360mm radiator on top and my thick 360mm radiator on bottom, but the grommet holes between the top and bottom chambers are not positioned correctly for Thermaltake's own standard thickness radiator, so obviously their cases and radiator groups are not fit. talk to each other. Also, they didn't have pre-made mounting holes for the usual pump/reservoir combos, so you'll have to hammer your own deal together. In fact, in this case if you want to buy it and use it, you're going to modify it quite a bit, because to a certain extent it's what you want it to be, maybe more than in other cases where the designers are even more clueless , but it's more like it so that the designers got some things right by blindly copying Caselabs than actually understanding what they needed to design. Their own special sauce that they added to the design is actually pretty weak and causes more problems than it solves. In summary I would only recommend this case because they blindly copied a number of things Caselabs did without understanding why it was there. With what they screwed up, if you're determined enough you can find ways like I did and find out by now that Caselabs doesn't exist anymore, so there's no choice if your needs are about the same like mine, barring all other cases considered inevitable. It's actually a bit disconcerting to see how all case manufacturers either produce something that doesn't fit modern computing needs at all, or all try to copy the same "trendy" design, all do it badly, and none offer practical alternative designs . Unfortunately, this case is one of the very rare alternative designs. So if you have specific requirements that compel you to look at this case, then this is it.