Thermaltake Element G Gaming Case Review

Assembling the System

AMD Test Platform
Component	Model	Pricing
Motherboard	Gigabyte MA790GP-DS4H	Live Pricing
Processor	AMD Phenom II 940 Black Edition	Live Pricing
Cooling	AMD Reference Cooler
Memory	OCZ Reaper PC8500	Live Pricing
Hard Drive	Seagate 7200.12 320Gb	Live Pricing
Optical Drive	LG Dual Layer DVD Burner	Live Pricing
Power Supply	Corsair Memory HX1000	Live Pricing
Graphics Card	XFX GTX260 Black Edition	Live Pricing

As you can see below fitting everything inside the ThermalTake Element G was easy. You get plenty of room to work and plenty of room for your parts to breathe.

One thing that I am not wild about is where the 2.5″ drives get mounted. As you can see with the HX1000 there is no space between it and the bottom drive. If I were to use my Ultra XPro 750 watt psu (which is almost 1/2″ longer), I would be unable to mount the bottom drive at all.

The hard drives aren’t completely tool-less. You need to run the mounting screws in, then you slide the drive into place. It is as simple as that and completely secure.

One of the added features that I found useful was in the way that the power supply mounts. It can be mounted two different ways as can be seen in the below photos.

In the above photos you can see the knock outs for the water lines. These will easily fit a 3/4″ outside diameter line.

One of the features that has bothered me with most cases with side fans was the wire and the fact that it just hangs there. This is only an issue on a case with a window. The ThermalTake Element G took care of that issue. All you have to do is plug in the molex connector that is easily hidden behind the motherboard tray. The power then runs to a set of contacts that match up with a set of contacts on the side panel. Granted there isn’t a window, but it is a much easier way to run this wire. I do hope this is integrated into more cases from ThermalTake, especially the ones with windows in them. The only drawback I see is that there is no protection from the contacts if the side panel is off.

The biggest issue I have with this case is the cut-out for the cpu back plate. It is simply too small. As you can see in the below shot it doesn’t quite fit the AMD backplate. You could probably pull the backplate out upon removing the screws, though I would prefer if it matched up properly.

The socket 775 backplate does fit through but I no longer have any socket 775 boards so I can’t see how it lines up.