Published in Reviews

Cooltek Timaios Computer Case tested

by on07 November 2011

Index

It’s a pity Timaios does not have a see-through panel, as the company did awesome work when it comes to improving the looks inside. All the fans, and their power cables, are white, as well as the front panel LEDs.

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Timaios measures about 476 x 190 x 488 mm and will take standard or ATX motherboards. Most of the standoff screws are already screwed in and you can see that the hole beneath the socket is large enough, so mounting CPU coolers on an already mounted motherboard will not be hard.

Cabling can be routed behind the motherboard tray, but there is very little room there.

The thick black cables you see on the picture below are USB 3.0 cables coming from the control panel. These cables are connected to motherboards’ external USB 3.0 connectors found on I/O panels in the back. The cables can be routed via one expansion slot or watercooling holes. If you don’t have USB 3.0, you can only use the two standard USB 2.0 connectors.

 

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Timaios comes with four fans. You can see the three 12cm fans on the picture above, whereas the third sits in the front panel. Cooltek used thin foam as dust filter on the front panel. Cleaning the front panel filter is not that simple, as you’ll have to take of the mesh grill with Cooltek’s logo as well.

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The top 5.25’’ bay has a door on the front panel, in order to keep the mesh grill looks. Mounting optical devices requires removing the front panel – a tug on the bottom of the panel will do.

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A closer look at Timaios reveals that it’s made of more parts but is generally a very tough case. We removed the metal covers on 5.25’’ slots and the metal fan bracket in order to show you the 3.5’’ cage. The covers can be reused as they’re fastened/unfastened with screws.

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As you probably noticed, the fans do not come connected to the fan speed regulators. Namely, Cooltek left it up to users to decide on how they combine fans, whereas the detailed instructions can be found in the C.A.M.V.C. manual. The fan cables are about 50cm long, so no problems there. Note that one regulator runs two fans.

The fans run at maximum 900rpm so they’re inaudible whether connected to the regulator or not. We must admit that Cooltek could’ve used faster fans, since they offer such control.

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The 3.5’’ cage can hold four 3.5’’ drives, whereas the fifth can be placed in the floppy bracket.

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Although the 3.5’’ brackets can be removed, the construction itself is fixed in place.

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Good thing is that one of these brackets will hold 3.5’’ or 2.5’’ drives. If users need more cooling, Cooltek left an option to mount a 60x60x110mm fan on the bottom of each bracket.

Note that you’ll have to turn the drive around in a way where the connectors face you, because the opposite side is not open (as you can see from the picture below). Larger, 3.5’’ drives are easily mounted and don’t even require screws, whereas the smaller, 2.5’’ drives must be fastened.

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You won’t need screws when mounting 5.25’’ drives, as Cooltek used plastic locking mechanisms on all 5.25’’ bays.

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Graphics cards, or any other expansion cards, can also be locked without using screws but we somehow didn’t trust this mechanism too much. Namely, coolers of most graphics cards we used prevented the mechanism from fully closing. This may not mean much during operation but if you plan on moving the case elsewhere, we recommend the good old screw fastening or simply taking them out.

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As far as graphics card length goes, if you’re placing the card in the second expansion slot, or any of the following five, then it must not exceed 27cm. This is the length of a Radeon HD 6970.

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CPU cooler height must not exceed 160mm. We used our Hyper Z600, which is exactly 160mm high. As you can see from the picture, it fit quite well. We had no problems with the cooler touching top panel fans.

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Last modified on 07 November 2011
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