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Product:	Thermaltake MozartTX case Review
Price:	$220 (US)
Supplied By:	Thermaltake
Author:	Nano-ZTX
Date:	June 11th, 2007
Rating:

My first impression of MozartTX out of the box is 'Impressively... Large'. Standing 28" (720mm) tall there is no doubt that this beast of a case is made to attract the crowd. Unlike the many HTPC machines made these days to become smaller and smaller to blend in with other Home Theater equipment such as amplifiers and speakers, ThermalTake designed MozartTX so that it will impress whoever walks into the HT setup room and ask 'Is this a computer?'. That's certainly the reaction I saw all the time when I was building it up for this review. Another positive thing on the size is the depth of the chassis, which is only 14" (36cm) deep and takes up less floor space compared to a large ATX case such as 21" (55cm) deep ThermalTake Armor.

Specifications:

Model VE1000BWS

Case Type Cube Tower

Dimension (H*W*D) 330 x 360 x 720 mm ( W x D x H )

Window Side Panel Window

Case Front Panel Aluminum

Case Body Material SECC

Color Black

Cooling System Front:12 cm fan x 2 ( up to five 12 cm fan )
Rear: 12 cm fan x 3 ( up to five 12 cm, one 8 cm fan )

Motherboard Primary: ATX,Micro ATX, BTX, Micro BTX, Nano BTX, Pico BTX
Secondary: Mini ITX

Drive Bay 7" drive bay x 1
5.25" drive bay x 5
3.5" drive bay x 7 (Exposed x 1 ; Hidden x 6 )

Front I/O E-SATA connetor ; USB 2.0 x 4 ; IEEE 1394 Firewire ; HD-Audio

Expansion Slots 7 slots

Weight ( Net/Gross ) 16.5 kg / 17.0 kg

The version of ThermalTake MozartTX I received for review was the BWS (Black Window Silver-Panels) and leaves no guessing about what is running the HTPC inside the case. As it can be seen in the picture, there are four clear panels (two on each side) unveiling the two systemboards (YES! TWO) which would make up the unique PowerUser/PowerSaver dual setup. Also the hard drives on RAID and array of optical drives can be seen on each side. Personally, I prefer the BWS over other styles BNS (Black No-Window Silver), SNA (Silver No-Window Aluminum), SWA (Silver No-Window Aluminum) because if there is a RAID with five 500GB drives in it, I might as well make people impressed by it, right?

The door panels of MozartTX have tool-free release on top and bottom with one key-lock on each side and swings open 90 degrees on hinges. I noticed that the releases needs to be pulled back a bit to close the doors properly so it can't be slammed shut. On the mini-ITX side is a slot for a standard size ATX power supply which frees up space on ATX/BTX side of the chassis. The panel on mini-ITX side also has a mesh-vent on top of the ATX PSU slot for cooling.

Cooling:

MozartTX come with Three Black/Orange 120mm fans with 7 more 120mm vents and a single 80mm vent on the mini-ITX board side. LED-lit fans could be swapped to shine through the clear panels if bling is the mission. That's plenty of cooling even if you have a hot funace like the AMD 4x4 Dual Dual-Core system. For such setup, MozartTX can fit in up to two 12cmx24cm LCS radiator for ThermalTake liquid-cooling systems.

Most people would be happy with the three quiet 120mm fans. Also, most mini-ITX really do not need active cooling in as CPU on them are usually low-power consumption type such as VIA C7 or Intel Pemtium M. MozartTX maybe big but it won't be noisy if setup properly.