Thermaltake Core X2 water cooled build
Posted: Mon Mar 14, 2016 1:00 pm
Last month my home PC crapped out on me, so started to gather parts for a new build. After a lot of back and forth I settled on the Thermaltake Core X2.
Its height and depth were no different than my old case, and only 5 inches wider I gained loads of room.
In my planning/building I have run across some things that may be useful to others. In the very few reviews I have seen on this case, some of this didn't come up, but could be because of the what I picked to put in this case.
The most annoying to me was found AFTER I purchased a Bitspower 250mm res. The plan was to run it between the case side and drive bays. I stupidly didn't measure before I bought. Ended up getting it swapped for a 150mm res. There is only 2" between the side support rail and the drive bay cages, the res is 60mm or 2.3" in diameter (not including mounts). So unless you are ok with the res leaning to one side when upright, then you will need a shorter res.
If you go vertical, and are keeping the optical bays like I am, then you are limited to 9.75" from the case floor to first drive bay.
The lower radiator mount. If you are running a slim rad with only the outside fans, you're good. If you are running push/pull on a slim, or thick rad with either push, or push/pull you will want to do some math.
From the lower rad mount to the lower drive cage is 1.5", if you run push/pull on a slim rad, that lower cage is got to go or you leave that one fan off.
If you are running a thick rad like my XSPC RX360 V2 then the lower drive cage is lost completely. That leaves you with 1.75" between the back of the rad face and the power supply cage. Depending how you orient your ports, this could be interesting for you getting both hose and fans in that space. Me I'm putting them to the front.
oh, and I know/understand why Thermaltake did what they did, but the upper rad mounts are such you cant push the rads to the back of the case, only to the front. slightly annoying, 5 minutes with a drill will fix the issue. They did it to keep the rad's off the back 120/140mm fan area on the off chance you would put a rad there... would have been nice to have the ability to push to the back.
so far, love the case. Not going to be exactly light when I done, but upside I don't LAN anymore so it will get parked under my desk until it dies LOL.
Short list of cooling parts being crammed in this...
2x Black Ice Nemesis 360GTS slim rad's in the top
1x XSPC RX360 in the bottom
1x Bistpower 150mm Tank Z-Multi res.
1x XSPC Raystom V3 cpu block
2x Modmytoys 8 way PWM spliter
6x Noctua NF-P12 fans (had in the junk drawer)
3x EK Vardar F4-120 fans
still in the planning/layout stages figuring wire and tube routing.