Thermaltake Element S review

Thermaltake’s Element S looks rather snazzy, with a matt-finished metal and plastic shell and a bright red edge around the door on its front fascia. Behind the door, nine drive bay blanking plates include sound insulation and dust filters. The power and reset buttons, along with the usual USB, eSATA and audio ports, are on a panel at the top of the case.

Both the rear and sides of the case were prone to flexing. The matt black interior edges weren’t quite as well finished as those of Antec’s similarly priced Nine Hundred Two, but none were sharp enough to do us any damage.

The power supply has to be mounted in a separate bay below the motherboard. The top of the bay, which also bears mounting points for two 2.5in laptop drives, has to be removed before you can insert your PSU. Unfortunately, the PSU enclosure requires careful routing of the cables, which means that not all of them will necessarily be able to reach across the length of your case.

The case’s main bay is generously proportioned bay and leaves plenty of room for even large components. The rear blanking plates can’t be re-attached once removed, so there’s nothing to protect your system from dust if you remove components later. There are plenty of fans and mounting points, including 230mm fans in the top and side panels, but we’d have liked to see more dust filters.

Although it’s a bit noisy, the case looks good and has decent airflow. However, we weren’t impressed by the Element S’s cable-shortening PSU mounting and somewhat flimsy construction, especially as Fractal Design’s Define R2 costs just £5 more.