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Veteran PC-case maker Thermaltake is celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2024, and the company has settled on a quirky, cool colorway to celebrate the year: Hydrangea Blue. This shade will adorn a host of Thermaltake products (limited-run models for the year) that will complement one another. It intersects with another unusual entry in PC-case land: the second year of Thermaltake’s CTE design campaign. CTE shows up in the $179.99 CTE E600 MX Hydrangea Blue, which is also available in Snow (white) and non-iterated black editions (the last simply called the CTE E600 MX). What is CTE, or Centralized Thermal Efficiency, and how does it affect performance? In short, it’s a PC-building scheme that rotates the motherboard orientation 90 degrees, with the aim of enabling airflow out the top of the case. The mainboard ports face upward instead of out the case’s back, and the GPU gets mounted longways up and down, unless you use one of the included brackets for mounting it facing the glass. This makes for a striking build, but the thermal and acoustic performance in this chassis all comes down to the fans and cooling systems that you bring to party.
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Design: Face Down, Ports Up!Thermaltake’s CTE isn’t the first enterprising PC case to hide the motherboard’s I/O panel under the top panel (SilverStone’s been doing it for 13 years in a few designs, such as the legendary Fortress series), but Thermaltake focuses on directing air upward from the sides rather than the bottom. While it does retain a radiator mount on the bottom panel, it also has three of them on its front side, right side, and back side. (You won’t lack for choice in where to place a rad of any size.)Port placement dictates that the CTE E600 MX faces a completely different direction than the CTE’s forebear. Its single Type-C and dual Type-A USB 3.x ports are placed at what would be the right front corner of a traditional mid-tower’s top panel. Thermaltake also equips that section with separate headphone and microphone jacks (rather than a four-pole combo jack), using power and reset buttons to set the space’s visual boundaries.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
In the same spirit of the quirky placement of other items here, the E600 MX’s bottom-panel dust filter slides out from the left side. The design keeps you guessing!
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Power-supply bay and cable-passage locations also dictate that the panel that had been the left end of The Tower 500 is now the back of the E600 MX. Since nobody looks at a case from the back, Thermaltake chose a less stylish way to place its removable filter here. Four cable-tie hoops beside that removable filter panel are designed to help users run their peripheral cables cleanly down the back of the case from the top panel. If you don’t look at it, it works well!
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
A picture with the top panel removed will be helpful to anyone who’s never seen a case designed with the CTE E600 MX’s motherboard orientation. Thermaltake provides 2.5 inches of space between its expansion slot bracket and its removable top panel for users to bend their cables and route them through that rectangular hole on the right, as shown in the photo below.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Top-panel radiator space extends 285mm from the card brackets to the front radiator bracket, but screw-hole nubs sticking out near the slots reduces the actual smooth mounting space to 274mm.The top and front panels feature magnetically affixed, rigid-framed nylon dust filters, and Thermaltake adds two more to the fore and aft vent sections of the right side panel. The rear panel’s exterior filter and the bottom panel’s slide-in filter complete the E600 MX’s comprehensive vent coverage.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Removing that outer panel lets us see that its two vent sections were covering the right-side radiator mount and the power supply’s air inlet. Also visible from this angle are the E600 MX’s dual 2.5-inch drive tray and a dual 3.5-inch drive cage (photo right), and its front-panel radiator bracket attachment points (photo left).
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Large holes that surround the motherboard standoffs resemble reverse-motherboard “hidden connector” design (like with Asus’ BTF or MSI’s Project Zero), but unfortunately these gaps are not located in the proper hidden connector positions. The large openings instead provide builders using standard-design motherboards extra room to run their cables cleanly behind the board.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
The next closeup shows most of the things that meticulous planners need to see: First, that the 0.75-inch-deep step beneath the motherboard’s edge is just barely short enough to clear long graphics cards (when one is installed the long way upright, placed directly into a motherboard PCI Express slot). Second, that the front-panel radiator mount overlaps the right-side-panel radiator mount, leaving only around 55mm of clearance for a side-mounted radiator and fan set. And third, that the bottom panel’s radiator bracket is, like the front panel’s, removable.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Maximum radiator lengths are 466mm up front, 480mm on the right, 463mm on the bottom, and 470mm at the rear. But note that removing the front panel’s radiator bracket extends the bottom (and top) radiator space by 32mm.Building With the Thermaltake CTE E600 MXWe can think of a few reasons that a builder might choose to eliminate the front-panel radiator mount entirely, including the fact that it just won’t work very well if they swap out the case’s vented front panel for its optional tempered-glass front face, which comes in the box. You can see it here. Also shown are the included hardware kit, a manual, the warranty description, a PCIe 4.0 riser cable, several riser brackets, and a bundle of reusable hook-and-loop cable straps. The riser is for the graphics card, and you can mount the riser as a sort of “GPU shelf” on the portion of the motherboard tray below where the motherboard ends.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Attached cables include a Type-E dual-link for the USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, a 19-pin for the two USB 3 Type-A ports, an Intel-style combined power button/reset button/power LED/HDD LED header-block cable, and an HD Audio extension for the front panel’s headphone and mic jacks.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
We’ve recently revamped our testing kit for PC cases. Asus and Cooler Master helped us configure a base system upgrade with Z790 motherboards in the three most popular form factors and a full-size ATX power supply. Other upgraded components, such as the 12-inch-long, triple-slot PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti graphics card and our 13th Gen Intel Core processor, were borrowed from recent reviews and builds.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Shown in our standard test configuration, the E600 MX swallows full-ATX motherboards and gigantic graphics cards, as you can see. Placing our closed-loop cooler in its usual position to increase airflow over the voltage regulator, we found that the case’s screw-hole divots (for its slot panel screws) would dig into the tank with the radiator turned the other way. That’s a shame, because installing it this way required us to remove the front-panel radiator bracket.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Here’s how the test system appears in standard configuration with our slate of test components (which is to say, without installing the E600 MX’s optional components). Pretty slick, if a little empty. The lower third is bare because we didn’t use the GPU riser shelf in our first test build, and the power supply is hidden behind the motherboard tray in a chamber back there. Plus, the three-position radiator mount to the right of the motherboard is bare in our test config. This case will look under-used inside unless you think bigger than our standard test config.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Since we had to remove the front-panel radiator bracket, anyway, we decided to at least get a photo of the CTE E600 MX with the glass front panel installed. And while we’re at it, why not try putting in one of its two riser-card bracket kits? Two of the three pieces fit together, as shown, to place the card near the bottom. We could have mounted the card out at the ends of those brackets, but decided instead to space it a little farther from the left side’s glass panel in the hopes of improving airflow a bit.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Now the CTE E600 MX looks a little more filled out! (That GPU riser cable in white is pretty exposed, though.)
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
Tip: Those extra holes shown below the forward end of the graphics card are alternative bracket mounts with 1.5 inches and 2.75 inches of additional space between the graphics card and the case’s back panel. Those who wish to use that space will find that 140mm, 280mm, and 420mm radiators will clear the motherboard by approximately an inch. Any excess from the flimsy header cables, such as from the HD Audio and front-panel button/LED combo, can tuck in that space.Testing the Thermaltake CTE E600 MX: Bring Your Own Fan BaseHere’s a quick look at our new test configuration, which we’ll be using to compare the CTE E600 MX’s three most recently reviewed ATX competitors.
We immediately noticed a problem with our graphics card temperatures with the card mounted in the CTE E600 MX’s default (direct motherboard insertion) location. Questioning whether this result may have been caused by the card’s orientation, we included results from our The Tower 300 retest. Note that The Tower 300 uses a different (MicroATX) motherboard of a different size, so that even though its GPU temperatures can be compared, its voltage-regulator results aren’t useful.
The short story is that our CPU suffered by around 10 extra degrees C when installed in the CTE E600 MX, and that our graphics card ran a full 30 degrees hotter when stood on its end (compared to other ATX cases). Placing the card in its alternative location on the riser shelf dropped the CTE E600 MX performance penalty to around 5 degrees C, which we find acceptable in a case that has no fans of its own. That said, it’s all going to improve from there once you add a few fans. Our standard test build doesn’t account for the 10-plus fan positions that you can populate in this case for looks, extra cooling, or both. TLDR? CTE E600 MX buyers should start out with at least a few extra case fans, and those who want their graphics ports to point straight up might want to pick a different graphics card. Ourselves, we think that using the riser cable and GPU shelf looks way better; otherwise, you’ll have a big blank area at the case bottom beneath the motherboard that you can’t use for much else. And know that that riser hardware is definitely part of the price; PCIe riser cables aren’t cheap. If you don’t use it, you’re leaving a chunk of the money you spent on the table. Of course, cases that don’t have their own fans tend to do well in noise tests, and adding the glass face to the CTE E600 MX put it far into the lead against the other ATX cases.
In practical fact, though, you’ll probably want to add some fans, and that will make your build at least a little noisier than ours.Verdict: Uniquely DIY, and Kind of BlueWe do get the logic for the lack of fans in the CTE E600. Most folks willing to build in a rotated-board case like this one are likely to have an evolved plan for their cooling scheme and radiator flow. Adding stock fans might clash with their build logic or even the appearance they are going for. After all, a case like this, even if you opt for it in a plainer white or black, is meant to get attention.
(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)
However, we have to give Thermaltake props for a case that delivers a unique color scheme, an uncommon motherboard orientation, excellent cooling-placement flexibility, and GPU riser gear in the box. Is it a superior value? Without any stock fans, we have to say no, since the first trio or so you add will push the overall price north of $200. But the GPU mounting gear is a $30 to $50 value on its own, and that “Thermaltake 25” color scheme isn’t something you will find most anywhere else for any price, outside of a custom paint job. If you’re looking to assemble a high-visibility build with at least one big radiator, and you have a snazzy GPU you want to show off face-on, the CTE E600 is a fine choice and worth the money. But we’d buy it more on the strength of the color, the appearance, and the cooler-installation flexibility than for the unusual motherboard rotation.
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