After being live for a full 24 hours, the Thermaltake “Ask Me Anything” has officially concluded!
Epic thanks to Shannon Robb at Thermaltake for taking time out of his schedule to answer all of the questions from Tom's Hardware's community. We know this was a lot of work on his end, and we're greatly appreciative of what went into engaging with our forum.
Q. Why not make custom threaded cables to be bought separately for your PSU's?
A. The idea for custom sleeved cables has been brought up and considered at length. The decision has not been finalized as to whether they would be full length or extensions, but with the announcement of our Digital or DPS series PSU's the possibility of custom sleeved cable options are a lot more likely.
Q. Thermaltake turned a lot of heads when it partnered with BMW Designworks and showed the world that gaming mouse. Any other partnerships on the horizon with BMW Designworks or others for products coming out that you can clue us in on?
A. That is a good question and thank you for asking! The BMW Designworks USA partnership has been very important to allow us to show we are willing to do things with designs most others would not dare. As you know the Level 10 M Headset is coming quickly and should be here sometime soon.As for the future, you never know, the wheels are always turning for our designers so, I guess I would say "stay tuned" as there are many cool things which have not been announced.
Q. Do you plan the modular drive cages and SSD mounts in your future cases?
A. As I myself am a more Extreme enthusiasts (I have not had an air cooled rig in probably 7 years, normally benching on LN2 when I have time) I definitely have been pushing our design team for better and better in terms of liquid cooling.Our design team is an awesome and very talented group and I think for those looking for the higher level of modularity and liquid cooling, they will be happy to see some of our new designs in the future. Unfortunately once again nothing that's announced as of yet, but rest assured the capabilities of Thermaltake chassis offerings will only get better going forward.
Q. I have always wanted to ask, if I want to buy and sell Thermaltake products in the UK, who is the best person to discuss this with at TT?
A. Normally that's a little out of my scope, but depending upon volume normally you would work directly with one of our many distribution partners, or if you deal in a substantial volume and we have an office close enough to service you maybe we can get you a direct contact to work with, but normally a distributor is the quickest and easiest for purchasing at volume for resale.
Q. I am one of those guys that do not like the Level 10 design at all, so I got myself something more conventional : Element V Full Tower Black Edition. This case is awesome, but the lack of spare parts (fans) makes it hard to match other things you put in that case (can't really put static color fan). Would be great to see some more stuff with colorshift led just like the 3 big fans in that case and a 5" extension bay to accommodate more fans. I know it's a custom built feature for that case only, but why not try to extend that to other cases with a 5" extension bay with a series of fan, from 80mm to 220mm? Anything on the way on that side?
A. The Level 10 is one of those like it or hate it designs. I don’t really think there is an in-between, but in reality like any design you see out there it’s the same thing. The Level 10 is more extreme than most. Just recently my marketing assistant and I stripped one completely and powder coated the whole thing black and white. It looked amazing, and if you check out our Facebook page, you can see some pics of it. As for your other question, the short answer is yes.Yes, we are definitely working on more chassis accessories to be able to better customize the case or make it work for you. This is also why you will notice we are trying to offer a more universal feature set across our chassis line so that these accessories will work with most models, and allows everyone to enjoy adding extra performance or even customizations to their case as needed.
Q. Thermaltake Tai-Chi is a neat passive notebook cooler. The whole system works on the tunnel effect apparently. Is this tunnel effect going to be incorporated into GPU/CPU/Chipset coolers eventually or built into cases themselves? What type of innovation can PC enthusiasts expect if any from Thermaltake in the passive convection based cooling sector?
A. Wow, that’s going back a bit now.It has to be five years since I’ve heard about that one!There is always interest in passive silent cooling however as CPU's (Both AMD and Intel) and GPUs are hitting TDP's higher than they ever have it becomes more necessary for us to move to more extreme or efficient cooling. This is why we felt it so necessary to join the AIO liquid cooling market as now stock CPUs can push over 200 Watt TDP's (AMD FX 9590 - 219W TDP) however if we are talking ULP like NUC series or something I could possibly see it, but for most desktop usages the sheer size needed for a passive cooler is prohibitive to a design.
Q. When is the XASER or a true handled/transportable LAN PARTY case coming back or is the Level 10 the answer to that?
A. LAN cases we know are popular, and we are not against revisiting handled cases but the design has to be right and I would not worry as we are always coming up with new ideas.
Q. Why is Thermaltake not manufacturing any cases with full side window like the Armor series?
A. Many of our newer chassis have large windows such as the Urban and newer Chaser series. The usage of larger windows is something you will see as an option in future cases.
Q. Mechanical Keyboards are very popular for gamers nowadays. I’ve noticed Rosewill was the 1st company to introduce dual backlit keys for mechanical keyboards, but I’m disappointed that their modes are limited. A lot of gamers prefer to play in the dark, and not all of us are FPS gamers. I myself am a MOBA gamer, and I’d like to the QWER keys to also be in illumination mode. Roccat and Corsair introduced the Per Key Backlit, where you can turn on or off each key without the others being on or off. Dual Backlit Keys + Per Key Backlit would be great and an ideal keyboard for a lot of gamers. Any plans for something like that?
A. We seem to think alike on many things here... I have thought about RGB LEDs in key switches for a while but there simply is modification to the switch body necessary to facilitate the RGB application along with some extensive controller work to allow not just RGB function but per key RGB as that is a lot of channels. Not just a on and off but a mix to allow different color. This may be possible in a future application but there are some things that would definitely have to be figured out first :)
Q. Mechanical keyboards have come a long way over the past years and now there are many different options on the market to choose from. However I noticed that there aren't many wireless mechanical keyboards available. Would Wireless mechanical keyboards be a possibility in the future for Thermaltake?
A. Wireless is always "Possible" however due to the inherent latency it is not ideal for gaming. You never know if there is enough demand for this we may try it.
Q. Any plans in the cooling department? (Fans and thermal compounds?)
A. Yes, we have some new ideas on fans and I’ll be working on revamping our fan offering soon. As for Thermal material that is something we are always working on improving as new formulations are tried to attain even better performance.
Q. What sets your self-contained liquid-cooling CPU coolers (ie Water 3.0 series) apart from the rest?
A. The Water 3.0 series was a work from our team and OEM to improve performance over previous gen while also optimization on the Fan side from our team to improve acoustics while also optimizing the fan design to best match the radiator design for the best possible performance. I'm sure you know most AIO coolers are similar and it also comes down to the small tweaks that make the difference that is the margin we work in, and just like Water 2.0 series you will see very strong performance from 3.0.
Q. What about the Frio air cooler? What makes it better than the competition?
A. There are multiple FRIO coolers so it’s hard to say what exactly you are referencing as to make it "better" than the competitor. At a certain point you reach a region of diminishing returns which is why we now moved to the NiC Series of coolers which allow for full ram compatibility on any board while still keeping an optimized fin array for great performance. I would say that Thermaltake does not target to be "better" than everyone; we just aim to make the best possible solution for any issue users may face. Yes you may get 1-2C better from a certain cooler but what good is that if you cannot use half of your memory slots?
Q. What are plans for future CPU cooling solution designs?
A. Future planned for CPU cooling – Well, there are many.... many have not been announced but we will be looking into expanding our reach into the cooling market as a whole from fans, coolers and even out Liquid cooling offerings.
Q. Why was the Thermaltake Speedo tower case discontinued? It was very practical with all of its fan configuration options and the size made it easy to build in. It was one of two cases I know of that had two 120mm rear fan mounts.
A. Speedo was a case I personally loved, but it simply got long in the tooth and eventually newer models were brought in and it was replaced. ex. I love the 57 Chevy but eventually that design went away as well, and who knows maybe a version like the Speedo will come out some day, but it’s all up to what we see from the market demand.
Q. I'm interested in your Luxa2 product line. What’s the best place to get your Metro Leather Laptop bag and the Swarovski Crystal Laptop Cooler?
A. The Metro Leather bags can be found here: (Brown) http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/store/Product.aspx?C=1225&SC=1235&ID=2255 (Black) http://www.thermaltakeusa.com/store/Product.aspx?C=1225&SC=1235&ID=2254
Q. I have been dedicated to my Xaser IV ever since its release. The reason I have not upgraded is I’ve not found another quality case with an efficient locking mechanism that will prevent intruders from booting my beautiful machine or opening my machine and possibly stealing the parts. Why did Thermaltake stopped producing chassis with lock mechanisms? What happened to the Xaser series?
A. Like many things the Xaser was eventually phased out. The thing is that the market demand for locking front panel doors has been very low ,so we discontinued that and focused on items where users demanded more. If there is enough demand we are always willing to look at new ideas or even revisit some designs.
Q. Are you expanding to the low profile range? Eg - BigTyp Revo Q2. Is there anything in the tubes to enhance them to disperse or conduct? And is there anything special planned production-wise for your crystal anniversary?
A. We have many things for cooling, and low profile is not left out of the mix, but some is merely concept as lower profile coolers take a lot of design time to ensure you do not lose function and performance due to orientation.