Inside the BMW-designed Thermaltake Case

By Marcus Yam
published

We get to see what's under the hood.

We first got an eyes-on the BMW-designed Thermaltake PC case during CeBit and we liked the way it looked. Instead of just having one giant box for all the computer components to breathe the same air, the Level 10 separates everything inside a case into four parts -- the PSU, optical drives, hard disk drives and one for the CPU and expansion cards. Still, we didn’t know exactly how things worked on the inside or how it would circulate air for cooling.

Today we got an opportunity to go hands-on with it. Each compartment, including each drive bay, has its own cooling with a fan on the bottom and a fan on top. As expected, it’s not the most easy-access or mod-friendly case, but it still looks pretty cool.

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Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
29 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dragonfang18
    if it is not expensive, then I think I will look into buying one.
    Reply
  • kezix_69
    Brilliant. Make it $150 or less and I'll buy one!
    Reply
  • Relayer
    Dusting it will be a bit of a pain, with all the separate parts and tight spaces to get into. It definitely looks cool though and should perform well.
    Reply
  • starhoof
    Great idea to put everything in each module to have its own cooling. however, it might be a bit of trouble to install all of the hardware, and it might run into problem with being a bit cramped, and would a nice aftermarket cooler fit in it ?
    Reply
  • gcolefla
    i imagine this will be over $200 if not over $300. The abs canyon has a similar temp chamber concept and its $600 and not designed by BMW. We can hope its under $200 though, especially to have cable management and hot swap hard drive bays like this. I even think my mac friends would think this is a cool design.
    Reply
  • grieve
    BMW + Thermaltake = $$$$

    I don't think any large aftermarket heatsinks will fit... BUT It is pretty cool anyway. Maybe we will get lucky and it will be a reasonable price.
    Reply
  • coopchennick
    I think this looks so awesome. I would love to have one of these.

    But I bet this thing will be very expensive.
    Innovative new design by BMW...
    Reply
  • in the 6th picture there is an aftermarket cooler, although not a huge one
    Reply
  • Basically, with all those fans, everything being pratically external, and all those surfaces it will be a very noisy dust magnet.

    Perfect for posers who think image and a badge are more important than cost or actual usefulness/functionality.

    Hmm... exactly like BMW cars and their drivers really.
    Reply
  • 7amood
    this case is sexy... and it's a concept design... so i guess it'll cost way out of the range of a regular full tower case.
    I prefer a normal big case but this is on is so hot looking and I want one just to keep it and look at it.
    I guess i'll wait and hope that 12 or 18 months from now, a similar design with less flaws and much lower price tag will be out.
    Reply