Glorious Extravagance: Thermaltake's Core X9 Snow Edition Modular Chassis

Back at CES, Thermaltake announced its Core X series cases, which are huge, modular, stackable cases that you can use to build some insane rigs. At the show they came in a Mini-ITX variant called the Core X1, a Micro-ATX variant called the Core X2, and an E-ATX variant called the Core X9, and they were all black. Today, Thermaltake announced another Core X9 -- the Snow Edition. Guess what color it is.

Beyond the white paint job, there is no difference between the standard Core X9 and the Core X9 Snow Edition. The case measures 502 x 380 x 640 mm and weighs a hefty 17 kg when empty. The case is completely modular, allowing you to almost completely change the internal layout to your needs. It is so modular, in fact, that you can stack multiple Core X9s to create a tower and mount components in both of them as if it was a single larger case. Unfortunately, Thermaltake did not provide any images of the Snow Edition stacked.

At CES, ThermalTake's Shannon Robb said with a wink, "We created the problem [a 540 mm radiator] so we made the solution [the Core X-series]." Of course, with sensibility thrown out the window, you can start to feast on all the possible combinations of hardware you can get into the Core X9. You can build a dual-system case; you can opt to have your hardware in one end, with cooling in the other end; or you can "densely" pack all of the hardware into one of the cases. For that matter, filling up two of these will be rather costly, no matter how cheap the hardware is that you decide to use.

Inside, the case is separated into multiple chambers, with the top chamber offering room for a motherboard, four dual-slot graphics cards of any reasonable or unreasonable size, three optical drive bays, and more radiators than you'll ever need. The bottom chamber offers room for two 3.5" drive cages, each of which can house three hard drives.

The side panels feature large windows, and the top and bottom panels of the case are removable for when you want to stack them. The side of the I/O module can also be swapped, putting it in the ideal location for where you wish to place the system on your desk -- assuming you're brave enough to place this on your desk.

Anyway, if you like the concept, but aren't sure whether your hardware will fit, don't worry -- it will fit. If it doesn't, just get a second one and stack them.

Pricing for the Core X9 Snow Edition sits at $179.99, which is $10 more than the original black variant.

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