Thermaltake Shark Case Help

[Volteau]

Hey guys,

Not sure if this is where my question belongs (so the admins can feel free to move it to the appropriate section if need be) but here goes: I found an old Thermaltake Shark Case at a friend's house and he let me have it. Coincidently I am in the process of building a new computer, and since it's a full tower, I thought myself lucky. But as I started building I started questioning my luck. I did some research on it and it seems this is quite an old case with an old design. The hard drive "enclosures" are odd and don't seem to "grab" the HDDs firmly enough (in my case two ssds in an HDD type enclosure), the fans work with 4 pin molex connectors, and the power led is 3 holed instead of the more contemporary 2 or even 1 holed ones, which my motherboard can’t correctly accommodate (and hence the power led does not turn on). So the question: should I upgrade to a newer full tower setup? I know it might seem like I answered my question, but I still wanna hear what you guys have to say.

My system specs are (just for the sake of listing them, just in case):
MSI Z170A Gaming M5
Intel Skylake 6700
NVIDIA 970FTW
The ssds in the enclosure I mention above
16gb DDR4

Thanks,
Volteau

 

[Lutfij]

It's a good thing you've mentioned your systems specs for us to guage the situation. Good job!

I'd say you should go for a new case as the design where your PSU is pulling in warmer air itself is a shot to the feet reducing PSU efficiency and consequently lifespan. The sort of components that the case was built for are now considered antiquated devices such as optical disk drives(ODD's) there isn't space to mount your SSD's securely not are there proper cablemanagement grommets/holes inside the case to work with. I almost forgot, it has no FP USB3.0 and HD audio connectivity. Cooling inside it is also crippled since you're confined to a single 120mm radiator if you're going CLC or custom level watercooling. The extra wires and cut worthy areas also make for a tiresome build process.

I might be taking the high road with this Thermaltake chassis but I myself am in possession of a Thermaltake Armor Jr chassis that is yet operational though I'm trying to amass the funding to make the jump for a better PSU, case and introduce my little bro(owner of the Armor Jr) to custom watercooling.

Irrespective of budget, some recommendations can be:
NZXT S340/Noctis
Corsair 100R/230T
Phanteks Eclipse P400/Enthoo Evolv ATX
Coolermaster Master Case 5(or pro)

^ they all have a foot over the limitations I've listed above. Thermals wise they will all be much much better than the Shark you currently have.

* You could mod the case and set you own standards but the amount of time, effort and resources you'll need to pool into that will be much more than what you're intending to do with your system now. Perhaps be a pet project of your's?