Introduction

Thermaltake has been around for quite a while now; ever since the first Xaser chassis came out, people knew where to look first if they fancied extreme case designs that come in big size. Each of the high-end brands from today needs to have a flagship chassis that comes with the most and best features available. Previously the Xaser series filled this gap for Thermaltake, but today Xaser is more like a normal mid tower. Spedo (Ed: yes, that's Spedo and not Speedo -- trademarks, you know) is the new lion in the cage and we will be examining it today to see how it compares to the other towers we have tested.

The Spedo with the Advanced Package has a massive appearance and an awful lot of drive bays, including all the necessary covers for the drive bays. There are twelve bays/covers but Thermaltake still manages to keep the design simple and sleek. It looks similar to the previously examined Cosmos S with this pseudo-robot style derived from science-fiction movies. One of the features is A.T.C.3 (Advanced Thermal Chamber), a system that is supposed to separate the different cooling zones within the PC. Another feature is C.R.M.3 (Cable Routing Management) which is actually really helpful.

Specifications

The initial impression on opening the case is that the interior is very roomy. There are several covers at the bottom; the first one covers the power supply and the second one above is the A.T.C.3. You can see a small green PCB at the bottom, which is another unique feature Thermaltake offers with the Spedo. This contact board has a counterpart on the side panel. When you close the panel, the two board connect to each other and enable the fan in the panel to run -- there's no need for additional cables or connections. If you install the PSU facing down with a 120mm fan, there is a filter to keep out the dust. Unfortunately the opening just beside this does not come with a filter. The other side reveals the C.R.M.3 that contains four table-like plastic parts connected to the back behind the motherboard. All cables going through the case can be stored under these parts.

System Installation

The installation of parts is easy and the first impression of a big interior space is confirmed, as there's ample room after installing a normal size ATX motherboard. Space beside and above the motherboard allows you to easily route cables and helps allow air to circulate and cool the various components. Even longer video cards will fit inside of this case with no conflicts on the right side. The hard drives install without tools since Thermaltake provides a handy tightening system in the hard drive frames.

Our only minor complaint is that after installing our standard test bed, we installed all of the plastic covers again and found that the cover above the power supply touches the third graphics cards in our triple-SLI setup. This prevents fresh air from reaching the card's intake fan, which will almost certainly cause problems. As you will see on the next page, the definitely impacts GPU cooling.

Performance

We ran our standard system configuration consisting of three 8800 Ultra GPUs, a quad-core CPU, and 2x2GB of RAM in the Spedo, with and without the A.T.C.3 cooling installed. Our results are as follows:

Temperatures with A.T.C.3 installed

Temperatures without A.T.C.3 installed

As you can see, the graphics cards reach very high temperatures; this is not only the fault of the direct contact of the plastic cover of the power supply but the whole A.T.C.3 unit. We ran the tests again without any plastic parts installed and the difference is 15°C in idle and almost 20°C with full load. Other components run slightly hotter without A.T.C.3, but the 2-3°C increase elsewhere is far less of a problem than the dramatic GPU temperature increase. Of course, our system always runs quite hot and few people have three higher-end video cards in their systems; however, if you do have a similar setup we suggest you skip the A.T.C.3 cooling -- or just look for a different case.

The change in acoustic noise is only caused by the higher fan speeds on the GPUs under load. 33dB(A) may not seem particularly loud in comparison to some systems, but if it's sitting next to you all day long it can easily drive you crazy. Those who don't care about noise (or perhaps use a headset while gaming) probably won't mind as much, but silent computing users will need to look for other options -- like fewer GPUs and perhaps water-cooling.

Closing Thoughts

The case shows very good artisanship, without a doubt. It's well built and caters to users looking for other options in the full-size tower market. There are plenty of people that love fancy cases with all sorts of features, even if some aren't actually necessary. In our opinion a case doesn't need all of the extra fluff and the Thermaltake Spedo has a case of feature overkill, but there are surely people out there who will love the appearance and design. The Thermaltake Spedo Advanced is available in stores starting at around $200 in the U.S. or 170€ in Europe.