They super copied every other company's products, and now they get coverage from almost all the websites owned by Purch, and many other advertising companies too. Nice to see how money works.
I will be covering almost every company I met with at Computex, which includes a bunch of case companies. Thermaltake was the first one simply because my first meeting was with them, but you'll be seeing more content as the day progresses. No money is involved, or at least there is none heading my way.
I just signed up to comment on this matter! My eyes are starting to bleed, when I see a big-sized company like Thermaltake ignoring CaseLabs's statement on Facebook... Being this disrespectful and behaving weird with all those "copies" (google "Thermalfake"), it's not just case's.
I decided for myself to never buy Thermaltake products anymore (bought a case in 2009).
And Kristian, I am sorry if I questioned your work (I have seen your previous works and most of them our very informatic) but this is an outlier when I see your first choice is the one company that in forums everyone is mentioning them as being the copiers of others work without shame.
I do find it odd that the allegations swirling around Computex were not mentioned at all in this article. Seems like this is relatively huge news around the offerings they have.
Libel is when an news organization makes a claim that hurts a person or company without evidence. I highly doubt that Kristian would have gotten a comment out of the Thermaltake booth on a legal issue. Just because serious accusations are flying around Facebook and in forums doesn't make it a topic to cover for Anandtech.
Anandtech, thank you for keeping out of the drama. Thanks for reporting the pertinent forum topics that have been written about in the past. Nvidia GTX 970 RAM configuration, Samsung Evo 840 firmware issue, and others.
I couldn't buy a Thermaltake this time around. My last case was a Thermaltake Mozart TX that I bought in late 2007 and has served me well. Solid, lots of space, unique, but a bit heavy. Their offerings today look too much like pissed off transformers. I'm glad I went with my Corsair Obsidian 900d. I really like Corsair as a company (and Antec, in the case realm) so I had no problem supporting them. What TT is doing these days makes me sad.
I was baffled by the misleading product specs on Thermaltake products many years ago (for example - 2000RPM case fans with 9dbA noise rating or similar). I've read lots of reviews covering their products through the years and my general impression of this company was never a good one. The recent case with CaseLabs further cemented my decision to never even think of buying a Thermaltake product. And you're right, it's telling that not a single word is mentioned in the story about the fact that at least one case seen in the photos above is a straight rip off from another company.
Around 2000, when building silent high performance PCs was still a major challenge, I treid several TT products. Fans, coolers etc. I regretted buying most of them due to low performance and since then haven't seen anything to make me try them again. Flashy looks seems to be what they're best at.
There are only so many ways to create a box to keep standardised computer components in. If you want to get upset about this you also have to support Apple's attempts to copyright a rectangle with rounded corners.
I own the Thermaltake Armor (now broken, felt apart by itself - haha). The front curved panels have hinges while the Bitfenix curved panels are uniform with the chassis. The Thermaltake one has drive bay support and big feets while Bitfenix has none of both. The Bitfenix case has different features then Thermaltake's case.
PS: The main issue here is that a big company (Thermaltake) is hurting a smaller company (CaseLabs), which emphasizes on premium-quality, flexibility, support and other great values while Thermaltake is MAINLY focusing on profit-maximizing.
But what TT is doing is blatant copying. It's not just a few similarities, it's only a few differences just to be different. The fan controllers alone are enough to prove it's a straight copying of styles.
Nothing original, all I see is CaseLabs and Corsair replicas. Will definitely never buy another Thermaltake product after this blatant copying of designs.... Only used them for low end builds anyways.
My experience with Thermaltake products is that they are of inferior quality compared to other competing products. A friend has a huge TT case from a few years back and when we did some maintenance on it this year, we noticed that three of its four pre-installed fans were totally jammed and were hard to rotate even with hands. We have a working 286 PC from 1986 at my parents' place with the stock fan still alive and working just as well as it did 29 years ago... I had a TT cpu cooler years ago, the fan was super loud and it just wasn't very effective at cooling anything, except on full blast when it was so loud no one could tolerate the noise. Now that TT has blatantly copied their case designs from Caselabs, I'm just going to add TT to the small list of things I'm boycotting.
The WP200 is an interesting concept, besides its horrible looks. But: why te **** do the place the mainboards back-to-back, accompanied by many "small" fans at the front & back? They should be facing each other, so they can share the airflow from fewer bigger fans.
Building a system into a case like that would be quite hard. The case would need at least one removable motherboard tray, and you'd need to do the cabling of both motherboards, GPUs and so on before attaching the motherboard tray back in to the case. When the MBs are facing each other, both sides of the case are blocked by the motherboards and there's no way to work on anything inside the case. Also, the motherboards would be oriented so that the right hand side one is upright like in a normal ATX case, and the left one would be reversed so that the GPU(s) are on top and the CPU is at the bottom. Graphics cards on the reversed motherboard would be sucking in air from the top of the case, which is where all of the hot air tends to rise. You'd need a very odd airflow setup to cool a system like that. It would need air intakes at the bottom, top and rear, and then blow it out from the front. Unless you watercool the entire thing, in which case you can have the radiators pretty much wherever you want. Having the motherboards' rear IO panels facing up like in Silverstone Raven line of cases would simplify things, as you could have the standard bottom-to-top airflow and it would work just fine. Still the problem of how to build your system with motherboards facing each other would exist.
Some valid points. Movable motherboard trays are nothing unheard of, but surely complicate things. In order to keep the power cables from messing with such a movable tray, one would want to put the PSU into the tray as well. Or use some power extensions mounted to the tray.. which might work well with a PSU shared between both systems, or be needed for that anyway.
But don't worry about cooling this setup - cooling is the reason why I'd want it in the first place. Imagine a massive fan at the front, or 2 - 4 large ones. they'd be silent and work still in an energy-efficient range. They wouldn't produce much pressure & air speed, but the flow would be massive due to the sheer size. There would be no appreciable heat accumulation, so it wouldn't matter where GPUs suck their air in. The airflow would be simply from the front to the exhaust at the back.
Of course such a system would be a bit expensive. But if it saves you another case, saves you another PSU and provides better cooling there may be a market for this.
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mmrezaie - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
They super copied every other company's products, and now they get coverage from almost all the websites owned by Purch, and many other advertising companies too. Nice to see how money works.Kristian Vättö - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I will be covering almost every company I met with at Computex, which includes a bunch of case companies. Thermaltake was the first one simply because my first meeting was with them, but you'll be seeing more content as the day progresses. No money is involved, or at least there is none heading my way.bloodinmyveins - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I just signed up to comment on this matter! My eyes are starting to bleed, when I see a big-sized company like Thermaltake ignoring CaseLabs's statement on Facebook... Being this disrespectful and behaving weird with all those "copies" (google "Thermalfake"), it's not just case's.I decided for myself to never buy Thermaltake products anymore (bought a case in 2009).
sad...
mmrezaie - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
It's not just Caselab: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cases_cooling/t...And Kristian, I am sorry if I questioned your work (I have seen your previous works and most of them our very informatic) but this is an outlier when I see your first choice is the one company that in forums everyone is mentioning them as being the copiers of others work without shame.
Me sad too ...
AndrewJacksonZA - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Yeah... these are some heavy allegations.https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=...
Kepe - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I think it would be worth mentioning in the article that Thermaltake copied their case designs from Caselabs.wicketr - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I do find it odd that the allegations swirling around Computex were not mentioned at all in this article. Seems like this is relatively huge news around the offerings they have.eanazag - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Libel is when an news organization makes a claim that hurts a person or company without evidence. I highly doubt that Kristian would have gotten a comment out of the Thermaltake booth on a legal issue. Just because serious accusations are flying around Facebook and in forums doesn't make it a topic to cover for Anandtech.Anandtech, thank you for keeping out of the drama. Thanks for reporting the pertinent forum topics that have been written about in the past. Nvidia GTX 970 RAM configuration, Samsung Evo 840 firmware issue, and others.
sabrewings - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I couldn't buy a Thermaltake this time around. My last case was a Thermaltake Mozart TX that I bought in late 2007 and has served me well. Solid, lots of space, unique, but a bit heavy. Their offerings today look too much like pissed off transformers. I'm glad I went with my Corsair Obsidian 900d. I really like Corsair as a company (and Antec, in the case realm) so I had no problem supporting them. What TT is doing these days makes me sad.npp - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I was baffled by the misleading product specs on Thermaltake products many years ago (for example - 2000RPM case fans with 9dbA noise rating or similar). I've read lots of reviews covering their products through the years and my general impression of this company was never a good one. The recent case with CaseLabs further cemented my decision to never even think of buying a Thermaltake product. And you're right, it's telling that not a single word is mentioned in the story about the fact that at least one case seen in the photos above is a straight rip off from another company.MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Around 2000, when building silent high performance PCs was still a major challenge, I treid several TT products. Fans, coolers etc. I regretted buying most of them due to low performance and since then haven't seen anything to make me try them again. Flashy looks seems to be what they're best at.rtho782 - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
There are only so many ways to create a box to keep standardised computer components in. If you want to get upset about this you also have to support Apple's attempts to copyright a rectangle with rounded corners.How about the Termaltake Armor, from 2007:
http://www.thermaltake.com/db/pictures/modules/PDT...
Vs the Bitfenix Pandora, from 2015:
http://aphnetworks.com/review/bitfenix-pandora-win...
Very similar styles with the curved in front panels.
90% of PC cases are of the same basic design, drive bays at the front, motherboard with the slots on the bottom facing the back, etc.
bloodinmyveins - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
I own the Thermaltake Armor (now broken, felt apart by itself - haha). The front curved panels have hinges while the Bitfenix curved panels are uniform with the chassis. The Thermaltake one has drive bay support and big feets while Bitfenix has none of both. The Bitfenix case has different features then Thermaltake's case.And yes, the look kinda alike but not similar.
check : http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis...
PS: The main issue here is that a big company (Thermaltake) is hurting a smaller company (CaseLabs), which emphasizes on premium-quality, flexibility, support and other great values while Thermaltake is MAINLY focusing on profit-maximizing.
sabrewings - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
But what TT is doing is blatant copying. It's not just a few similarities, it's only a few differences just to be different. The fan controllers alone are enough to prove it's a straight copying of styles.YouGeeElWhy - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
>Thermaltake also displayed a DRAM kit with pre-installed liquid cooling block.Of all the things to waste money on...
adamthepolak - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Nothing original, all I see is CaseLabs and Corsair replicas. Will definitely never buy another Thermaltake product after this blatant copying of designs.... Only used them for low end builds anyways.Kepe - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
My experience with Thermaltake products is that they are of inferior quality compared to other competing products. A friend has a huge TT case from a few years back and when we did some maintenance on it this year, we noticed that three of its four pre-installed fans were totally jammed and were hard to rotate even with hands. We have a working 286 PC from 1986 at my parents' place with the stock fan still alive and working just as well as it did 29 years ago...I had a TT cpu cooler years ago, the fan was super loud and it just wasn't very effective at cooling anything, except on full blast when it was so loud no one could tolerate the noise. Now that TT has blatantly copied their case designs from Caselabs, I'm just going to add TT to the small list of things I'm boycotting.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
The WP200 is an interesting concept, besides its horrible looks. But: why te **** do the place the mainboards back-to-back, accompanied by many "small" fans at the front & back? They should be facing each other, so they can share the airflow from fewer bigger fans.Kepe - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Building a system into a case like that would be quite hard. The case would need at least one removable motherboard tray, and you'd need to do the cabling of both motherboards, GPUs and so on before attaching the motherboard tray back in to the case. When the MBs are facing each other, both sides of the case are blocked by the motherboards and there's no way to work on anything inside the case.Also, the motherboards would be oriented so that the right hand side one is upright like in a normal ATX case, and the left one would be reversed so that the GPU(s) are on top and the CPU is at the bottom. Graphics cards on the reversed motherboard would be sucking in air from the top of the case, which is where all of the hot air tends to rise. You'd need a very odd airflow setup to cool a system like that. It would need air intakes at the bottom, top and rear, and then blow it out from the front. Unless you watercool the entire thing, in which case you can have the radiators pretty much wherever you want.
Having the motherboards' rear IO panels facing up like in Silverstone Raven line of cases would simplify things, as you could have the standard bottom-to-top airflow and it would work just fine. Still the problem of how to build your system with motherboards facing each other would exist.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, June 9, 2015 - link
Some valid points. Movable motherboard trays are nothing unheard of, but surely complicate things. In order to keep the power cables from messing with such a movable tray, one would want to put the PSU into the tray as well. Or use some power extensions mounted to the tray.. which might work well with a PSU shared between both systems, or be needed for that anyway.But don't worry about cooling this setup - cooling is the reason why I'd want it in the first place. Imagine a massive fan at the front, or 2 - 4 large ones. they'd be silent and work still in an energy-efficient range. They wouldn't produce much pressure & air speed, but the flow would be massive due to the sheer size. There would be no appreciable heat accumulation, so it wouldn't matter where GPUs suck their air in. The airflow would be simply from the front to the exhaust at the back.
Of course such a system would be a bit expensive. But if it saves you another case, saves you another PSU and provides better cooling there may be a market for this.