The Level 10 GT Snow Edition computer chassis from Thermaltake is a professional looking gamer’s case that has a lot of features that gamers and enthusiasts will enjoy along with the plain good looks of a case designed by BMW.
Ease of Use, Performance: 23/25 Look & Feel: 22/25 Features 22/25 How much I enjoy 25/25 Total: 92/100
Thermaltake partnered with high end car manufacturer BMW to design a few computer cases that include style and a unique compartmentalized design starting with the Level 10. The Level 10 is an expensive case and with the potential sales being limited with its $800 price tag the company wisely decided to offer a lower featured case but with the same quality design.
The Level 10 GT combines some of the classic BMW design features and especially the compartmentalized areas for a fantastic chassis, especially for gamers. If you need to work on your computer from time to time for more than just cleaning a chassis or case that is user friendly is a must.
The Level 10 GT features a large swing out door for the motherboard area above the video cards and the CPU so doing work on just the motherboard and its components is easy. The drives are hot swappable with removable trays including plugs lined up with each drawer for connecting hard drives.
If your motherboard has hot swappable features this makes a great way to swap out drives if you need to while your system is running. You need to ensure your system is hot swappable and that you do not, this is really important, remove the system hard drive.
The top optical drive area allows better cooling as well as a more permanent solution for the less replaced components even though replacing any optical drive is easy. The main design of the Level 10 GT is compartmentalized so working on any one component or sets of components does not have to interfere with others and the Snow Edition really takes this to an extreme.
I love the simple white with black colors and the case is perfect for the enthusiast gamer or anyone who wants a chassis that has all the features of a more expensive case. The case is expensive at about $300 but far less than its big brother the Level 10 while containing many of the same features.
The Level 10 GT comes with the case and the usual screws and hardware that many cases come with along with a very nice protective cloth over the case. The case includes wiring harness straps and an eight pin Molex extension for the more current motherboards and the power required of the high end CPU’s.
The Level 10 GT includes a headset rest that attaches to the left side of the case next to the optical drives near the top which is very handy. The case has locks for the side door above the motherboard as well as the hard drives to keep prying hands out of your system and the door swings wide when you need to work on it.
Installing a system is easy with all the features, I have a standard ATX motherboard but a large one will also fit along with longer video cards. I have two GTX 460 video cards with the Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME Plus coolers attached that gives the cards a total length of almost twelve inches.
I also have the Noctua NH-D14 cooler which is about the largest cooler I have ever used and it fits with room to spare in the full sized case. You can also install a liquid cooler and the radiator inside the case on the top in place of the upper fan with plenty of room for your CPU and video card setup.
The Level 10 does have plenty of room and this is due to the full sized case but also the almost separate areas for the drives which make replacement easy. Hard drives mount in a tray and slide into the system with the power and drive connectors mounted on the cage.
You simply plug your SATA cable into the adapter for the bays you want to plug drives into and the adapter lines up with the drives connector when it is slid in. The power for all the hard drives comes from a four pin Molex adapter cable that attaches to your power supply but again you plug your power supply into a hard mounted Molex cable that supplies the drives.
The optical drives have the regular power supply cables accessible from the inside by the motherboard but with over 3 inches between the ATX motherboard and the backs of the optical drives there is plenty of room. The front panel comes off easily with a tug but you have to watch out for the power button and reset button if you’re going to try removing the cover while power is connected.
Once when I was setting up my system I did turn on power when installing the cover by pushing the power button in a bit but this was no problem by simply removing power form the power supply when working on the cover. I had an easy time with installing my system even with the oversized cooler and the longer video cards that I have as well as having the two cards in SLI.
The case comes ready for several different water cooling solutions including a top mount for a radiator or running water cooling lines out the back of the chassis. The Level 10 GT comes with a front, top and side 20cm fan that are all Colorshift enabled for lighting effects.
The rear 14cm fan is a more common non lighted fan but the Colorshift fans can switch between red, green, blue and combinations of these from flashing between the colors to all colors on parts of each fan. You can also simply have all the colors off with the default color being the solid blue when you turn the system on.
There is a case mounted high and low speed switch on the top of the case for changing the fan speed for more cooling if needed along with the fan color button. The top also has a slot for two highspeed USB connectors and the Level 10 GT comes with a USB 3.0 highspeed to a 20 pin internal connector cable.
My motherboard does not have this type of connector so I removed the cable, you can buy two USB 3.0 to external USB A cables for connecting to a rear PCI or PCI Express USB 3.0 card. The top panel also includes an eSATA connection on the top that connects to a regular SATA connector on your motherboard internally.
The front panel has the usual Power and Reset buttons along with four USB connectors and the front panel audio and microphone connections. The internal cables are quite long and you will have no problems connecting them to any motherboard whether Micro ATX, ATX or Extended ATX.
The front panel has a small floppy drive panel next to the drive lock and does include the cover if you don’t use any floppy drives. The two locks work independently to lock the drives in place or the side door and the side door releases using a button on the bottom of the panel.
Let’s see, fully featured cable management inside, locations for additional fans, handle securely connected to case, locking cable for keyboard/mouse and even louvered side panel fan for directional cooling on motherboard. Any other features that I have not mentioned would just be icing on the cake as this is about the most fully featured chassis for a computer I have ever dealt with.
The Level 10 GT is a fantastic case and makes a great system with all the features you could want, even a place to hang your favorite gaming headset. I highly recommend the Thermaltake Level 10 GT for a fully featured computer chassis that has just about everything you could want in a full tower case.