Case Deconstructed – Inner Components

If you remove the top fan mounting brackets from the case, you get a much better view into the cases internal design and parts like the motherboard tray, device bays, and hard disk bays. Keep in mind that Thermaltake designed the Core x9 to be stripped all the way down to its frame, so we still have a few more layers to strip out. From the top-down view, you can see that the motherboard tray takes up the back half of the case, leaving quite a bit of room for components and liquid cooling equipment in the front half of the case.

With the top fan mounts removed, we also get a much better view of the interior width of the case (in between the middle supports running the depth of the case). From one side to the other, the middle support beams are 14" apart, meaning that there is a bit more than 1/2" of space between the side panel and the plane of the cases middle support beams. This give you some interesting cable routing options between the lower and upper portions of the case even with the side panels installed..

The removable motherboard tray is held in place with two thumbscrews in the front sides and two flat head screws to the rear. The rear screws fit into a channel in the tray allow the tray to slide and be removed without fully removing the rear screws. You simply remove the front thumbscrews and loosen the rear screws and the motherboard try slides forward and up to remove. Both sets of screws fix directly into the side mid-support beams. The grommeted pass-through holes in the motherboard tray are positioned perfectly for power, drive, and control cables no matter how large of a board you choose to install. They remain fully unblocked even with an E-ATX style board installed. The recessed portion of the tray (underneath the CPU socket area of the board) acts as a hard drive mount point with drives mounted underneath the plate. The plate is recessed so it does not impede any bottom mount plates used for cooler mounting to the CPU.

From the inside rear view of the case, you can see that the case supports mounting of up to eight PCIe style cards with thumbscrews holding the cards in place. Grommeted pass-through holes are provided directly above the PCIe hold downs for power or liquid coolant tubing routing. Further, the fan mount directly above the rear panel support up to a 140mm fan or radiator with a 120mm fan provided with the case by default. The provided fan mount holes allows for height adjustment as needed.

Removing the motherboard tray reveals the bottom mounts points of the case, including the drive bays, the covered section to the rear left of the case, and the default PSU mount location to the rear right of the case. The case is designed to allow PSU mounting on either side of the case, but the cover can only be mounted in the rear left section of the case. If you choose to mount the PSU on the left side of the case, the cover does not impede the PSU or its power cabled in any way. Further, the provided PSU support bracket can be mounted on either side of the case.

From the inside and with the front panel removed (as well as the motherboard tray), you get a good view of just how much space is available along the inside front of the case even with the device bays in place. Further, Thermaltake gave a lot of options for fan mounting and wire / tubing pass-through.

The removable pass-through plate, located in the floor of the case just behind the front panel fan, is held fast by to flush-mounted screws to the rear of the panel. The panel has tabs on its bottom that slid into matching slot in the floor of the case. Once removed, a large pass-through hole is revealed for use when stacking multiple Core X9 cases on top of each other.

With all parts stripped from the case, you get much better view of the configurability of the case in terms PSU, fan/radiator, and drive bay mounting. The bottom left and right portions of the case are identically designed, allowing for bottom mounting of the support brackets in four different locations (front left, front right, rear left, rear right). The brackets can also be side mounted in up to four locations (front left, front right, rear left, rear right). In the bottom mount configuration, the brackets can be used for either fan/radiator mounting or for drive bay mounting. The side-mount configuration only supports fan/radiator mounting to the bracket. When used in the bottom rear left configuration, the mount bracket is hidden underneath the cover. The cover itself does not impede use of the bracket for either purpose, that being drive bay or fan/radiator mounting.

When used in the bottom mount configuration, the support brackets have hooks that fit in to mount holes towards the center section of the bottom plate and are held fast with two thumbscrews along the outside edges. The thumbscrews fasten directly into the case bottom plate.

In the side-mount configuration, the support brackets are held in place with four thumbscrews. Two fix it to the outside of the middle support beam and two fix it to a curved section of the case side, allowing the bracket to float slightly above the bottom deck of the case. The support brackets from indented mount points for the upper set of screws so that the bracket sits vertically along the inside of the case.

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