ThermalTake V6 BlacX Edition review

Installation and testing
To test the ease of installation I installed my old ASUS Commando motherboard with an Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 processor into the ThermalTake V6 BlacX.

During the installation, I experienced that the interior is too compact. Lining up the motherboard and fitting the screws into the holes was quite hard due to the limited working space, and one of the big design flaws is that there's not enough room between the upper motherboard standoffs and the top panel.

There's so little room that I even had to remove the 200mm exhaust fan because its blades were touching the 8-pin power connector of my motherboard. The motherboard clearance is very poorly thought out, if V6 BlacX was just a couple of centimeters bigger it would have been a lot easier to install hardware into this case.

Another problem with the V6 BlacX is the awkward HDD cage. The HDD cage can be removed without any tools, but the HDDs are secured with screws and it's pretty much impossible to reach the holes without a screwdriver with a magnetic tip.

The installation of the power supply, graphics card and DVD burner did not cause any problems. There's very little room for cable management though, especially if you don't have a modular PSU it will be pretty hard to nicely tuck all your cables away.

The blue status LED lights up when you boot your system and the HDD LED flashes red during HDD activity. The 120mm exhaust fan is quite noisy but you can adjust its RPM with tools like Speedfan. The 200mm exhaust fan has blue LEDs and is pretty quiet, but as I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago I was unable to install this fan into my case due to clearance issues with the motherboard.

Conclusion
The main selling point of this case is the integrated SATA dock, standalone editions are sold for as much as $40 so that fact alone makes this $69 case a pretty nice deal if you need such a dock. The V6 BlacX's design is visually appealing and its compact size and light weight make it a nice companion for LAN parties, but unfortunately ThermalTake dropped the ball on the interior of this case.

If you don't swap hardware every couple of months it's a decent case, but if you frequently replace hardware this isn't the best case to get. There's very little working space, few room for cable management and due to clearance issues with the motherboard I was unable to install the 200mm exhaust fan. Additionally, another weak point of the V6 BlacX is the HDD mounting system, I was expecting a tool-free installation method but you have to use screws and the holes are not easily accessible.

If the case was a bit roomier and included a better HDD cage I would give it a 8.5/10, but in its current form, it only deserves a 6.5/10.

The Good Stuff

Clean look

Top-mounted SATA docking station

Cut-out for easy CPU cooler swapping

Nice tool-free mounting mechanisms for PCIe slots and 5.25" bays.

All-black interior

Support for one 2.5" SSD/HDD

Compact and light-weight

The Bad Stuff

Clearance issues, little work space and the fan blades of the 200mm fan touched my motherboard.

Awkward HDD mounting system

Upper 5.25" bay can't be used for optical drive due to the cables of the SATA dock.

Little room for cable management

No dust filters for side and top panel.