Thermaltake Kandalf Aluminum Case (VA9000)

The Kandalf sports a distinctive looking front bezel.  Two doors open from opposing sides to reveal the face.  The right door as you can see below, has a black aluminum plate with a circular attachment at the top.  Maybe the case should have been called the CANdalf instead of the Kandalf.  The aluminum 'Kan' has some blue LEDs mounted so a blue glow is present inside with things powered up.  Also, on the bottom half of the bezel door's face is a Thermaltake name logo that is illuminated.  A switch inside the case allows this to be turned off, on or to blink.

These two aluminum doors are held in place by a magnet/steel shim arrangement we have seen becoming more at more popular at Thermaltake.  At first glance (and second glance too for that matter) the 5.25" bays look odd.  This is because there are a total of eleven bays.  The top most bay is filled with a slide in tray that has your power and reset buttons as well as power and HDD activity lamps.  The small screened area can be pushed out to accept a floppy drive or left in place so you can put a HDD there.  The screen mesh is reasonable tight but there is no filter behind it.  This is noteworthy only because each of the other bay cover screens you see have a removable filter placed immediately behind it.  I do so love a clean machine.  This tray can be removed and placed in any one of the other ten bay positions.

  

The bottom tray has two finger grips that allow you to access a drawer.  The drawer area is large enough for CD/DVDs.  I was able to get 20 bare CDs in there.  Talk about packing for a LAN party.  This drawer like the power button tray, can be removed and placed in any of the other open bays spots.

  

Here's a closer look at the filtered bay cover, front and back.  They are easily removed by two small clips on their outer edge.

The oversized window shown below is a bit of an unusual design without looking too much over the top.  Basically with the entire front bezel feeding filtered fresh air into the case there is no need to break up the clean lines of the side panel with a fan.  The door as you can imagine is large and as such has two fasteners.  Each of these is colored black and are very smooth in operations.  The top most of these has a lock recessed in it so you can secure your rig from curious fingers.

Up top we find the familiar top mounted user ports originally introduced with Tt's Xaser III case.  The design has certainly gone through an evolution of sorts.  The access ports are on one end of a large oval whose rearmost crescent serves as venting for the top of the case.  This vent area is augmented by a 90mm exhaust fan mounted immediately beneath it.

  

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