Thermaltake Tsunami Aluminum Case (VA3000)

With the Tsunami case, Thermaltake has really been pushing their "mirror coating" paint job.  I'd say a picture is worth a thousand words if you look below.  I have seen some nice paint jobs over the years but the Tsunami's (and the LANMOTO's) is hands down, without question, comment or reservation the best paint job I have ever seen on a case.  The paint job was so good in fact that taking pictures of this case proved to be quite a challenge.

Wrapping things up on the outside of the Tsunami we find ourselves on top.  A small flap opens to expose two USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire port in addition to a speaker and mic port.  As far as a LAN box is concerned, this is the way to go to give you ready access to these needed jacks.

A Look Inside

Popping the side panel off, I superficially was disappointed to not see a removable mainboard tray.  The work room was only adequate until I saw that both the HDD and FDD racks were removable.  This changed things considerably in regards to work room which completely negating the lack of the removable mobo tray.  We'll look at the racks shortly but let's start at the case rear.

Along the rear wall is the 120mm blue LED exhaust fan we mentioned earlier.  Just below this is another excellent feature brought over from the LANMOTO which is the PCI/AGP card clips. 

These clips are on all seven of the expansion slots and work so simply, you really do have to wonder why this hasn't been the standard for years.  Pull the clip back, install your card, push the clip back in and into a snug locking position and you're done.  One last point before we move forward is the chassis intruder sensor.  Provided your mainboard allows for this function, this is a nice plus.  If your mainboard doesn't allow for it, the sensor and its wire are easily removed.

The Thermaltake Tsunami is set up to accept a max of four exposed 5.25" devices, two exposed 3.5" devices and five hidden 3.5" devices.

The hard drive cage is completely removable as we previously noted.  A small thumb screw at the bottom and clip at the top give you the ability to remove the cage quickly and easily.  If you look closely you will also notice the black grommets at the HDD mounting points on the rack.  These grommets dampen any vibration that may emanate from your drives.  To my knowledge, this was first seen in the Kingwin KT-424.  Special screws are necessary to install your drives in the rack.  These are of course included with the case.

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