A Trio of Thermaltake Towers

Thermaltake Eclipse DV - External

The original Eclipse was a great case. It offered much of what's needed in a desktop tower enclosure and had few faults. Let's get right to it - the only significant change in this DV variation is the change from a mere CD holder primarily for decoration in the front to a full-fledged, fully functional, DVD/CD-R/W slim-line combo drive.

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Because of this change, the front bezel can no longer really 'unfold' into two doors like the Eclipse did; instead the entire front bezel swings open to reveal the external bays and power / reset buttons. On the side is also where you'll find the button for opening the drive, just like laptop drives. In this shot you can also see the nicely folded cables for the drive and lights, ensuring one will never have to worry about the cables getting stuck or kinked when opening the door.

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Taking a step back, here's a more direct shot of the front bezel. The clear plastic strips in the middle of the front light up blue when the computer is powered on, and HDD activity is signaled by a red LED adding to the light show on the left side of the bottom strip. A disc in the drive is quite visible through the sharp looking window, not unlike many popular table-top CD players available.

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The ornament at the bottom is supposed to indicate volume based on a soundcard's output levels, but in our experience it seemed to respond directly to access of the disc in the included drive, as it was glowing even with our on-board sound card disabled in our test bed.

Now we'll examine that right side in a little more detail. The lock and front ports are here, closer to the bottom, so along with the drive opening in this direction here are two more reasons to make sure there is plenty of clearance on the right side of the case towards the front.

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The Eclipse DV suffers from a problem found in many other cases unfortunately, and that is the problem of requiring a certain amount of clearance on both sides of the case for optimum usability / appearance. On the one hand, the ports, the optical drive, and the main front door are all accessed from this side, but enjoying the view the case window provides and doing anything internal requires relatively unrestricted access from the left side. The good news though is that there is no need for completely unrestricted access to the right side - only the front area needs to be open.

Here is one of the nicest features of the Eclipse DV: unlike cases which require the front bezel to be forcefully pried off, this Thermaltake case has been designed to make this process a cinch.

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Unlocking the latch with the provided key allows this entire portion of the case to hinge out, providing easy access to the external drive bays and their respective covers, as well as the removable filter for the front 120mm fan. Again, cable management has been thought through carefully, and the latching fit itself is snug and secure.