Thermaltake Kandalf LCS

Kandalf, the grey wizard of cooling.

The Kandalf comes firmly from the Enterprise-E era, militaristic Federation styling intact. The swing open front doors conceal a radiator with three 120mm fans, the middle one glowing blue to highlight the Thermaltake logo. Water pipes snake into the bottom of the case under the eleven 5.25" bays and the little utility tray that often features in the high end Thermaltakes.

You say 11? That’s incredible! Well, not quite. The top bay features the power button and it would be bloody hard to fit an optical drive in there thanks to retention clips from the plastic bit on top, and the water pipes go through the bottom bay, so you’re effectively restricted to nine bays.

Port extenders for Firewire, USB, headphones and microphone sit on the top under a flip-top plastic lid – however the plastic feels a little cheap and flimsy and ruins the overall effect of the case. A large air hole grid is also present here, meaning this case is definitely not for those after quietness.

Popping off the huge thumbscrew that holds down the latched, windowed case door and prising it off, three of the 5.25" bays are revealed to be filled with a removable drive cage for three 3.5" hard drives, with space for a 120mm fan at the front – unfortunately not provided. A removable floppy drive bay sits above it.

An interesting quick release system is used here in which the retention mechanism is squeezed and then lifted away from the holes in either the drive or drive bays – it works well, however can be a little finicky to get back into place.

Unfortunately the old quick release mechanism above the PCI slots is still there, making it incredibly difficult to fit some graphics cards – such as the 7950GX2 – into the case. Our recommendation? Get rid of the bastard ASAP, which Thermaltake has thankfully made easy through the removal of two screws.

A second bay for three more hard drives resides up the back where the power supply usually goes, cooled by a 90mm fan, and below it a blue glowing 120mm fan that makes an indecent hum is mounted. To accommodate this, the PSU is slid in sideways.

The motherboard tray is not removable, although the back plate is, so access shouldn’t be too restricted.

Hooking up the built-in water cooling system took about five minutes, including the time to make sure all air bubbles were clear. The reservoir features a wide mouth, so just like Solo you can slam it down fast. Well, the coolant anyway. And that’s pouring it into the reservoir, not drinking from it, which would be stupid and would probably have you hospitalised, creating hilarious stories for your friends for decades and causing you to pee green for a week. Yes sir, very Atomic.

The pump is a little noisy but tolerable, we do wish however that quieter 120mm fans were used, having been spoiled by the likes of Nexus.

Firing up Chernobyl in an ambient temperature of 26°C the kit kept the little heat generator to an admirable 40°C – it has decent cooling chops.

The Kandalf is a decent case that will get you into watercooling without having to think too much, and you have to consider that this inclusion is also set at a decent price. A few nagging features hold it back from greatness though – and we look forward to seeing these fixed in the next revision.