Thermaltake’s Overseer RX-I – a big case for big cooling

Installing the PSU and Hardware

Let’s look at our options for installing our power supply into the Thermaltake Overseer RX-I

The PSU can be installed fan up or fan down. Ideally it is installed as shown with the air being sucked through the PSU’s fan through the bottom of the case and protected by dust screens and blown out the back of the grille – independent of the case’s air flow.  The picture above shows the Overseer RX-I case with the ECS Golden Series motherboard, RAM, and CPU and installed in the case. Notice how much room there is for a CPU cooler!

Thermaltake supplies a removable metal mesh dust filter that is supplied for use with the power supply and built into the bottom of the case. Of course, if you use your PSU with the fan facing up, there is no need for a dust filter. If you install your PSU with the fan facing downward as in this case, the best place for a dust filter is naturally under the power supply, to protect it from clogging with dust as the fan will pull cool air (and dust) in from beneath the case.

The alternative is to install the power supply unit “upside down” with the fan facing upward. The warm air from inside the case is now exhausted out the PSU’s grille. One of the disadvantages with the fan facing up is that now you have to take extra care so as to not to drop a screw or other tiny object into the now open PSU. As a tip, cover your open PSU with a cloth when you are adding a video card, for example.

Installing the motherboard is done by using the included spacers and screws. It should become apparent at this point, that full tower cases are very spacious if one is used to mid-towers and that now there is a lot more room to work with.

Many PC builders install the CPU and CPU cooler first along with the RAM on the motherboard and then install it into the case. We are very glad for the Overseer’s thoughtfully placed cable management cutouts.

The front bottom half of the case is taken up by a non-removable hard drive cage which can accommodate five hard drives. The top area allows for 4 optical drives which are also secured with screws (supplied) or can just be clipped in.  The tool-less design works really well and securely holds the drives without screws.

The Noctua NH-DH14 is very large cooler and there is plenty of room around it.  The airflow through the cooler’s dual fin stack moves in the traditional manner from front to back.  Outside cooling air is pulled into the case by the front 200mm fan and exhausted by the back and top fans.

We were able to get our Core i7-3770K to 4.8GHz with our ECS motherboard and since then, we have reached 4.9GHz on air with our EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard.  Watch for an evaluation later this week of this amazing overclocking motherboard that has found a permanent home with Ivy Bridge in our Overseer RX-I case.

The EVGA Z77 FTW is a “plus” sized ATX motherboard and it still easily fits inside our Overseer RX-I.

Watercooling

We moved the DVD optical drive down two slots to accommodate the Water2.0 Pro’s liquid cooler’s radiator and two fans. The air is drawn in from above the case and passes through the radiator to be exhausted back into the case but the heat is easily removed by the 200 mm fan on top and the 140 mm fan at the back of the case. An alternative is to place the radiator where the back exhaust fan is now.

To fit Thermaltake’s own liquid CPU cooler, we had to drill out threads so that four screws could pass through to affix directly to the radiator.  It is the same thing that we had to do with our Chaser MK-I case for the AMD FX Liquid Cooler.

Fortunately, this Overseer case has so much room, it is easy to place just about any hardware inside and install it relatively easily because your fingers are never cramped.

Filters

How effective are they? Well, this image of the filter over the front intake fan was taken only after a few weeks of use. It’s definitely better to clean the dust trapped in the filter where it is easily removed and cleaned rather than stuck inside your precious hardware where it is difficult to remove and where it builds up over time to cause thermal issues.

Let’s head for our conclusion.