Thermaltake S200 ARGB ATX Mid Tower Chassis

Needed to add some extra storage to my wife’s PC and her OEM case wasn’t setup to handle it. What’s more, the OEM case had a single exhaust fan and no option for adding an intake fan or anything. (I’m looking at you ASUS). So I went looking for a replacement – wanted something that looked nice, would be easy to build in, and not too expensive. The Thermaltake Versa H17 definitely fit the bill. This is my first Thermaltake case. After my experience with the H17, I expect it won’t be my last. (I’m giving serious consideration to moving my home server to a V21 cube chassis.)

I’ll go into detail about my experience with building in the case.

First I’ll mention, if you’re re-using old parts or if you’re on a tight budget and you’ve got / are getting a wired power supply instead of modular, the case is ideal. The H17 doesn’t use traditional drive cages of any kind to mount drives – no doubt a cost saving measure – and instead uses a system rubber washers + screws where you can mount a 3.5″ hard drive to the floor of the case under the PSU cover and second 3.5″ hard drive under the top of the PSU cover. With this mounting system instead of drive cages, this leaves TONS of space to neatly tuck away your unused power supply cables.

You mount 2.5″ drives in the same basic fashion as the 3.5″ drives, except the drives can mount on either side of the case’s motherboard tray. I chose to mount drives to the back side of the tray to make cable management easier.

The motherboard tray has a very large cutout to make access to the CPU backplate a breeze, should you ever need to. The side panels go on and off without any issues at all – unlike many other cases I’ve used over the years. Behind the motherboard tray there is PLENTY of room for cable management – especially when you include the space under the power supply cover. There are plenty of zip-tie points to help keep your wires tidy as well. If this case is missing anything it would be rubber grommets and velcro straps, however, including these would only end up increasing the price of the case.

Let’s talk for a minute about fans and cooling.

With having a mostly solid front panel, there is going to be some restriction on the amount of air coming into the chassis. However, because the ventilation holes are on the front of the panel (instead of on the sides of the front panel like some other cases) the incoming air doesn’t need to make a directional bend and lose pressure. The front of the case is listed as supporting up to 3 x 120mm or 2 x 140mm front fans along with 1 x 120mm or 140mm top fan (featuring a magnetic dust filter) and 1 x 120mm rear exhaust fan – a 3 pin basic black Thermaltake fan is included here. Only including the one fan is another cost saving measure on Thermaltake’s part.

When I purchased the case, I ordered 2 x 120mm Cougar Vortex PWM fans to use with it in addition to a 120mm Cryorig fan that I already own. While I don’t think most people will need to add three fans to this case, I do highly recommend you get at least 1 decent fan to include as a front intake. My original plan was to include all 3 fans in the front of the case and leave the top fan location vacant. I changed my mind on this during the build for 2 reasons.

1 – The wires for the buttons, LEDs, and ports on the top of the case are attached to the front panel. When you install the fans too high up in the case, it becomes difficult to route these wires into the case.

2 – After I noted the position of the top fan location is in a more “forward” position relative to the CPU, I decided to put the 120mm Cryorig fan there as an intake fan. If the position were more toward the back, I’d have instead configured it as an exhaust fan. If I’d have made this fan an exhaust where it’s located, I’d literally be stealing cool air that’s coming into the chassis and exhausting it away from the CPU before it has a chance to make use of it. This is not withstanding that positive air pressure is best for managing dust. If this computer had a tower style CPU cooler (such as a Cryorig H7 or CoolerMaster 212 EVO) instead of a stock downdraft style cooler, I would not have added the top fan at all as this would just cause turbulence.

If I were going to ding the score of this case for any reasons at all, it would be these points about the fan mountings. However, I don’t feel it’s appropriate to deduct from the score of this case at all. Here’s why.

As this case is a budget case, I don’t expect many people who purchase it to plan on using 360mm AIO coolers – which could be difficult due to the wire issue that I mentioned – and in all honesty, I think the cooling configuration I’ve got in place right now is likely more optimal than my original plan for 3 fans in the front of the case. Running the 3 fans in the front would only have blown extra air under the power supply cover. Having the top fan more forward winds up being a plus because running an intake fan here alleviates any problems this case would have with pulling in sufficient air to keep things inside cool.

All-in-all, if you’re looking for an attractive case (especially if you don’t want a windowed side panel) that is high on build quality but low on price, I would highly recommend you consider the Thermaltake Versa H17.

El gabinete se siente de buena calidad, viene con todo lo que indica, es ideal para una micro atx junto con una gráfica no muy grande

Me llego en buenas condiciones y el producto correspondiente, también a buen tiempo.

Like the headline says this is a nice looking case! Was looking for a case with a mesh front that was reasonably priced. This one came with 3 RGB fans which was a huge bonus. The case seems well built and has 2 3.0 usb slots. I’m by no means an expert computer builder (this is my 3rd time building a pc) but it was easy for me to build in.

Pros
– 3 RGB fans
– easy to build in
– mesh front
– seems well built
– lightweight

Cons
– no rear fan
– needed RGB switch to connect all fans
– RGB fans were all daisy chained (might be intimidating to someone new – took me a minute to figure it out)
– only 2 usb ports

Overall I’m happy with the case. Would recommend if $100 or less.