Installation
The front panel or fascia can be removed for easy installation of rom drives. The tool-free, lock n’ load system is easy to use. Mounting the rom drives and hard drives was a breeze. The V9 BlacX is midi-tower and not a full size tower, so it’s slightly smaller as we expected. At first I was a little concerned whether a full size ATX motherboard would fit with all the trimmings (CPU cooler+PSU+GFX card), but as it turns out … it was OK, albeit a little tight.
We managed to fit the massive Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler … but only just. The tips of the heatpipes were touching the windowed panel but luckily there was no damage. Having said that, NOT everyone will be using the Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler. We only used it to test the depth of the V9 BlacX Chassis. As far as we’re concerned … we didn’t find any problems at all.
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel Core i5 – 650 @ 3.2Ghz (LGA 1156) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte P55 USB3 |
| Ram | Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR3-1600 4Gb kits |
| Graphics Card | GeForce GTX 460 OC (1Gb GDDR5) |
| Hard Drive | Seagate Barracuda 250Gb (8Mb Cache) 7,200rpm SATA-II |
| Optical Drive | LG x24 DVD-RW Re-writer SATA |
| CPU Cooler | Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler |
| Power Supply | Thermaltake ToughPower XT 875W |
| Chassis | Thermaltake V9 BlacX Midi Tower |
| Network | Netgear WG111v2 |
| Monitor | 23″ Samsung (1920×1080) – HD 1080p |
| OS | Windows 7 Ultimate |
To test the Thermaltake V9 BlacX Chassis, we used the above components. These are the same components we’ve been using in all of our tests. These include the Intel Core i5 – 650 processor @ 3.2Ghz, Gigabyte P55 USB3 motherboard (full size ATX), Geforce GTX 460 OC, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer and a Thermaltake ToughPower 875W power supply, and our massive Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler.
