The hard drive section is next. The ThermalRock Circle case uses a sideways hard drive mounting system. Six hard drives can be mounted using the same rails system as the 5.25” devices. The hard drives are mounted so the cables go to the back; this allows you to hide the cables easier and should help a bit with airflow. One thing missing from the hard drive section is a fan, be it side or rear. This could be somewhat worrisome with hard drives running as fast and as hot as they are.

The final section of the case is the motherboard section. The case unfortunately does not include a removable motherboard tray. Although most of the parts of the motherboard are easily accessible, the bottom rear motherboard screw and heat sink mount can be a challenge to get to. A removable tray would make the job of mounting the motherboard and heat sink easier. The case features two 120mm fans, on front intake and one rear exhaust.

Test Setup
AMD Athlon 1700+ @ 11.5x166
ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe Rev 2.0
512MB Corsair PC4000
ATI X800Pro 256MB
Western Digital 250GB
ASUS CDRW
ASUS DVDROM

Testing was performed using Motherboard Monitor. The system was tested at full load (running F@H for 30min) and with Windows idling, results are shown below in °C.

	Full Load	Idle
Case Temp	29	29
CPU Diode	40	33
CPU Socket	40	35

As you can see, cooling in the case is excellent. The 120mm fans do a great job of moving all of the hot air from your CPU. The upside down design of the case should also help cool down your video card, as the heat from the cards heat sink rises from the card, instead of back into it.

Conclusion
I seem to have a bit of a love hate relationship with the ThermalRock Circle case. Overall I really like the styling of the case. The front panel is truly well done. The integrated CD-holder is really nice looking, especially when the front panel lights up blue. ThermalRock have defiantly put some attention into the details on the Circle case. The cutout of the door enabling the front audio ports to be accessible when the door is closed truly is ingenious. There are features like this all over the case. Another example is the power supply mount, not only is the power supply support by the bracket, but ThermalRock also integrated two steel stands, to support the back of the power supply. The cooling of the ThermalRock Circle is also excellent. The backwards internal design truly does help with cooling, and thus gives us an early look into the BTX form factor.

I did mention that not everything is great on the case though. The main problems have to do with the backwards internal design. Although it is great for cooling, it frankly sucks for working on. The whole CPU section of the case is incredibly hard to work on. Installing a heat sink inside the case takes some true flexibility of the fingers. This wouldn't be a problem if ThermalRock utilized a removable motherboard tray. Also attributed to the backwards design is the annoyance of plugging in anything into your motherboard when the system is on the floor. Usually you only have the power cable to deal with, but now you have the barrage of expansion card cables to fish your fingers through to access the onboard ports. The device rails are also not perfectly implemented. Although the rails are great to mount onto the devices, removing the optical drives from the case is not the easiest of tasks. The latches seem to bind on the edges making the devices stick into the bays.

Pros: Great cooling, nice styling, attention to the details

Cons: No removable motherboard tray, usability of onboard motherboard ports, CDROM rails

Overall: Overall I though the ThermalRock case is a good case. The looks and performance of the case are great. If you can get past some of the design flaws this may be the case for you.

If you have any comments, be sure to hit us up in our forums.

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