ThermalTake M9D: get some colour into your life

Straight out of the box, the M9D has got Thermaltake written all over it. At first glance, you’ll notice a door that looks like it belongs on an alien aircraft and a big side window that carries with it a 23cm fan. This huge fan not only pushes out a significant amount of airflow at a very low speed and an even lower noise level, but it also manages to glow in blue, red, green or mixed thanks to a button at the bottom of the window. However, if the side panel is too much for you, Thermaltake offer the M9D with a simple black side that carries with it a spot for a single 8cm fan.

Looking head on, the left side of the door has a power and reset switch while the right has two USB 2.0 ports, audio in and out along with an eSATA port. The top of the case has two LEDs; a red for hard drive activity and a blue one for power. The door also has four lights in it that glow blue when the system is up and running to give the whole system a nice glow without blinding you. Opening the door up, we’re greeted with nine 5.25in drive bays. We can also see hidden behind the bottom three bays a single 120mm fan that helps draw air into the case, thanks to the mesh design.

With the side panel off, we find the typical tool free design that is associated with most cases these days; our graphics cards, sound card etc. don’t need to be screwed in, nor do our 5.25in devices. Next to the I/O spot we have another 120mm fan included that helps draw hot air away from the CPU and exhausts it out the back.

Instead of installing nine 5.25in devices, we have a 3.5in HDD cage at the bottom of the case that takes up three 5.25in bays and holds three hard drives. Attached to the cage is a single 120mm fan which we saw from the front; this fan is here to blow cool air directly across your hard drives to make sure that they stay as cool as possible.
While there is no removable motherboard tray, installation is still a breeze with the midi tower giving us plenty of room to install those long graphics cards and an ATX motherboard. Due to the cage design for the hard drives, you do need to use screws, which is a little unfortunate. Luckily, it only takes a minute to screw a few hard drives in and hopefully you don’t find yourself pulling them in and out on a regular basis. All the normal cables are there along with a SATA one that plugs straight into your motherboard.

The Thermaltake M9D stands at just under 45cm tall and its all steel body weight is a reasonable 7.1kg. What’s so nice about this particular Thermaltake case is that the LED scheme they’ve chosen to go for and the overall design isn’t “out there” like some of their other models, which means if you like a little colour but don’t want to be blinded by it, the M9D is a good choice. As mentioned before, there’s always the option of choosing one without a side window as well.

The cooling ability and overall design of the case is impressive. The price tag is pretty standard and it’s worth remembering that you will need to buy a power supply separately in our configuration. We have noticed, though, that some companies do offer a small 430 Watt PSU for a similar price to the RRP. Looks are always subjective, but with some nice glows, a huge amount of airflow coming in from the side and an easy setup, it’s definitely worth looking at.