Like so many things in life, my purchase of a Thermal Take Shark case was the result of a rampant upgrading spree gone horribly, horribly wrong.

'Twas a dark and stormy night when I finally decided to go to PCI Express on my work/gaming PC. I've been putting it off for ages as I've found through painfull personal experiance that adopting the latest technology to hit the market is tempting, but a path that leads to an empty wallet and a broken heart when you realize that new technology frequently doesn't work out quite the way you thought it would. There's also the fact that I'd just bought an HIS x800Pro about 6 months ago so it was hard to justify the upgrade without getting some more performance in the gaming department. For an AGP system my gaming rig is pretty pimping but it finally came down to a little spare spending cash and a n urgent "need" to upgrade. It's been a while and the time for change had come. Before I could come to my senses and change my mind I placed my parts order and waited. The next morning seemed to take forever but at last UPS arrived with my new toys. A shiny new MSI K8N SLI motherboard and a pair of MSI 7800gt video cards. I already had an Athlon64 3500+ and two gigs of Corsair PC3200 DDR Pro so I was good to go.. Or was I?

A threesome with twin GF 7800s. My new motherboard is in schoolboy heaven.

After getting off work I started the assembly into my much beloved Tsunami case and Io a terrible truth was revealed unto me. The drive bays in the Tsunami point towards the rear of the enclosure as they do in most traditional cases..... Right where the 7800 power adapters want to be. I spent a little time fiddling around with them but the cabling was just too tight and proved to be quite irritating to work with. After sitting and pondering the problem for a few minutes and contemplating mounting my hard drives into 5.25" bays up at the top of the case, or beating the entire system flat with a large mallet, I sadly decided that the Tsunami had to be retired. It's over a year old so perhaps it was time for a change anyhow. Luckily I happened to have a Thermal Take Shark case in stock at work and I'd been eyeing it for quite some time so I decided to see if it'd work, and how it would measure up to the Tsunami. (Sorry Pappy. :P)

The Shark quite a striking case to look at. It's a full size (ex. BIG) aluminum case with the usual fit and finish we've come to expect from Thermal Take's products. The front bezel on the case that the door attaches to is a sturdy plastic, but the door hinges and hardware are solid steel and the door itself is a large chunk of aluminum. Like the Tsunami it's extremely robust and should stand up to a little rough handling. Themal Take has done some interesting design work on the door and it's quite unique looking with it's wave, silver grille and menacing looking cutouts. One thing I don't like about the front door is the magnets that are used to hold it shut. I've got the same complaint there that I had with the Noblesse case a few years back. When I lift the computer up to move it the front door opens and swings around wildly. Not a good thing when it's a solid piece of aluminum and you take your computer to work or LANs on a regular basis. The magnets work fine and give it a good feel when it's sitting on your desk, but I'd like to see slightly stronger magnets or a steel latch. If you're using one of the newer carry straps it's not a problem as most of them have a strap that goes around the front of the case and keeps your door safe in transport. Sadly my faithful old Gear Grip doesn't have that. :(

That blue front LED has to be pimped up.

The finish on the case is a semi gloss black that I find quite attractive, and shouldn't show marks or pick up fingerprints as much as the high gloss enamel finish that so many cases seem to have these days. Adding to the good looks is a rear 12cm blue lit exhaust fan, and a blue LED in the top cutout of the front door. I'm going to be swapping out the front LED soon however and replacing it with a cold cathode light tube to spread the blue glow out a bit.

Shown next to a puny Compaq for comparison.

If you look at the above picture you'll see handles near the top and bottom of the motherboard tray. Unique among all the Thermal Take cases I've seen, the motherboard tray is easily detachable with the removal of two thumb screws located at the front of the tray. Personally I've never understood people's fascination with removable trays but whatever. It's here if you want it. I've always found that you have to unplug everything and pull the cards to remove the tray and the only real reason to take it out is to change the board.... So why bother with the extra two screws on the tray? Just use a long screw driver and pull the whole board out. If anyone's got a really good reason that they like these trays let me know.

For cooling the Shark has a blue lit 12cm rear exhaust fan as was mentioned above as well as a filtered front 12cm intake fan that blows across the hard drive bays. To clean the filter you'll need to remove the entire front bezel which is bit of a pain unless you have a screw driver or a knife handy as the left hand retention clips are behind the case's frame. I was suprised that the front bezel on the case isn't hinged as well as the door as was done on the Tsunami. The filter seems to work well after just a few days running at work it's got a bit of dust in it that I'd rather not have on my sweet new video cards. The bad thing about the filter (and indeed one of the very few problems we found in this review) is that on my case it slightly touches the center hub of the fan and makes a slight humming noise. I'm going to have to play with this a bit and see if I can put a little spacer in there or perhaps I can bend it or something. Bad design. The other Thermal Take cases I've seen have a more rigid frame with crossbars that retain the filter screen better.

The plastic front bezel has some good sized slots in it for air intake and if you put your hand near them you can feel the air being drawn into the case. However, unlike many other cases with front doors there are no slots in the door for air circulation when the door is closed and if you put your hand behind the hard drives you can feel the air drop off when the door is closed. With the open side grille it doesn't seem to be a problem as I ran a few stress tests and the cpu/case temperature doesn't change with the door open or closed. I might find it to be different when I close off the side grilles with plexiglass, more on this when I actually get the case mod done.

If you're one of those folks who are going to be using a water cooling kit the Shark comes with the punchouts on the back of the case for mounting your hardware and running the hoses. Thermal Take of course recommends their "Big Water" cooling system, but apparently certain other brands/models will fit as well.

The grilles look neat, but do little to stop my arch nemesis: the evil Dr. Fan Noise.

The side panel of the case has an interesting design rather than the typical oval or X shaped plexi window. There's no plexi in the swoop shaped openings just a metal grille. While this does look really cool and covers up the messy wiring on your hard drives it has the unfortunate drawback of not dampening any case noise. When I'm at home my computer sits on my desk with the left side facing me. It's also not going to be doing much for stopping dust getting drawn in the side of the case. I'm no expert on airflow and cooling but I'm pretty sure that it's better to have air going from the front of the case and out the back through the filters. I suspect that the pretty side grilles will soon be grey with dust build up. When I do the light on the front of the case and add my internal lighting I'm going to be buying some bolts and a little piece of plexiglass to close off the side.

Both the front and side doors lock for security using the same key. The front lock is steel but the side lock is made of plastic. The side panel has a silver handle that also acts as a latch on the door. I spent a little bit of time tugging on the door and prying to try and open it without using the latch, and it's locked on there solid. The internal latch plate is about six inches wide so you're not going to need to bother with screws to retain it.

Long live the Ultra 500 watt modular PSU!

One thing I've found quite annoying in the majority of cases I've worked on lately is the lack of space around the power supply. Swapping out a power supply quite often necessitates the removal of the CPU's heatsink and your ram. With the Shark there's a big gap above the PSU so it just slides out the side. Excellent. Assembly of the components into the case went smoothly with no problems. There's a toolless hold down on the rear of the case for your cards. I pulled it out and used screws. The hold downs work great but I move my computer every day so I'm sort of paranoid about it somehow bumping loose.

Love those side mounted drive bays.

Insert clever comment here.

I know I have to clean my wiring up, so don't even say it.

Thus far I'm really liking the Shark. A truly worthy replacement for the Tsunami. The Shark is a very sharp looking case and is easily one of the finest designs I've ever seen. Fit and finish on the case is outstanding and there's tons of little touches that show the thoughfullness that went into the design. The only problems I can find are the weak magnets on the front door and the poor filter design for the front intake fan, but those two points are minor blemishes on an outstanding product. This case might be a little big for some people but unless you're going to be moving it around quite often it shouldn't be a problem. Great work as always Thermal Take!

Editors note: As of Oct 5.2005 we did some moding on the Shark. Check out the article here.