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However, there are plenty of little touches in the Spedo that we really like, with the extensive cable management system on the backside of the motherboard tray probably the most notable. Thermaltake’s Cable Routeing Management (CRM) system might only be composed of removable plastic panels, but they go a surprisingly long way to makes the process of tidying all those pesky wires away a whole lot easier.

Other little touches like the front panel cables coming pre-routed behind the motherboard, fan cables coming pre-sleeved and the plentiful supply of pre-fitted reusable cable ties only sweeten the deal, and it’s clear that Thermaltake has tried to make keeping the insides of the Spedo tidy as easy as possible.

Sadly though there are more problems and again it’s fiddly plastic parts that cause them, this time in regards to the drive mounting systems. The Spedo mounts all the drives into the single floor to ceiling drive bay rack, with the hard drives fitted into the two 3.5” drive cages capable of holding three drives each, mounted into quick release drive trays.


The problem is that the quick release catches for both the 3.5” drive trays and the 5.25” securing mechanisms are enormously unsatisfying and generally quite naff. While other similar drive mounting mechanisms we've seen have been used to great effect, most notably in the superb Coolermaster ATCS 840, Thermaltake’s solution is so much worse that it’s hard to imagine how it made it out of QA – you’ll need to apply a worrying amount of force to release any of the catches, and even the plastic clips will frequently catch on each other and not release the drive anyway.

While Thermaltake has included the option to rather cleverly mount the drive cages either laterally or longitudinally in either the two hard disk cage mounts or the 5.25” drive bays using included adapter panels (each 3-drive cage takes up three 5.25” bays), the overall implementation of the drives mountings themselves is still very poor.


This inclusion of a desirable or innovative feature only for it to be poorly implemented is a trend that seems to run throughout the Spedo and it’s enormously frustrating. Other case manufactures have included literally identical features in the past to great effect yet here the result is so often a wearisome and occasionally broken mess. Let's hope despite this it's able to prove its worth in our battery of thermal tests.