Done Deal:

What am I thinking now is, isn't that a beauty? A very stylish case, nicely polished and looking real strong. The front of the Thermaltake Soprano flows and looks sharp. It offers easy installation and upgrading, excellent cooling, stylish and locking side panel and bezel door, spacious interior and room for water-cooling kits and upgrades of that nature.  

The Thermaltake Soprano case, shown here in an angle shot. This is showing off the window side panel. A window side panel is in these days a must have feature for computer cases, as this gives it a little extra eye candy for admiring your work of art. Most of us want to put some lights and other fancy things in the case and then of course a window panel is the way to go and show of what you have accomplished. 

Let's turn the case to the other side and here we have the normal sidepanel in black, which is kind of normal as the motherboard is behind this panel. We also get a clear view on the front door which can be locked via a key to secure it.  

Yeah, I guess you were wondering, what's that thing on top of the Soprano case? When we open it up we have five connections that were hidden underneath. Here you will be able to attach your favorite device such as USB 2.0 devices, an IEEE 1394 Firewire, microphones and headphones. 

There you have it. The Soprano!

Final Thoughts:

Right out of the box Soprano was a big hit with us, as soon as we noticed the style and beauty of the Soprano we knew this case was a keeper. Further-more upon inspecting the clean and carefully laid out interior, we come to the conclusion that case is going to be a nice addition to anyone’s home décor or office environment.

Everything about this case was easy and enjoyable. Nothing concerning the installation and operation of this product was confusing or left us wondering or guessing. The manual is very helpful but not necessary as we found that this case is just self explanatory after taking a good look at the components and accessories.

The rear of the Soprano is equally impressive with a massive low noise 12 cm exhaust fan taking care of the thermal ventilation very well. The side panel is a nice design that will allow you to admire your hardware without leaving the panel off. Adorned to the clear acrylic panel is a 9 cm fan that also acts as an intake and blows cold air directly onto the video card north-bridge area of our mother-board and helps compliment the font intake system. 

Soprano is a very nice example of style and elegance and should be consider on anyone’s short list that might be in the market for a touch of class in a mid tower design. With everything Soprano offers, what is not to like about it?  One thing I found out that was a bit of a surprise is, that in order to use a dual slot video card you must un-screw the Tool-Free PCI expansion slot mechanism and use the screws to manually install the devices.

This is the only draw back in the design that I noticed. I modified our Tool-Free locking device with a Dremel and cut relief area’s into the device to allow dual slot card clearance as we wanted to use the Tool-Free design with our dual slot 5900 Ultra NV35.

Only other thing that caught my guard was finger prints, this front door is so glossy from the Mirror Coating, that finger prints stick out like a sore thumb, hence don’t be all up on your front door if you don’t want your ID left behind! While Thermaltake includes a nice polishing cloth to remedy this, its still something to think about.

Ending note:

This is an excellent case with an excellent price. The user friendly design is unique and very functional. With everything I experienced with the case, I highly recommend this product.  

The Soprano is available at Xoxide.

Pros:

• Clean - excellent design, very sleek and sexy
• Tool-Free installation of components
• Transparent side panel window (Optional)
• Spacious interior with plenty of room
• Very good airflow with three included fans
• Anti-theft locking side panel and front door

Cons:

• Front Bezel "Mirror-Coating" is a magnet for finger prints
• Tool-Free locking device is not dual slot VGA friendly 

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