Thermaltake Suppressor F31 ATX Chassis Review

TECHNOLOGY X TEST BENCH

For our build of the Suppressor F31 we have used the following:

The room inside the F31 made this build extremely easy. We removed the cage for 3.5” drives which was as easy as two screws and then it slides out, you can also remove the base it secures to but we didn’t see a necessary reason to do so as it wasn’t really restricting airflow in any way. We also removed the lower  of the two 5.25” drive just for the heck of it. There were not major issues while completing this build. When we installed the Motherboard we ran into issues with connecting our Sata data cables through the cable pass-through. There wasn’t enough clearance for it to fit comfortably and so we just moved it through to a different area that fit unfortunately it’s not the intended pass-through. This messed with a little bit cable management but wasn’t anything major. There is room for a lot more fans and coolers then we installed, such as installing up to a 360mm radiator in the top or at the front with the removal of the drive cage. You can also have radiators up to 140mm installed on the bottom. We have a 120M on the rear. Your VGA length limitation is 278mm with the HDD rack in and expands to 420mm without. PSU can exploit up to 220mm if you don’t install a bottom fan. One of the cool things we found with the F31 is that the trays of the 3.5” cage can be taken out and fit into the backside of the case to keep your SSD’s or other drives up to 3.5” out of the way. We love how modular the F31 is, can’t say that enough. Build complete and out of the way the case is awesome. For what we put in we had tons of room and some usually harder to reach pieces like the Molex connectors on our ICY DOCK, which given their placement we usually have an issue getting up to and reaching in smaller chassis, but the spacious F31 allows us tons of clearance for that. There’s also a mouse and keyboard security clip accessible from the inside which you run your mouse and keyboards through to ensure they aren’t removed from the device. In our opinion this is a useless addition as if you’re building a system in a case like the Suppressor F31 your mouse and keyboard are probably going to be the last thing you care about if something goes missing.

SOUND DAMPENING

It is clear to us that sound reduction is one of the focal points of the Suppressor F31. A lot of thought, effort and weight went into the sound dampening process of the F31. The modular design of the top panels keeps the minimal amount of noise escaping possible with up to three removable panels. The door and rear panel have a thick padding which helps cut down the noise as well and do so very well. If you end up with the window version you should already understand that you won’t have as much dampening on that side. Especially since the window is not secured with screws or fastened tightly, it uses tabs that you bend into position.

FINAL THOUGHTS & ANALYSIS

The Suppressor F31 by Thermaltake was a fun build. We do have a few concerns about the F31 that could use improvement. Such as moving the pass-troughs over a cm or two so that there is no doubt that any ATX board will make the clearance and cable management will not be much more of a hassle. Also, with the window version we would like to see the window more easily fastened to panel. Such as we saw in the Be Quiet Base 600 Chassis, they had a double pane, screw-fastened window panel and it helped with the dampening a lot more. There were many positives with this case as well. The build was easy and the manual was very informative for anyone having issues with the build and removing of panels. The larger chassis gave us more room for installation and the modular design was amazing. Being able to move or remove almost anything in the skeleton was great. Moving drives to the cable management side of the chassis was simple and easy especially with the room they left for cable management you have no issues back there. Tipping the scale at $99.99USD ($133.12CDN) on Amazon.com at the time of this review. The price is pretty mid-range for a mid-tower ATX chassis and overall we enjoy the case and for that we give the F31 our Bronze Seal.

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