I love it when new PC cases come into the office. It always gives me the new-PC-build tingles. This week we were lucky enough to receive one of Thermaltakes newest cases, the Ceres 500 ARGB.
Before I give you the hands-on experience, let’s talk specs for a bit just to see if this case is even up your alley or not.
The Ceres 500 ARGB is a mid-tower case built with cooling in mind. It comes in both black and “snow” editions. Snow obviously being the all-white build, well, mostly all white. The PCI cover plates at the back are black, and the case has a front steel flair in the front that is a light gunmetal colour on both the black and snow options.
The case can fit all sizes of motherboards, from mini-ATX to E-ATX and has a nice large cavity for the biggest graphics card you can find or anything up to 425mm without a radiator or 395mm with a radiator. It has a CPU cooler clearance of 185mm and can fit a PSU up to 220mm. Not bad for a mid-sized case, to be honest.
The PSU compartment is shrouded, so your PSU will be hidden from view. The front left of the shroud has an optional LED Display that can be purchased. It can display the time, the weather, real-time stats from your PC and, for the real PC users out there, GIFs.
Interestingly, 60% of the case is perforated to allow optimal airflow past all the components. The case can handle up to seven 120/140mm fans; one in the back, three in the front and three on the top and has radiator support on both the top and front of the case, with the front being able to take a whole 420mm unit, while the top supports up to 360mm. While you might be worried about dust with all that perforation, the case also comes with five magnetic, easy-to-remove dust covers. The left side is fitted with a non-tinted, 3mm tempered glass panel, and it has Thermaltake’s fancy, turn knob design, kind of like a cupboard door. I like that it provides easy access to the internal compartment of the case. Personally, I prefer a full glass panel on the side, but as this case has the PSU shroud, the panel doesn’t go all the way down.
The crème de la crème of the whole case though is that it comes with four CT140 ARGB fans from Thermaltake. Now, you are probably thinking to yourself, “there are a lot of cases that come with case fans these days.”, well I’m here to tell you that the CT140 is not your average case fan. The CT fans from Thermaltake come with a specifically tuned seven-blade set-up and a daisy-chainable cable, so you only land up with one cable that needs plugging in, and the CT Series ARGB Fans now support ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, BIOSTAR, and ASROCK sync software, meaning you don’t need anything extra to control them.
We don’t currently have the CT Fan range in South Africa, but the dual packs for the CT140 ARGB are sold for around $50 on Amazon. This case comes with around R1,600 worth of fans, right out of the box. However, that doesn’t mean they are free. The case will set you back around R3,000, but with the fans included in that price, it doesn’t seem so bad compared to other mid-tower chassis.
Phew, that’s a lot of specs; now, let’s take it out of the box.
The Ceres 500 ARGB is a pretty-looking case, I like the rounded square edges, and the steel front accent adds some personality. It’s exceptionally easy to take apart as everything is attached with a thumb screw or clips right off, meaning it’s easy to get into to get your precious build inside. I like a lot of space to hide all my cables, and while the Ceres 500 is only a mid-tower, it does have a lot of this cable-hiding space. There are two rubber feed holes for your cables to be sent behind the motherboard and built-in cable clips, so you don’t have to worry about wasting the cable ties you use to hold your chair together on keeping your cables tidy.
The case also has two 3.5-inch drive caddies in the PSU shroud and can support up to 2 more on the back plate. If you don’t mind having your HDDs on display, there is another slot for one on the front, next to the motherboard. Of course, each of these slots supports two 2.5-inch drives; combined with the two caddy slots, that’s eight HDD slots in total.
The case also comes with a GPU support bracket, so your hefty beast will have a little pad to rest on and a built-in bracket for vertical mounting of the GPU. The rear PCI panel rotates as well, so there’s no need to worry there, but you will need to bring your own riser card for the GPU.
I feel like this case is the complete package. I don’t need to worry about buying anything extra unless I want the little LED panel at the bottom. I’d grab all my PC parts, build them into the chassis and attach the radiator. Nice, easy, and the whole thing is built and cooling-ready. It’s as if this case was designed with PC enthusiasts in mind. While it might be a bit big for a mid-tower, that’s ok. We like big chassis and we cannot lie.
