Thermaltake Urban T81 Full Tower Case Review

The front panel swings open to reveal a pair of powerful 200mm front intake fans along with a pair of external 5.25" drive bays.  These drive bay plates are held in place with a small tension clip for easy removal and installation.  The lower drive bay plate also includes a smaller 3.5" slot as well.

The 200mm intake fans also have a removable mesh screen filter over them to help keep dust out of the system.  They're latched with tension clips as well, and release easily to clean.

Its worth noting that the front door is pretty solid when closed, which does prevent the fans from drawing air directly from the front.  Thermaltake has circumvented this potential issue by adding vents down the sides and underneath the front panel to draw air when the door is closed. These vents will probably be adequate for daily use, but if you plan on some serious gaming or running some graphic intensive processes, it may be in your best interest to pop the front door open.  Since that can generate some serious heat off the processor and cards, you'd ideally want the fans to have access to as much airflow as possible.

The Urban T81 features two side doors, which is a slight deivation from the traditional sliding panel held on with thumb screws.  Instead, you will find a fully lockable split double door.  The rear door showcases a mod favorite, a sizable plexiglass window to view the internals, and opens to allow access to the motherboard and componants.  The front door is set up to open backwards in a "suicide-door" style used by such iconic cars as the classic Jaguar Mark-IV, and opens to reveal all of the internal and external drive bay cages.

While the plexiglass is fairly thick (a little over 3mm, or roughly 1/8th inch) the door holding it was fairly thin, so the rear door did have some wobble which took a little play and aligning to re-latch cleanly when closing.

There is plenty of honeycomb venting at the back of the case to help passively vent heat, along with a 140mm exhaust fan to push the hot air out a bit more actively.  The expansion slot plates are also drilled out to help the case breathe, and you will find a trio of rubber grommets to run cabling and hoses to an external radiator or device. 

This case is built with multi-GPU builds in mind, showcasing 8 expansion slots that allow for installation of up to four video cards with dual slot coolers.

One thing that we found disappointing with the Urban T81 was the same thing mentioned with the Level 10 GT, and that was the external screw mounts for the expansion slots.  The T81 sports the same row of external thumbknob screws, all held in place by a cover plate that you have to remove first before you can remove the expansion slot plates.  It's not the greatest design layout, but it's a step up at least from the old punchout inserts.