Thermaltake Shows Unique Level 10 Desktop Case

Thermaltake has been turning more than a few heads at the CEBIT show, presently taking place in Hanover, Germany, with a new and unique desktop chassis called the Level 10. The Level 10 chassis is on display in Thermaltake's booth with a "No Photos" sign in front of it; so naturally, pictures of it have started popping up all over the Internet. Thermaltake reps are staying mum on most of details of the case--such as when it will ship and how much it will cost--but we've been able to glean a few details and speculations about the new chassis.

The Level 10 full-tower chassis is geared for gamers and enthusiasts and will be offered as a limited-edition case meant to celebrate Thermaltake's ten-year anniversary. The chassis was designed in partnership with The BMW Group's DesignWorksUSA, a cutting-edge design firm that has designed products for a wide-range of companies, such as Adidas, Nokia, Procter & Gamble, and Whirpool. DesignWorksUSA has won recent awards for designs for a Pado door handle, the BMW Z4 automobile, and the HP Scanjet 9120 document flatbed scanner.

Instead of placing all of the system components inside a single housing, the Level 10 instead separates the different components into their own compartments. In addition to making for a very stylistic and unique-looking design, this approach could also potentially offer some unique cooling solutions for serious overclockers. We're hard-pressed to remember seeing a desktop case design that came even close to resembling the Level 10 from a commercial chassis manufacturer (modders, on the other hand, continue to surprise us with their innovative designs). While not in the same league, nevertheless, the Level 10 reminds us a bit of the nontraditional design of Antec's Skeleton Open Air Case (which, in turn, reminds us of the utilitarian open-case designs from HighSpeed PC).

The Level 10 design being displayed at CEBIT features a long vertical strip going up the right side of the font of the case, which houses the power button, e-SATA port, mic-in and headphone out jacks, and four USB ports. The top-left portion of the front of the case includes a drive compartment that looks like it can house an optical drive as well as at least two more external 5.25-inch drives (or presumably internal drives as well). Below that are a series of six individual 5.25-inch internal drive bays running up almost the entire height of the case. A large compartment, meant to house the power supply, sits behind the top drive bay compartment. Below that, and taking up the greatest amount of space, on the left side of the case is the motherboard compartment. The right side of the case features a removable door with a lock, which provides access to the case's innards.

The Level 10 is schedule to be officially unveiled at Computex in early June in Taipei. Presumably by then, more details will be available about the case. We will do out best get our hands on one in order to do a full, hands-on review for our HotHardware readers, with the hope of ultimately letting you know if the case is truly worth the likely hefty-price it will sell for. Don't tell Thermaltake, but if they do send us one, they'll have to pry it from our cold, dead heads if they ever want it back.