In recent years, TT has launched the Tower 100 200 two products for the series, which have won the favor of many ITX players with their high appearance and strong hardware compatibility, and recently TT has launched the MATX chassis TT The Tower 300 that is more in line with the needs of the public in order to expand the product range of the series.
TT The Tower 300 continues the characteristics of the Tower series in terms of exterior and interior design, with a motherboard mounting method on top of the I-O port and a prismatic chassis design, which has a high product recognition. Moreover, compared with TT The Tower 200, the chassis has upgraded hardware compatibility without much increase in three-dimensional volume, allowing users to make more flexible hardware combinations. This review article will take you to learn more about the performance of TT The Tower 300.
TT The Tower 300 maintains a family-style prismatic design in appearance, although the first impression looks the same as the previous product, but the cross-section of the TT The Tower 300 hardware compartment is octagonal, so the TT The Tower 300** strip design is richer, and the vision is more three-dimensional.
In terms of size and volume, the length, width and height data of TT The Tower 300 is 551*342*281mm, although it is increased compared with TT The Tower 200's 537*300*280mm, but because the chassis is higher, the length and width are not very large, so compared with other models on the market, TT The Tower 300 can visually show a more slender effect.
From the front, TT The Tower 300 adopts more line design, with two more sides on the front of the product, but glass is made of glass on three sides to facilitate users to display hardware, and through the role of line guidance, the user's visual center of gravity can be more easily concentrated in the middle of the product, which can better highlight the appearance of hardware such as water blocks, memory, and motherboards, which will be more compatible with this year's popular water-cooled products with screens.
At the bottom of the front is also a matte black metal panel with a dust screen design,The panel in the middle can be removed and replaced with a style that can install a screen,But the screen needs to be purchased by the user,The official website price is899element。
On the top of the front, there is a matte black plastic top cover that covers the I-O port, and the number of I-O ports on the TT The Tower 300 is USB 30*2，usb 3.2 type-c*1，3.The 5mm audio jack*1 and microphone jack*1 are not much different from other mid-tower chassis on the market.
On the right side of the case, you can see that the panel has a hollow design and a dust filter is installed inside, which can improve the heat dissipation efficiency of the case and help users keep the inside of the case tidy. Because the entire chassis is made of matte black color, no matter which angle you look at this product, you will feel that it is more integrated.
The left side of TT The Tower 300 is exactly the same as the right side in terms of design, so it will not be repeated for the left panel.
To see the back of the case, above this is the outlet of the motherboard I 0 interface, and in the middle of the back are two fan mounting positions, using a hollow translucent design, when using RGB fans, you can faintly see the lighting effect, and TT is equipped with a magnetic dust filter for the two fan mounting positions, which can further reduce the dust in the chassis. Underneath the metal panel is the power compartment, which is secured by a fixing bracket and screws.
Finally, let's take a look at the design of the top cover of the model, the top cover is made of plastic, the overall shape is a trapezoidal column, and in the middle of the top cover is the element that runs through the fuselage design-octagonal, and in order to improve the heat dissipation efficiency, a large area of hollow design is made in the middle of the top cover, and the dust net is built into the inside of the top cover. From the outside, you can also faintly see the 140mm fan that comes with the case.
To its credit, all of the TT The Tower 300's panels are tool-free to remove, with the front glass panel popping out when pressed, while the front side glass panels, case lid and rear panel are secured with plastic clips that can be removed with a little force. The open-hole metal panels on the left and right sides are magnetically fixed and can be removed with a little force.
First of all, see the motherboard tray part, as mentioned above, TT The Tower 300 supports the installation of ITX and MATX motherboards, if you install ITX motherboards in the chassis, all the outlet holes can be used, and the installation experience will be more comfortable. If you install a matx motherboard in the chassis, except for the two rightmost cable outlets, the rest of the cable outlets will be blocked in half.
However, the interesting thing is that the outlet of this case is compatible with the interface of the matx back plug motherboard, and we also tried to install the back plug motherboard in TT The Tower 300, but the column on the left side of the case will affect the cable plugging and unplugging of the back plug motherboard, and the 24pin power supply cable of the motherboard will have hardware compatibility problems with the back fan, so it is not recommended that users use the hardware match of the back plug board in this case.
In terms of thermal compatibility, the TT The Tower 300 looks smaller, but the fan bracket on the right side can support up to 420mm radiators. In terms of air cooling, the bracket supports the installation of up to three 140mm fans.
Because the 3D size data is increased compared to TT The Tower 200, the top of TT The Tower 300 is designed with two pre-installed 140mm fan brackets, which can be removed when installed, and the motherboard I O port can be seen after disassembly.
The rest of the fans are mounted in the same way as TT The Tower 200, with up to two 140mm fans on the rear panel and up to one 140mm fan above the power compartment.
In summary, TT The Tower 300 can be fitted with up to one 420 water cooling plus five 140mm fans for water-cooled users, while up to eight 140mm fans can be installed for air-cooled users.
In addition, during the installation process, I found an interesting point again, the bracket used to mount the hard disk in the TT The Tower 300 motherboard tray is marked with a fan hole, which has been verified in practice to install a 120 140mm fan, but if the fan is installed in the bracket, it will have compatibility problems with the fan on the back panel, so the official does not tell the user in the manual that this bracket can install a fan.
In terms of rest of the hardware compatibility, TT The Tower 300 has a CPU cooler height limit of 210mm, a graphics card length limit of 400mm, and a power supply limit of 200mm length.
In order to maximize the advantages of TT The Tower 300's hardware compatibility, we installed a MATX motherboard and 420mm liquid cooling for this chassis.
This installation experience is not easy, and the advantages and disadvantages of the chassis are particularly prominent in the installation experience.
Let's talk about the difficulties in the installation process first, because the chassis designs the power cable interface to face forward, so the power cable needs to be bent to the back of the chassis before wiring, which is not friendly to the power supply with short cables. And because most of the cable outlets in the motherboard tray are blocked after installing the MATX motherboard, it is difficult to install the MATX motherboard in this case.
In addition, in terms of the installation of the radiator, because of the limited size of the chassis, the position of the 420mm radiator is relatively limited, and the installation process needs to fine-tune the position of the radiator on the fixed bracket, and the outlet hole at the very edge of the radiator will also be blocked after installing the radiator, so it is recommended that the user complete all the wiring work before installing the radiator.
After talking about the shortcomings, let's talk about the highlight design of this chassis in optimizing the installation experience, first of all, the rectangular panel under the front of the case can be removed to allow users to reach into the power compartment to plug and unplug the cable, although the operation space is less and can only be used for blind operation, but if you just simply plug and unplug the SATA power supply cable, it can still be relatively easy to achieve.
The second is that TT The Tower 300 has a convenient cable management mechanism, and the cable management tools of this case are soft plastic cable baffles, which are designed on the left and right sides of the back of the case. The baffle can be bent to a large extent, which is enough for users to hide the wire, and the slopes on the left and right sides of the back of the chassis are the hidden wire space, and the user only needs to hide the cable through the baffle in this space to achieve a neat cable management effect.
After the installation is completed, the hardware in the TT The Tower 300 chassis is relatively compact, so it can also make the hardware compartment look more sophisticated, and the large area of the back of the chassis is designed with a large area of openings, which can clearly see the RGB lighting effect of the back fan, which can be regarded as embellishment of the appearance of this case. In addition, TT also provides a horizontal bracket for this case (sold separately) to provide users with a unique case appreciation visual, further enhancing the case's exterior playability.
When it comes to the heat dissipation performance, we used the benchmark thermal test platform of Super Energy Network, placed TT The Tower 300 in an environment with a room temperature of 25 degrees, and conducted three case heat dissipation tests: the right back air intake, the right back air outlet, and the right air inlet and back air outlet. During the test, we retained the 2 fans pre-installed in the case, the vertical air duct was set to the bottom air inlet and the top outlet, and the positions of the installable fans of the case were installed and installed on the Xianma 120mm ice cave fan** speed fixed 1000 rpm), and finally the test showed that TT The Tower 300 performed best in the case of air coming out on the right back, with a super energy index (EXP) of just 89 points, and excellent heat dissipation performance, close to the level of bare metal heat dissipation. However, during the test, we found that the air duct setting will seriously affect the air cooling performance of the case, and the TT The Tower 300 has the worst Super Energy Index (EXP) of 79 in the air duct setting with air intake on the right back9 points, and if the air duct setup of the right air inlet and back air outlet is used, the super energy index (exp) of the case is 837 points.
Secondly, during the test, in order to test the fan installation method with the best heat dissipation performance under the premise of keeping the fan configuration unchanged, we adjusted the two pre-installed 140mm fans to the back of the case, and used two 120mm ice cave fans on the top to fix the speed of 1000 rpm). Therefore, if you want to add a case fan to TT The Tower 300 to enhance heat dissipation, we believe that you only need to set the air duct to the top of the right back and the bottom air inlet to achieve the best cooling effect.
TT The Tower 300 comes with a pre-installed fan called the TT CT-1420. The official nominal maximum speed is 1500rpm and the maximum wind pressure is 23mmH2O, the maximum air volume is 7737cfm。In the fan test, the data is ** in the self-made air volume and wind pressure test device of the super energy network, this test device is prepared according to the relevant national standards and ISO standards, through the pipeline test air chamber multi-nozzle orifice plate to measure the air volume and air pressure of the fan, and with different system impedances (ordinary radiator, ordinary tower radiator) under the air volume, the real-time speed of the fan is monitored by the speed tester, and in the noise room with ambient noise of 15dba, The volume test tool was placed 30 cm away from the fan to measure the noise level at full speed of the fan.
After testing, we can see that the actual value of the fan in terms of air volume and maximum static pressure is not much different from the official nominal data, and the actual performance meets the official publicity standards.
We also conducted a smoke test on the TT The Tower 300 to better understand the air ducts of the chassis. We kept the two pre-installed 140mm fans on the top of the case for air outlet, 1 x 120mm fan on the bottom of the case for air intake, 2 x 120mm fans on the rear of the case for air outlet, and 1 x 420 water cooler for air outlet. Smoke is sucked into the chassis from the bottom and left side of the chassis, please ** below ** for specific smoke test conditions. I can't see **Please refresh the page).
Mobile phone channel: Bilibili.
As you can see, after the smoke is drawn into the chassis from the bottom and left side, some smoke exits the chassis from the top panel, some smoke exits the chassis from the right panel, and the top exhaust volume is slightly more than the right panel.
In terms of hardware compatibility, TT The Tower 300 not only supports the installation of up to 420mm liquid cooling or 8 140mm fans, but also the maximum length of the graphics card is 400mm, which can meet the installation needs of mainstream RTX 40 series graphics cards and RX 7000 series graphics cards, and the chassis is also compatible with back-plugged motherboards, which can meet the installation needs of most users. In terms of heat dissipation, the TT The Tower 300 has a maximum score of 89 points, and the air-cooled heat dissipation performance is close to the level of bare metal.
However, due to the compact size of the case, as mentioned above, the installation experience of TT The Tower 300 is not easy, because the power cable interface is designed to face forward, the case is not friendly to the power supply with short cables, and due to the size limitation, the chassis can only be equipped with one radiator, if you want to install a water cooler for both the graphics card and the CPU, users will not have a chance to install TT The Tower 300.
TT The Tower 300 is priced at 799 yuan, with the same price in all colors, and is positioned as a high-end chassis product. So if you're looking for a compact MATX chassis but have high requirements for cooling and compatibility, this case may be the one that meets your needs.