Creating something so unique in such a flooded market is no easy task and yet there were many examples last year. Lian Li’s wall-mountable PC-O5S was practically a piece of art, being constructed from aluminum and a large tempered glass panel to show off the hardware inside. This case was of excellent build quality and design inside and out. The PC-O5S’s only downside was its asking price of almost $300, which is toward the upper end of what most are willing to spend on a chassis, even if it’s not a bad value. If you love the idea of a wall-mountable PC but don’t want to spend more on your case than any other part, perhaps Thermaltake’s latest creation is for you.
Priced at just $150, the new Thermaltake Core P5 seems affordable for what it is. It’s more comparable to the Lian Li PC-O7S in terms of its size as the PC-O7S measures 514 x 585mm and the Core P5 is 608 x 570mm. However, the Core P5 is twice as thick, which makes it more like hanging a traditional computer case on the wall. Unlike Lian Li’s wall-mountable range, the Core P5 is intended to be used with custom liquid-cooling systems and its modular design affords the flexibility of building horizontal or vertical.
Unfortunately, a big part of cost cutting has resulted in an acrylic window rather than one of tempered glass. The case has also been constructed from steel rather than aluminum which has blown the weight out to 12.2kg (26.8lbs) empty, making the PC-O7S almost 20% lighter despite featuring a massive glass panel. The Core P5 is also an open-air chassis whereas the PC-O7S isn’t. Lian Li had initially intended to make the PC-OxS series open-air, but in the end decided against it and instead included dust filters and case fans. The Core P5 does feature a dust filter on the rear side which seems a little pointless to us, there are no fans included out of the box. Therefore, we won’t be testing the Core P5 how we normally test computer cases and instead will be installing a custom Thermaltake liquid-cooling system to take full advantage of the Core P5’s unique design.
