The Box and Goodies -
The V9 BlackX comes in the rather typical box for a mid-tower case. You get the familiar picture of the case on the outside of the box along with one or two of the more interesting features. In this case we see both the dual bay docking station and the fact that is has USB 3.0 ports.

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The back of the case contains some graphics that expand upon the airflow found with the V9 BlackX as well as more detail about the features you get when you pick one of these up. Some of the typical extras are things like HDD cooling from a front mounted fan, a top mounted 230mm “blow-hole” fan. These are designed (so the graphics say) to pull cool air in from the front and the side and then vent it out the top of the case through both natural convection and the push/pull cooling setup. Inside you get a tool-less design for the drive bays and the add-in cards.

To keep the case safe during transport you have Styrofoam caps and a thick plastic bag (to help with scratches). As with most case purchases these days all of the items you need to mount the motherboard and PSU are inside the case.  Like I said, as far as the packaging goes the V9 BlackX is like a good majority of cases.

The V9 BlackX Edition -
The Thermal Take V9 BlackX is an interesting looking case. It is a semi glossy black case with a diagonal window in the left side of the case. In the opposite corners from the window there are two vents. These vents are mirrored on the right hand side of the case but on the opposite corners. These allow for a crossflow of air through the case from each corner (at least on opposite corners).

The front of the BlackX follows the now common style of looking like it is all a large grill for air flow. Ro a certain degree this is true but there are no fans anywhere but that one front fan down by the HDD cage. You do get four external 5.25-inch bays and two external 3.5-inch bays they are visible in this shot by their outlines. The nice thing about this style of front panel is that it does help to present a smooth front even with nothing installed.

The back of the case falls back in to more typical design; you get a large rear vent fan next to where the board I/O will sit. This is supposed to help vent out some of the hot air from the CPU. However one of the down sides to this is that it usually vents out right into a wall or the back of a cabinet. When you combine this with the hot air from any decent GPU can create a large amount of dead air behind your new BlackX case.

Looking at the top of the case we find that large 230mm fan that helps to vent hot air out of the top. Right in front of this fan we find the two HDD docking bays. These can fit both 3.5 and 2.5 inch drives and are hot swappable (at least according to the documentation). The front header area contains a USB 2.0 and 3.0 port along with the usual headphone and microphone jacks. Along the very extreme front edge are the power and reset buttons along with the usual function lights (HDD and Power).

Looking at the inside of the case we see a fairly typical layout. There are four perpendicular HDD bays (these allow for better air flow over the drives and also help to keep the case clean) with a tool-less mounting system. Just above this are two more bays that can be used for HDDs or for front mounted card readers etc. above that are the four front facing 5.25 Inch bays for your optical drives. If you look at the peripheral mounting slots we find that these are tool-less as well. However the design is a little clunky and sometimes sticks.

The PSU is mounted on the bottom of the case for the best airflow and cooling and also to provide you with a cleaner install. However, one of the down sides of this is that the cables from the PSU for things like the 8-pin aux power conector(s) usually have a hard time reaching across the case. Thermal Take has also put a cutout in the motherboard mounting back plane. This is useful for mounting those heavier coolers that require a larger bracket on the back of the board.

Not a bad design even if it is a little on the typical side. What counts now is to see how things go into the case and how well they operate once they are in there.

Performance -
Like most things that I review I tend to look at more than one aspect of performance. For me a case has to offer several things before it makes the cut. One of the first things it has to do is be easy to work with. It can be the best looking case on the planet, but if you cannot get your parts installed properly well then it is useless. The next thing it has to do is keep your parts cool this is the air flow test. Lastly (in my book anyway) it has to look good.

Ease of Build -

The board that I chose for this was a little bit larger than you would normally try to fit into a mid-tower case. However, that is why I chose it; I felt that the Asus Rampage III Extreme would be perfect for this. Surprisingly, I was able to drop this board in without too much trouble. I did have to sacrifice cable management a bit as these now needed to run in front of the board instead of alongside it as you would with a more normal sized board. Installing my two drives were fairly easy except that is was a pain to line up the holes on the side with the mounts that ThermalTake provides. The mounts for the optical drives were much easier to use though. The next issue we found was with the peripheral mounts. These were clunky and rickety. Although they came out easy enough they often did not go back in to easily especially with the dual height GPU that I dropped in. All in all I was not too disappointed by the V9 BlackX. It could be a little better; especially the HDD mounts and the peripheral hold downs. But for the most part things are not too bad.

Air Flow -
I was rather impressed with the cooling on the ThermalTake V9 BlackX. I really expected it to be less than adequate to be perfectly honest with you. I felt that the cooling vents on the sides were gimmicky and not very effective. However with the way the intake and exhaust fans are placed they actually work.
Even with the Rampage III Extreme, a Core i7 975 and 12GB of Kingston DDR3 1600 memory and an ATi FireGL Pro 8800 graphics card in the box the temps were fairly low and the noise was more than acceptable. In fact it was downright quite compared to many cases out there.

Aesthetics -
I am not completely sure about the looks of the V9 BlackX. It is ok looking although it does remind me of the Case 900. I asked my usual assortment of people about its looks and most of them said they thought is looked pretty good. From the front or the three-quarter view it has a certain flow to it; looking at it on the side though it looks very odd. The diagonal window does give it an interesting flare, while the dual docking stations are placed in such a way that they are not an eyesore when they are not in use. Still there is something about it that I like (which is what almost everyone I asked said).

Dock Performance -
The dual HDD docks on the top of the V9 BlackX connect directly to the SATAII ports on the motherboard so the performance is the same as a directly connected drive. We ran multiple drives in these bays including SSDs and found no difference in performance between being directly connected to the motherboard and the drives in the dock. I would have to wonder who would use these on a regular basis though. It is too bad these do not support SATA 3.0 with or we could test out some next generation SSDs for you

Value -
Value is another very subjective topic. What is expensive to some might be a deal to others. You can look at this topic in multiple ways. One is raw price and the other is what you get for the money. Each is accurate and both are correct ways to look at price/value. We tend to look at features, performance and real-property when we discuss value. However, we also take into account the raw cash cost of the item.

The Thermaltake V9 BlackX is available on the internet for around $100. This is not that bad of a price to pay for a decent tool-less mid-tower case. No when we take a look at what you get for your $100 we find that there is more to the V9 BlackX than meets the eye. You get two BlackX HDD bays for the price of a single good case.

Conclusion -
The V9 BlackX is a pretty nice case; it has most of the things you could want in a mid-tower and has an interesting style to it. The air flow was surprisingly good considering that I thought all of the vents were for show. They turned out to be very effective at keeping things cool. I would not recommend that you try and stuff as big of a board as I did in to this, but then again part of what I do is see just how far you can take things.  The dual HDD docks on the top are nice and can come in handy, but they tend to be more of a gimmick than anything of real use. If you are looking for a good case for your normal ATX sized motherboard then the Thermaltake V9 BlackX edition is a good choice. After all for $100 you get good cooling room for multiple GPUs and a couple of spots to drop in your backup HDDs.

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