Introduction
The first
thing that pops into our mind when we first heard the brand Tatu was the 90’s
one hit song All The Things She Said by the Russian duo group TATU. It really
made us somewhat intrigued with the prospect of reviewing the TMJ7 Gaming
Casing. A quick googling on the net return us zero/nada/cero hits on neither
any reviews nor its own manufacturer website. It’s like it had been sucked into
another dimension or something. The only tid-bits of details and data that we
could obtain were from some sales sites like Rakuten.my & 11street.my.
Here are
some of the details that we could scourge from the net:
Specifications: TATU TMJ7 Gaming
Casing
|
|
Brand:
|
TATU
|
Model:
|
TMJ7
|
Type:
|
ATX /
Micro ATX / Mini ITX
|
Colour:
|
Silver
|
Thickness:
|
2.0mm
Aluminium (Panel), 1.0mm SPCC Steel Body & 3.5mm Acrylic Side Panel
|
Dimension:
|
220 x
480 x 350mm
|
Net
Weight:
|
5.3kg
|
VGA
Support:
|
Below
280mm
|
Power:
|
ATX PSU
|
CPU
Cooling:
|
Below
140mm
|
Water
Cooling:
|
2x120mm
|
HDD:
|
3.5”
x2, 2.5” x2. (Expendable to 3.5” x3 / 2.5” x4)
|
Front
Panel:
|
USB3.0
x2 / USB2.0 x2 / Audio
|
The casing is looking good so far. In this small
review, we will be reviewing the TATU TMJ7 Gaming Casing which the folks from Mod n Go Design have been kindly enough to provide
us a unit.
Packaging
When the case first arrived at our doorsteps, to
say the packaging were minimalist designed really is an understatement. It’s
really is just a normal brown box made to fit the case for transportation.
Aside from a small tag with the name Tatu stuck to side, there was no other
identifier to distinguish it, not even the model name was indicated anywhere on
the box.
Opening
the box you will be greeted with the case wrapped inside a clear plastic bag to
protect it from any scratches and it is sandwiched snugly inside a foam
protector to save the case from any dents etc during transportation.
Heartbreak no.1: Aside from the case there were no other
freebies included except for a bag of screws for your PC assembly. Not even a
proper user manual was given, which is to us a really big facepalm thing to do.
As bare as the Sahara desert it seems, can’t
really blame it for its RM399.00 price I guess, there are not many choices for
aluminium casing in the market at the moment with that kind of price.
External
The casing itself is made out of 3 types of
material. 2mm aluminium for the main panels, 1mm SECC metal for the frame and
3.5mm Acrylic for its side panels. The case feels really sturdy for its size
and seems well build except for some small detailing issues. we really like the
design, its simple and elegant kinda remind us of the old Silverstone casing
design philosophy of using one clean piece aluminium panel for the front and
top.
The
front/top aluminium panel is joined together with the rear aluminium panel by
simply using rivets. This is where I find it to be lacking a bit, the rivet
work is a bit shoddy, you can feel the uneven cut at the tip of your fingers
when you run your fingers over them. This is a small setback when you are too
accustomed to good rivet works by other casing manufacturers like CoolerMaster
& Silverstone. The front of the case is very clean, you can only find a
power button, headphone/mic jack, 2x USB2.0 & 2x USB 3.0 ports and that’s
it. For added effect the power button lights up blue when you turn on the power.
Not
a single 5.25” drive slot is provided, hence this is how the manufacturer able
to cut down the length of the case by inches comparing to other mid-tower cases
on the market. For those who still hang
to their DVD writers for installing games or watching DVD etc, be prepared to
spend a bit more to buy an external solution.
At
the rear of the case you will find the usual stuffs, a 12cm exhaust fan
placement, 7 PCI/PCIe slots with aluminium ventilated covers, motherboard port
placement & ATX PSU compartment. At the bottom of the case are raised feet
that should give some degree of clearance to let cool air in through the bottom
vents.
The
side panels are made out of thick 3.5mm acrylic panel held in place by 4 pieces
of black lightweight aluminium screws.
The Inside
The
inside of the case is quite roomy, it is painted flat black mostly on the metal
SECC parts. You should be able to fit an ITX up to ATX motherboard in here. All
the necessary holes for wire management are provided though without any rubber
grommet. Fan placement is provided at the top and the front plate for 2x 12cm
fans each. Users can take out the plate by unscrewing 2 screws from the side of
the plate to dismantle it from the case to attach case fans.
Heartbreak no.2: As you can see, not a single case fan is provided by the manufacturer
which is another face palm moment in our book.
Only
a power button, harddisk led & power led connector is provided with case. Neither
reset button nor internal speaker is provided for assembly. The provided front 2x
USB 2.0 & 2x USB 3.0 connector is good thing though because you can never
get enough of them for all of your peripherals.
At
the back of the motherboard tray, they had provided around 2cm of space for all
your cable management needs. This is a plus to us so that you can tuck away all
those unwanted cables at the back from any prying eyes.
They
had stated the case can accommodate 2x 2.5” drives and 3x 3.5” drives, there
are mounting holes to mount a single 2.5” drive at the motherboard tray just
beside the PSU compartment and another 2.5” drive at the HDD cage. 3.5” drives
are mounted using white plastic HDD tray. If any users wanted to expand this,
they could sacrifice some of the fans to mount the hard disk at the fan
mounting plates.
Components Installation
Even
without a proper manual for installation, the process is a breeze, everything
fits nicely and as you can see the case can even fit a large air-cooler like
the Noctua NH-D14 though you have to forfeit the top case fan to make it fit. If you’re planning to use AIO coolers with the
case you would be restricted to 120mm type mounted on the rear exhaust vent. To
use any 240mm AIO coolers would not be advisable due to the top fan mount does
not have any exhaust holes for the hot air to be expelled out of the case. There
is enough room for GPUs give and take up to 320mm. Using semi-modular or
modular PSU is recommended due to the small space left in between the HDD cage
and PSU to stash non modular cables.
Temperature
Due to
time constraint, we’ll only be doing a basic CPU temperature test. Here are our
testbed specification and our findings:
CPU : AMD A10 5800K (Turbo Core to 4.2Ghz)
RAM : 2x2GB Gskill Ripjaws 2000Mhz DDR3
M/B : ASUS A88X-Plus (BIOS version 2801)
GPU : MSI R7 240 2GB DDR3
PSU : Corsair TX650M
SSD : Mushkin Chronos 120GB
HDD : WD Green 2TB WD20EARS
CPU Cooler
|
Minimum Temp (c)
|
Maximum Temp (c)
|
AMD Stock
Cooler
|
49
|
62
|
Noctua
NH-D14
|
49
|
56
|
Heartbreak no 3: Due to the design of the case
of having no intake vents at its entire fan placement really take a toll on the
CPU temperature. Yes you could minimize the effect a bit by using third party
cooling solution, but to us it shouldn’t be that way in the first place. Sure,
design is important but practicality is just as important to us. The
manufacturer should have estimated this issue during their design process. In our
opinion is that, the reason for the temperature to be on the wee high side of
things is due to the evident lack of intake vents on the fan placement, that
the fans are just simply circulating the available air inside the case, the
longer the pc run the hotter the air will be.
To try and
prove our theory, we did 2 different test to see if temperature would improve
if better intake of air was introduce to the whole system. First test is just
by keeping the side panel open throughout the test and the other test is by
making a simple side panel mod with proper intake vent hole inclusive of an
intake fan. Here is the result of the test:
CPU Cooler
|
Minimum Temp (c)
|
Maximum Temp (c)
|
Noctua
NH-D14 (Reference)
|
49
|
56
|
Noctua
NH-D14 (Open Sidepanel)
|
34
|
41
|
Noctua
NH-D14 (Modded Sidepanel)
|
36
|
46
|
As you can see by channelling clean cold air
from outside into the case really helps in keeping the temperature as low as
possible. Having the minimum temp drop from 49c to 34c-36c and max temp from
56c to 41c-46c is a lot by all means. Better temperature means that we can use
better and in some case hotter components inside the case than what previously
possibly could.
Conclusion
It’s a
love-hate relationship with this case. We love the design and choice of
material chosen to build the case but we surely hate some of the nagging issues
involving the high temperature reading due to inefficient airflow. By all means
it doesn’t mean that the case is entirely unusable but when used with our
testbed 32nm mule CPU everything does seems going toasty when we run our stress
test. It should be much better when paired with other lower wattage CPU’s in
the market though.
If you’re
in the market for a small footprint mid/mini-tower casing, this case really
hits the ballpark. Where in the market could you find an aluminium tower case
this size but can fit a full size ATX motherboard at a low RM399.00 price? Most
casing with the same league of footprint in the market is at best only able to
accommodate up to MATX motherboards. Here’s a small comparison table for your
reference:
Case Name
|
Tatu
TMJ7
|
Bitfenix
Prodigy M
|
Bitfenix
Phenom
|
Corsair 350D
|
Corsair
Air 240
|
CM
N200
|
Width (mm)
|
220
|
250
|
250
|
210
|
260
|
202
|
Height (mm)
|
480
|
404
|
330
|
450
|
397
|
378
|
Depth (mm)
|
350
|
359
|
374
|
440
|
320
|
445
|
We really
would love to give this case a gold noob award but due to its shortcomings in
term of inadequately thought of air intake vents and absence of any freebies
case fans and manual guide we had to dig deep and gave it a bronze award
instead. Again we would like to say our deepest thank you to the people from Mod n Go Design for making this review
possible, I believe if any of you decided to take a plunge in getting this case
from them, throw them a few bucks more and they would gladly make u a modded
side panel such as ours to tackle your temperature worries.
Pro:
Simple
& stylish designed.
Mixture
of lightweight aluminium, SECC steel & thick acrylic panel makes a light
but sturdy case.
Supports
most ITX, MATX & ATX motherboards in the market.
Small
footprint for a mid-tower case.
Competitively
priced.
Con:
Not so
great airflow.
Comes in
a bare minimum package, a proper manual with free one or two case fans thrown
in would make it a better package.
DVD & Blue-Ray disks lover would cringe at the non-existent 5.25” slot.
DVD & Blue-Ray disks lover would cringe at the non-existent 5.25” slot.
