Verdict: Almost as hot as the swinging sixties

We're not quite sure why Thermaltake has named its latest case 'Swing'. After all, its panels don't swing open and we're fairly sure that it doesn't indulge in a spot of wife swapping or 'Austin Powers'-style love orgies. Austin himself certainly wouldn't shout 'Yeah Baby!' upon seeing the case either, because it's just a generic steel chassis with a matt silver plastic front panel.

Plastic is much easier (and cheaper) to mould than aluminium, so case designers can theoretically be more creative with a plastic front panel than an aluminium-fronted case. The front panel of the Swing is shapely, but it's made from a single mould, so air can only enter the case through a small vent in the bottom. This means that air entering the case has to pass through two 90-degree turns, which isn't ideal. Thermaltake doesn't supply a 120mm fan for the front intake (although we fitted one for testing), but the Swing is fitted with a washable dust filter.

The rear 120mm fan mount is populated by a slow-spinning and reasonably quiet fan.

Four 5.25in external and two 3.5in external drive bays are provided, along with four 3.5in internal drive bays mounted at a 90-degree angle to the front of the case. This transversely mounted cage serves to restrict air flowing from the front of the case into the motherboard chamber. The windowed left side panel has a small vent built into the plastic handle, but it isn't large enough to let in a significant amount of air.

Even with our test PC sitting idle in Windows, the temperature of each measured component inside the Swing was disappointingly high.

For example, the CPU was a toasty 54ûC and the GPUs 70ûC. After a thorough warm-up, the Swing proved incapable of decent cooling, with the CPU temperature rising to 76ûC, although the GPUs were a more respectable 102ûC, well within the thermal threshold of the graphics cards. The infrared photograph reveals the Swing's principal problem: poor airflow. As the image shows, the ambient temperature inside the Swing is among the highest of the cases we tested, with a tendency for hot air to become trapped at the top of the case, which is particularly bad news for the PSU. This is one case that would really benefit from either a roof-mounted fan, or some form of vent.

The Swing has two glaring design flaws, which are the lack of a clear front air intake and a poorly positioned hard drive cage. These two factors combine to prevent sufficient cool air from entering the case, which is essential for keeping components cool. For a case to provide good cooling for a high-end PC, it needs to offer an easy route for the passage of air from the front to the rear, and over the hot components; in this regard, however, the Swing fails.

• Cases - 21st November 2008
• Motherboards - 24th October 2008
• Gaming Headsets - 26th September 2008
• Dream PCs - 24th September 2008
• Headphones - 12th September 2008
• Media PC components - 22nd August 2008
• PSUs - 14th July 2008

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