Verdict: A solid piece, but nothing classical.
It's about time something was named after Catherine Bach, best known for her role as Daisy Duke in the classic TV series 'The Dukes of Hazzard'. Despite her funky website (http://catherinebach.com) and new range of Daisy Duke-style clothing, we were beginning to think that no one would tip their hat to the 1980s sex-bomb actress. Well done to Thermaltake for stepping up to the plate so late in the day. Of course, classical music fans might prefer to believe that this case is named after Johann Sebastian. Then again, maybe not.
The Thermaltake Bach looks somewhat lumpy for a media PC case, and the blue light glowing from the recesses on either side of the block that houses the VFD doesn't help. Given that media PCs are intended to reside in a living room, they should strive to be as inconspicuous as possible - free from noise and lights, and displaying a sleekness of design. Just as the blue glow is unwelcome, so are the naked ports to the left. There are the usual power and reset switches, two USB 2 ports and a FireWire port, plus microphone and headphone jacks. However, most media centre cases (such as the Zalman HD160XT Plus on p64) hide these ugly holes behind a door.
On the right-hand side of the fascia are the drive bay openings. The primary optical drive opening is easily visible, but this door is part of a larger door that opens to reveal three external 5.25in drive bays in total. Why you'd want three optical drives is beyond us - even multiformat Blu-ray/HD-DVD drives are available now.
The lid of the case is attached by three standard thumbscrews and is easily removed. Inside, the case is roomy, as it's essentially a full-height desktop case that might just as easily house a 486 as a next-gen media PC, had it been born when the Dukes were still jumping over bridges. This means you can use a full-height graphics card if you fancy PC-based living room gaming, or just want to use PureVideo or Avivo to accelerate and enhance video playback.
There's space for two 3.5in hard disks, and as 1TB hard disks aren't horrendously expensive, storage space for music and video files shouldn't be a problem. There's also room to install either a micro-ATX or a full-sized ATX board, which is the main benefit of the case being such a big lump in the first place.
The big hindrance to installing powerful components in the Bach, however, is the cooling. Thermaltake only provides an 80mm intake fan at the front of the case and two 60mm exhaust fans to cool your media PC. The fans may not be noisy, but neither do they push much air. With the absence of any other fan mounts, we're sceptical of running anything but a modest system in the Bach without overheating becoming a problem, although the venting on the lid of the case helps matters slightly.
While the Bach has room for an ATX motherboard with quad-core support and a large graphics card, we'd advise you to be much more modest with your PC design if you're determined to use this case.
The supplied remote control for the supplied Media LAB software sports around 12 million buttons, so it will handle almost any task. However, we still prefer the Microsoft MCE remote control kit, which costs around £20, even if the receiver has to sit outside the case. The Microsoft remote has a much cleaner layout, with only the buttons you need to control Media Center. The backlighting is also handy if you watch films with the lights turned down.
Conclusion
The most striking aspect of the Thermaltake Bach is its dissimilarity to traditional media PC cases. There's little of the grace and none of the innovation that we've come to expect from such cases - no compartmentalised cooling zones, or rubber grommets to deaden hard disk noise. What you have is a big lump of a case with some small, slow-spinning fans, a distracting blue glow, and a VFD. This is quite disappointing, as media PCs are supposedly living room appliances, and should be as nondescript as a VCR or DVD player. The Bach, however, is far too bold a case to present to a technophobe as just another piece of living room gadgetry.
The main letdown of the Bach is its failure to provide sufficient cooling to run a powerful PC for extended periods of time, even though it has sufficient space to support a powerful system. We expect more from a product costing over £100.
