Hands-On with Thermaltake View 27 & Updated Riing RGB Fans

By Published October 13, 2016 at 8:30 am

Thermaltake's updated Riing RGB LED fans that we spotted at Computex have received a few final tweaks prior to production. The new fans succeed Thermaltake's trend-setting Riing RGB fans, building on initial designs by adding a USB-attached hardware controller that can daisy chain sets of 3 RGB LED fans.

This controller is leveraged to allow independent speed and brightness controls, without which both speed and brightness are impacted by regulating voltage delivered to the fan. With most LED-enabled fans, reducing the speed (to a quieter 30%, for example) would also reduce the brightness linearly. This is because the voltage is reduced by the motherboard or host, and therefore all fan components are affected. With the controller, a fixed supply of voltage is delivered to the LEDs, while the speed is independently managed through software. Conversely, if the user wanted to run LEDs at half brightness (or even off), that could be done while retaining 100% fan speed.

This is Thermaltake's primary selling point, aside from the daisy chain functionality that supports more fans than any case could reasonably fit. Groups are used to assign color and speed profiles to fans in sets of 3, with those profile settings copied and pasted to other fans by using a duplicate function.

As for the new enclosure, the View 27 is a mid-tower, entry-level case that uses a bowing acrylic side panel over the top and sides of the chassis. This window uses a moderately smokey tint, with the front acrylic tinted a darker black. There is no normal top panel; the left side is used to cover both the top and side of the case, and is removed in a single piece.

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Video card mounting is also somewhat changed from the norm. The View 27 can mount the video card horizontally (as usual) or vertically, using a riser to extend to the GPU for displaying the face plate through the window. A foam bumper is included in case the card is left in this position during shipping.

The View 27 sticks to current trends by including a PSU shroud for cable covering, which has a removable front plate to support 360mm radiators.

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As a brief aside, Thermaltake also has a new black liquid for custom loops. This new tone of black doesn't contain the same off-blue and off-purple base that most black liquids have. If that matters to you, they're excited about the new color.

Editorial: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Video: Andrew “ColossalCake” Coleman

Last modified on October 13, 2016 at 8:30 am
Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.

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