I use both the blue and black thermaltake cases (picking up the VM3000A Skull Case on Monday) and I'd rocommend thermaltake anyday. Basically everything in my comps is thermaltake unless there's a very good reason not to be. Fans, Coolmods, Ramsinks, VGA Coolers, you name it!
My blue one running an AMD XP2200+ with the thermaltake Aquarius II Liquid cooler runs at roughly 24c at idle and at around 30c on a 35c day with heavy gaming. Although the Aquarius II coolers aren't supposed to be the best way to go in liquid cooling, I find that mine has worked more than well for myself and would give it my full recommendation for anyone that heard otherwise.
The fans that come with the case are (all 7) so quiet that I can seriously say that any one of your cpu fans out there, regardless of how quiet they may be, are a lot louder than all these seven combined. Throw in a Thermaltake 480W power supply with an adjustable fan and your pc gets quieter still.
I used to run the Volcano 9 in mine but the volcano on it's own is loud enough to wake the dead and send them to their grave once more so the liquid cooler is great at keeping the noise down, not to mention a good 15c or so off the temperature. Basically I'm running the 7 fans that came with the case, ramsink and fan, 3 separate hard drive fans for each of the hard drives, 480W power supply with an adjustable second fan (always set to maximum), and the aquarius II liquid cooler and I can barely hear the thing during the day.
Anyway, all in all, there are a lot of amazing brands out there but all I know is Thermaltake myself as I use just about everything they make. Heck if you want to know anything about their products just drop me a line and I can't most likely give you a perfect review on it based on my own experiences.
btw be also sure to check out the Aquarius III which was put up on the Thermaltake site recently. A new liquid cooler which sadly enough I have to wait til next year to get a hold of
btw I'll post back in the morning after I've uploaded some links of my thermaltake cases. Also if you ever need any advice with thermaltake gear or how to work them (the instructions can sometimes be a pain in the butt to understand) don't hesitate to ask!
Edit: Oh yeah if you get the Black case (VM1000) and want a clear side be sure to ask for the VM1000A instead. It means that you get the black case with the clear side rather than having to buy the clear side separately at an additional cost. I'm not sure if the Blue and Silver cases also have that option but I wasn't aware of it when I got the blue one.
There's also the new Lanfire case but I find that to be more like a cheap toy and would have to say that Thermaltake kinda went backwards in producing that one. Either they had some cut-backs or they decided that a plastic door is cool! *LOL*
As for the keyboards and mice, personally I wouldn't bother with them. They aren't too bad looking and would match the case but could never bring myself to buy them as they looked a bit too weird to me. More like something Thermaltake tried a bit too hard to make impressive but failed miserably. I went for the Logitech MX700 Cordless Keyboard and Mouse combo instead and would say that unless the Thermaltake combo really take your fancy to just stick with any other keyboard and mouse because you won't be getting much more.
[ 11-22-2003, 09:47 AM: Message edited by: Bokken ]