Thermaltake Suppressor F31 Silent Mid-tower Chassis Review




/ 8 years ago

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Introduction


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Thermaltake is one of the biggest names in the PC component market, with a huge range of products that range from water coolers to power supplies. We’ve seen a lot of great products from Thermaltake over the years, and today we hope to see another great addition to their already featured packed range.

“The Suppressor F31 Window mid-tower chassis is the new addition to the Suppressor Series to the Thermaltake case line. Featuring the first chassis with 250mm wide and leading-edge sound reduction panels on all sides, expand your cooling options with removable panels for the perfect balance in silent operation and cooling performance. Supporting a range of motherboard platforms from Mini-ITX to ATX solutions, unrivaled liquid cooling expansion and expandability for all high-end GPU solutions users can expect an enthusiast built design they can trust.”

The Thermaltake Suppressor F31 is their latest mid-tower, following on from their F51 chassis which launched earlier this year, designed with a relentless focus on silent performance. It’s been kitted out with thick panels, vast amounts of sound dampening materials, a front panel door and extensive air and water cooling support, giving you all the tools you need to build a power and super quiet system.

https://youtu.be/vkLnHc9Er5o

Equipped with extensive support for fans and radiators, a decent amount of storage, large graphics cards and more, the F31 is certainly a capable product; I can’t wait to take a closer look at this chassis, so let’s jump right in and see.

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This chassis is closed up pretty tight, with lots of sound-dampening features to help keep your build as quiet as possible. There’s a very thick side panel on the left with an optional side panel fan mount. The fan mount has a magnetic exterior dust filter for easy maintenance.

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Another thick panel on the right as well as more ventilation down the sides of the front panel to provide airflow to the front mounted cooling.

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The front panel is just as bold as the rest of the design, with a thick door panel and a lightly textured finished. The design is a little boxey and bland, but I quite like the monolithic appearance.

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At the top of the front panel, you’ll find HD audio jacks, power controls, dual USB 3.0 ports and dual USB 2.0 ports; that’s decent amount of connectivity.

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A few magnets in the front panel help keep the door closed and to help further enhance the noise proofing, there’s a thick lining of sound dampening material on the back of the door.

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There are two 5.25″ drive bays, each fitted with a quick-release tool-free cover.

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The bottom cover clips out easily enough, allowing you to quickly clean the filter and access the front panel cooling mounts, where you’ll find a pre-installed 120mm fan.

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On the top, you’ll find a full-length magnetic dust filter, which is easily removed and cleaned when needed.

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You’ll also notice that under it, the fan mounts as closed off, meaning you can keep them in place for maximum noise dampening, or take them out to install extra cooling as required.

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Four sturdy feet on the bottom give good ground clearance for the full-length, slide-out dust filter.

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This filter gives clean airflow to the PSU ventilation, as well as any addition base mounted cooling.

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Around the back, you’ll find the side panels are held in place with thumb screws, but also normal chassis screws. I just wish I noticed these extra screws when I struggled for a few minutes wondering why the flipping panel wouldn’t slide off; I have no idea why we need a second set of screws here, but you could always leave the removed if required.

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At the top, there’s a single 120mm exhaust fan pre-installed, but there’s also the option to install 140mm cooling if required. The screw holes are elongated to allow more flexibility in the height of the fan/radiator mounting, as this could help prevent hardware conflicts.

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There are eight expansion slots, each fitted with a metal reusable and ventilated cover. There’s also a routing grommet to the right, as well as plenty of extra ventilation.

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The PSU mounting supports normal and inverted installation, of course, if you mount the PSU with the fan facing downwards, you can take advantage of the bottom dust filter.

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———————–

Interior


The interior of the left side panel is coated with thick sound dampening material, while the side panel its self is one of the thickest and heaviest I’ve ever seen; it’s virtually bulletproof.

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On the interior, we’ve got lots of room for high-end hardware, as well as plentiful cable routing options to help you achieve a neat and tidy build. There’s a large CPU cooler mounting cut out at the back, as well as pre-installed motherboard stand-offs, which should ease the installation process.

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The primary hard drive bay has three slide-out and tool free drives for 3.5″ HDDs, although screws are also included to install 2.5″ drives if required.

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The brackets are plastic and quite sturdy, but their design should also help reduce any vibrations from your drives.

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The PSU mounting is slightly raised with four large vibration absorbing pads. There’s room in the base for extra fans or radiators too, but this will require you to remove the HDD bay to make full use of it.

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There are two 5.25″ drive bays in the top, which come with a tool free locking system. Even better, if you don’t want to use these bays, they’re completely removable, freeing up more room for fans or large radiators in the front of the chassis.

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The front cooling mounts are extremely versatile, with 120mm and 140mm spacings and elongated screw holes to allow for a wide range of configurations.

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In the back of the chassis, you’ll find a single 120mm fan for the exhaust, you may notice that this big ol’ chassis only has two small fans, which seems like nowhere near enough cooling, but typically most consumers add their own after market fans and/or water cooling, so these fans are really just a small freebie, rather than include lots of fans that are likely to be replaced anyway.

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That being said, the fans are of a nice quality and come with black sleeved cables. There’s a huge amount of space at the back too, so AIO or custom loop radiators should fit with ease.

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All of the expansion slots are fitted with thumb screw, allowing for quick and easy installation/removal of your components.

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There’s even more thick layers of sound dampening material in the top, split into three easily removable panels should you need to take them out for extra cooling.

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The right side panel has, you guessed it, even more sound dampening material. I’m actually starting to think that if you removed all the steel, we’d still have a pretty sturdy chassis just from the padding alone; this panel is also incredibly heavy and strong, just like the one on the left.

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At the back of the motherboard tray, you’ll find a huge amount of space for cable management as well as a good amount of cable tie loops and cable routing holes to help you keep everything neat and tidy.

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There’s a laughable amount of space here, so much so, that you can actually install 3.5″ drive behind the motherboard and still have room to spare.

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There are three clips like this one, one here in the bottom right.

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Bottom left.

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With the last on in the top left. Each of these can be used to mount of the drive trays from the front HDD bay, this means that should you need to remove the HDD bay to make way for cooling hardware, you won’t lose any of the number of bays!

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The trays clip in with ease too, no tools required.

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Extra cable routing at the top, handy for motherboard cables and routing fans for the top ventilation.

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The front panel can be pulled off, giving you easy access to the fan mounts on the front of the chassis.

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Also included with this chassis, is a handy PSU shroud, which features a pair of 2.5″ drive mounts, as well as a grommet for power cables to any expansion cards.

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It’s a simple design, but will help tidy up your build and adds more storage with minimal effort.

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———————–

Complete System


Building a system inside the F31 was laughably easy, there’s so much room in here for our components and cable routing, that everything dropped into place with ease. The only minor issue I can see here is that for dual graphics cards, I would need to remove the HDD bays to accommodate a long graphics card, but with all three drive trays being capable of sitting behind the motherboard, that’s hardly a compromise.

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The PSU shroud is doing a great job, not only at providing us with two dedicated 2.5″ drive bays, but also for passing through the power cables to the GPU. GPUs that have the power cables on the side can be a major cause of trailing cables, but the provides a neat and tidy workaround to that issue.

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There’s a lot of space here, so even the biggest GPUs on the market will fit with ease. There’s also plenty of room left over, so thick radiators with push-pull fans will fit easily enough.

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Good clearance from the motherboard will allow for plenty of fans or radiators in the top too, although I would personally prefer to leave it closed up to reduce noise from the system.DSC_4663

There’s easily room for a multi-GPU configuration here and again, I’m really happy with how the cables pass through the shroud, much better than trailing the power cables over or under the card.

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All panels back in place and the F31 looks just as stunning as it did when we took it out of the box.

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———————–

Final Thoughts


Pricing

The Thermaltake Suppressor F31 is available in the UK from Scan.co.uk for a very reasonable £67.90. Readers in the US, Europe and Germany can expect to find it at most popular retailers for $89,90, €89,90 and €99,90 respectively. The Windowed version of the F31 is also available from Scan for just £71,17, and you should expect a similar small increase in price in other regions.

Overview

Thermaltake have really gone all out when it comes to build quality on this chassis. The side panels alone are insanely thick and heavy, so much so that it seems almost pointless having the noise dampening material installed, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. If you’re the kind of person who kicks your PC in a fit of rage while gaming, it’ll take its beating without sustaining damage, but I can’t say the same for the bones in your foot. That extra tough build quality doesn’t just help with kick-resistance and sound proofing either. If you’re installing a lot of high-end water cooling equipment, that adds a lot of weight to the system, so it’s nice to have the confidence that the frame of the chassis can handle it.

The system may be closed up pretty tight, but with all that ventilation on the front panel edges, on the base of the chassis and the optional fan mounts on the top and side, airflow certainly isn’t going to be an issue. You can have this chassis as closed up tight or as open to airflow as you like, or as your build requires and it’s certainly nice to have that kind of flexibility. With washable, clip in, slide on and magnetic dust filters on every intake, maintenance is going to be very easy too, just strip them down, give them a wash and a dry, re-install and you’re good to go.

Cable routing on this chassis is incredible, there’s a crazy amount of space behind the motherboard that will no doubt please those who like to do the lazy cable management method – stuffing huge amounts of cables out of the way. Those who like things neat and tidy will find lots of cable tie loops, a huge range of routing grommets, the PSU shroud and more will all help you get everything just the way you like it. Of course, the interior of the chassis does look amazing, but you’ll no doubt want the windowed side panel version if you’re eager to show that off.

The removable hard drive bay is handy, but even more so that you can move all three 3.5″ drive bays to behind the motherboard, freeing up all that space for radiators and other hardware of your choice; something that will no doubt please the modding community.

Pros

  • Tough build quality
  • Sound proofing materials
  • Front panel door
  • Removable 5.25″ drive trays
  • Removable HDD bays
  • PSU shroud
  • Excellent cable management
  • Dust filters
  • Removable cooling mount covers
  • Room to fit 3.5″ drives behind motherboard

Cons

  • Two types of screws used to mount side panels
  • Removal of the front HDD bay is essential if you’re using front mounted radiators or dual GPUs (for most cards)

“The Thermaltake Suppressor F31 may be rather bland looking behemoth, but in terms of building a system, it’s an extremely capable and well-made chassis, that’s sure to last you a lifetime, while helping you have a cool and quiet system build.”

Thermaltake Suppressor F31 Silent Mid-tower Chassis Review

Thermaltake Suppressor F31 Silent Mid-tower Chassis Review

Thank you Thermaltake for providing us with this sample.

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