Thermaltake

I had a badly pinned 24 pin cpu cable, it would randomly power off my NAS because if it was bent a certain way, one or more of the pins were not making contact with the board header. Contacted them via there support page and within a week I recieved a replacement cable. Great service and minimal fuss, this is the kind of service that keeps customers coming back.

5 Star (revised) – I purchased a Tt Core P3 PC chassis from Umart on 9th April thinking it must be of high quality and backed by a reputable brand Thermaltake. There hasn’t been a day past when I don’t regret it. The case arrived (albeit 10 days late) in a sealed box upon opening I noticed paint fading at the corner of the main frame. There is a sticker with a red arrow pointing at the faded area which appears to be done at the factory. I am 100% certain full retail price was paid for a brand new product, not a “factory reconditioned” or “returned” product. I have photographic evidence of it which I sent to Thermaltake.

In addition the riser cable which allows you to mount the GPU vertically in front of the motherboard is faulty too. I tested this multiple times with the GPU mounted on the motherboard, benchmark tests were able to run without hiccups. However when connected via the riser cable, the exact same benchmark consistently failed to initialise. And I’ve checked all of the connection points making sure they were plugged in all the way so it was not caused by a bad connection which left only one explanation i.e the cable itself is faulty.

I contacted Umart and to my surprise they directed me to contact Thermaltake. So I emailed Thermaltake on May 1st with the photos and original invoice. Thermaltake wants me to pay shipping to return the chassis to their office so they can observe and test which I can understand from a manufacturer’s perspective.

However from a consumer's perspective, this is not only costly but also tremendously inconvenient. The chassis weighs about 12kg which would cost $70 to ship back. I work in a restaurant. $178 is more than a full days pay for me. And on top of that I also paid $73 in shipping. To further spend $70 on a faulty product costing over $250 bucks is absurd. I also will have to spend further time uninstalling the pc component and disassemble the chassis (as it won’t fit into the box assembled). In addition, I will not be able to use my computer at home unless I buy another case for the interim which I simply cannot afford. Not to mention the amount of time I already spent assembling and testing the product. On top of that, there isn’t a guaranteed resolution yet.

A high end expensive chassis which came defective out of the box and immensely difficult to claim warranty are certainly not what I had in mind when I chose Thermaltake. As a consumer I feel the company deliberately distributes defective products, evident from the factory applied sticker on the chassis, then makes the return process so difficult and costly to deter any warranty claims, a very strategic move to maximise profit.

My Thermaltake experience has been nothing short of a nightmare. Imagine working and spending all of your money and free time testing, documenting and contacting the merchant and manufacturer for a refurbished faulty product. I have made the decision to cut my losses and live with the faulty product. By not wasting more time on a piece of junk of a product I may live a happy happy life ever after, a lesson I paid for dearly and learned the hard way.

If you are thinking about purchasing anything from Thermaltake, please make sure you do all the research beforehand as I later found out the riser cable from Thermaltake is a common issue from the PC builder community. Having seen the quality of their brand new signature product, I can almost guarantee you will regret purchasing anything from them. You will be at their mercy and made to jump through hoops for warranty claims.

By stark contrast, chipset manufacturer AMD takes a different approach in supporting their products. Some of the X570 series motherboards were manufactured before the 2nd Gen Ryzen 3000 series CPU release therefore require a BIOS update to support the newer CPU’s. Problem is that without an older CPU you can’t update the BIOS. So AMD have a free loaner program where if you have an older X570 motherboard with a newer Ryzen Gen 2 CPU and you can’t perform the BIOS update, they will ship you an older Ryzen CPU as a free loaner to enable the BIOS update then to be returned in a satchel provided. It is free of charge and no out of pocket expenses for the customer whatsoever.

I hope by sharing my experience, you can make an informed decision and please do your research online about the quality of a brand before purchasing. DO NOT make the same mistake I did.

EDIT: Thermaltake responded to my email by saying

<We have forwarded this matter to our supervisor for further consideration. Sorry for any inconvenience caused>

Email dated 5th May, 2020. No response since then.

EDIT 15 MAY, 2020 Thermaltake warranty department has sent me a black replacement chassis in BRAND NEW condition. I haven't installed it yet. At this point I am satisfied that they do stand behind their product and Thermaltake is a company that promotes service and integrity. It is only fitting to revise the rating to 5 STARS.