The Ceres 500’s tempered glass side panels are only 3mm thick, while many of the aforementioned competitors use 5mm glass. Personally, I dislike the latching knob system that Thermaltake uses in many cases, including the Ceres 500. However, this is just my personal taste and some people may really like the convenience or the look, so I’m not going to give it any downsides. We also found the Ceres 500’s sheet metal to be thinner and more flexible than you’d typically expect for a chassis at this price point.
In previous Thermaltake enclosure reviews, some of the motherboard standoffs were factory attached with cross screws. On the Ceres 500, his three standoffs in the middle (top center, middle row, bottom row) were all overtightened, stripping the threads at the bottom of the motherboard tray. When installing the motherboard, if you try to secure the screw to one of these three standoffs, the screw will spin.
I ended up having to temporarily fix it by applying superglue to the standoff threads sticking out from the underside of the motherboard tray. I know this only works as a temporary solution and using a smaller nut on these screws will fix the problem permanently, but again this is a $170 case. Issues like this shouldn’t happen and seem to be a recurring issue from Thermaltake.
