The tempered glass side panel of the Ceres 500 is only 3mm thick, whereas many of the aforementioned competing manufacturers are using 5mm glass. Personally, I dislike the latching knob system that Thermaltake uses on many cases, the Ceres 500 included. This is just my personal preference though, and some may really like the convenience or appearance, so I’m not going to give it negative marks for that. I also found the sheet metal of the Ceres 500 to be thinner and more flexible than I would generally like to see on a chassis of this price.
In a previous Thermaltake enclosure review a few motherboard standoffs had been installed cross-threaded from the factory. In the Ceres 500 all three of the centermost standoff (middle top, middle row, and bottom row) had been over tightened, and stripped out the bottoming threads in the motherboard tray. When installing a motherboard, and attempting to secure the screw in any of these three standoffs, they would just spin.
I ended up having to make a temporary fix by applying some super glue to the standoff threads where they protrude through the backside of the motherboard tray. I am aware that this only functions as a temporary fix, and the use of a small nut to these threads would permanently solve the problem, but again this is a $170 case. An issue like this should not happen, and it seems to be a recurring issue from Thermaltake.
