- Apr 3, 2018
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I had previously purchased the Grandia "HTPC" case and like it. I had a need for a smaller case than that and figured this would be a good choice when considering how the other has impressed me.
First off, super simple to build in. Nothing at all to do in relation cable management, pretty much just lays in there in front of the power supply. Unlike the other case this one does have sharp edges inside and I cut both my hands several times while trying to roll up and tie down some of the wiring. The case itself has nothing by way of anchor points to zip tie and so forth. They include (2) sticky tab plastic wire holders, a couple of zip ties, and a screw bag that I have no idea what some of the little screws would be for. No fan mount screws at all, in spite of the two places the case has available for an 80mm fan.
One of the mount locations for a fan are on the front behind the plastic facia. There is almost non-existent venting there, starving that location of proper air flow. The other is on the side where the vent is. I suspect that location would work better for cooling but like many other cases will probably have to remove the dust filter. This side panel and the top have screen filters. With that said, air flow in the case is nearly an afterthought with those screens in place. It would not seem that this case could deal with any manner of mid to powerful equipment inside, more on that in a bit.
One of the main detractors IMO is the top vent and the drive tray located below it. In order to get even a hope of air exchange it is best to take the top filter out, side one too, really. The drive tray is plain jane silver and looks pretty terrible when looking down into the case. Really could have taken a second to paint that black, it would have helped a lot. I may do it myself. The tray has a spot for a slim optical drive OR a 3.5" HDD. Not both. There are two places where a 2.5" drive can be installed to the rear of that tray and under the front side.
Watch very closely about your power supplies cable length. The same could be said about fan cabling and particularly in relation to where the headers are on your motherboard. Running power and SATA up to that drive tray puts the cabling right across the CPU cooler. Watch very closely that the fan doesn't catch it and as well take care if you decide to try and put a zip tie there to lift it away from the fan as this can cause issue with wire length and actually being able to flip this tray in/out (for access). I had issue with the PSU I used having SATA power just barely too short and one connector is unusable without an extension. On the mobo I am currently using the fan header won't allow the fan wire to go to the side vent without running directly over the graphics card.
In this particular build I currently have a Celeron G3900 on a thin stock fan and a half height GTX 750ti. Neither of those are particularly power hungry or loud. I utilized an extra Dell TFX power supply that I had on hand. The proposed use case for this system is going to basically be a video streaming box for a "dumb" TV. With the filters in place the interior just continues to climb in temperature until the GPU hits 80* and heat soaks the rest of the equipment. Due to the layout the PSU is basically the only active cooling pulling air from the inside of the case. In past experience it is no good for a power supply to be trying to cool itself by pulling the system's hot air through. Even when I took the filters out and added a fan it basically didn't change anything aside from noise levels.
The case is good looking, it is easy to build in if you don't care about wire management. It would be a very good selection for a super low powered system as a kiosk and may work out as a streaming box. It would be very difficult for me to recommend this particular hardware over some of the larger cases Silverstone offers unless you simply didn't have room. The sharp edges are a huge detractor from the quality I am used to seeing from Silverstone and that prominent tray should also have been painted.
First off, super simple to build in. Nothing at all to do in relation cable management, pretty much just lays in there in front of the power supply. Unlike the other case this one does have sharp edges inside and I cut both my hands several times while trying to roll up and tie down some of the wiring. The case itself has nothing by way of anchor points to zip tie and so forth. They include (2) sticky tab plastic wire holders, a couple of zip ties, and a screw bag that I have no idea what some of the little screws would be for. No fan mount screws at all, in spite of the two places the case has available for an 80mm fan.
One of the mount locations for a fan are on the front behind the plastic facia. There is almost non-existent venting there, starving that location of proper air flow. The other is on the side where the vent is. I suspect that location would work better for cooling but like many other cases will probably have to remove the dust filter. This side panel and the top have screen filters. With that said, air flow in the case is nearly an afterthought with those screens in place. It would not seem that this case could deal with any manner of mid to powerful equipment inside, more on that in a bit.
One of the main detractors IMO is the top vent and the drive tray located below it. In order to get even a hope of air exchange it is best to take the top filter out, side one too, really. The drive tray is plain jane silver and looks pretty terrible when looking down into the case. Really could have taken a second to paint that black, it would have helped a lot. I may do it myself. The tray has a spot for a slim optical drive OR a 3.5" HDD. Not both. There are two places where a 2.5" drive can be installed to the rear of that tray and under the front side.
Watch very closely about your power supplies cable length. The same could be said about fan cabling and particularly in relation to where the headers are on your motherboard. Running power and SATA up to that drive tray puts the cabling right across the CPU cooler. Watch very closely that the fan doesn't catch it and as well take care if you decide to try and put a zip tie there to lift it away from the fan as this can cause issue with wire length and actually being able to flip this tray in/out (for access). I had issue with the PSU I used having SATA power just barely too short and one connector is unusable without an extension. On the mobo I am currently using the fan header won't allow the fan wire to go to the side vent without running directly over the graphics card.
In this particular build I currently have a Celeron G3900 on a thin stock fan and a half height GTX 750ti. Neither of those are particularly power hungry or loud. I utilized an extra Dell TFX power supply that I had on hand. The proposed use case for this system is going to basically be a video streaming box for a "dumb" TV. With the filters in place the interior just continues to climb in temperature until the GPU hits 80* and heat soaks the rest of the equipment. Due to the layout the PSU is basically the only active cooling pulling air from the inside of the case. In past experience it is no good for a power supply to be trying to cool itself by pulling the system's hot air through. Even when I took the filters out and added a fan it basically didn't change anything aside from noise levels.
The case is good looking, it is easy to build in if you don't care about wire management. It would be a very good selection for a super low powered system as a kiosk and may work out as a streaming box. It would be very difficult for me to recommend this particular hardware over some of the larger cases Silverstone offers unless you simply didn't have room. The sharp edges are a huge detractor from the quality I am used to seeing from Silverstone and that prominent tray should also have been painted.
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