A Closer Look – Interior
So far so good; now let’s take a look inside.
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Taking the side panel off, we get our first look at the guts of this system, where all the really interesting bits are. Over near the front, we see the 5.25″ bays, with SilverStone’s tool-less push-lock mounting brackets on the bottom four. Below that, we see the hard drive cage, with caddies for five 3.5″ hard drives, mounted on their sides for better airflow from the intake fan just below them.
In the main chamber itself, we see the motherboard tray, which includes a large cutout near the CPU mounting area. This is quite nice for people who want to be able to change out the backplate on their CPU cooler without unmounting the motherboard. Just to the right of the motherboard is the PSU mounting area, where the aforementioned Velcro strap and plastic holder come into play to hold the PSU in place. |
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There are two major things to note here. One is that the spaces between the caddy rails are ventilated, which allows the intake fan to better do its job. Even so, the spacing still makes for restricted airflow when all five caddies are installed and in use, I would not recommend using more than three at once for best hard drive performance.
The other thing to note is that the area around the drive cage is surrounded in acoustic foam, which should help to muffle the clicks and whirrs of the hard drives while in use. |
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The caddies themselves are fairly well-designed. Four screws hold each drive in place, and the caddy slides straight into position, with the lever on the front locking it in place. |
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The three intake fans along the bottom deserve some special mention, as they have several noteworthy qualities. First, the fans themselves: 180mm in diameter, with removable dust filters for each one. The top side is covered in a honeycomb grille, which helps to prevent mishaps with dangling cables during use. Second, the position: they are positioned along the bottom, with a false bottom on the case to allow for good intake even on carpeted floors. Combined with the position of the motherboard and exhaust fan, this allows the airflow to be a straight line from bottom to top. |
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Flipping the case around, we have a look at the backside of the motherboard tray. First and most immediately apparent is the wiring for the intake fans. Although SilverStone were nice enough to tie it down with twist-ties, the tangle of bare wires is unsightly to say the least. Some mesh sleeving would have gone a long way towards cleaning things up.
Next up are the tiedown brackets and tray cutouts. Here SilverStone have done quite well, making sure that each cutout is accompanied by at least a pair of tiedown brackets for securing the cables that might run through it. The wires for the front panel also find their way to the motherboard through one of these cutouts, which makes it easy to tuck the unused cables out of sight behind the drive bays. |
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The area around the CPU cutout has a few interesting things to note. First is the strategically placed cutout near the corner of the motherboard, which is perfect for snaking in the EPS12V cable while keeping the rest out of sight. Next is the raised bump on the PSU mounting section, which has a couple of slits for feeding the Velcro securing strap through. The rows of vertical slits below it are for mounting the plastic PSU-corner-holder bracket with a pair of screws. |
Absolutely awesome case. It gets better the more you look into it. Plus Silverstone does a really excellent job on the fit and finish of their products. A+ for the engineering team over there.