Conclusions

This is a case that will definitely please the user that is looking for a case big enough to accommodate long video cards and big power supplies – including redundant units, if you’d like to have one. Not only that: bigger cases provide better thermal dissipation compared to smaller cases, where there is no available space for the correct airflow, especially if you have a lot of stuff inside your PC.

This case is really targeted to users with long peripheral cards (video cards in particular), as it comes with six adjustable fingers to hold peripheral cards in place. When you have long (and heavy) cards it is somewhat common for them to lift a little bit out of their slots during transportation, even if they are correctly screwed to the case.

Besides the traditional frontal and rear 120-mm fans that all high-end cases have you can install two side 120-mm fans to cool down the video cards.

Another highlight of this case are its SATA hot swap connectors available in one of the hard disk drive bays. All bays could have come with these connectors but we think SilverStone was smart here. First, putting connectors in all bays would have increased the price of this case. Second, with the case coming with only one set of hot swap connectors you can test whether hot swapping will work or not on your system, for then ordering the extra connectors if you are building a RAID array. Not knowing for sure that your system is compatible with hot swap or if you aren’t going to build a RAID system you would have spent extra money for nothing.

Installing drives on this case is a piece of cake with its screwless rails system.

The number of hard disk drive bays – five – is enough for almost everybody, including people building big RAID arrays, but the ultra mega enthusiast will probably be more comfortable with a case with at least six hard disk drive bays.

Even though it isn’t the cheapest case around – costing around USD 165 in the US and not coming with a power supply – its hybrid steel/aluminum design provides a far better cost/benefit ratio than all-aluminum cases, which cost over USD 300.

Even though we liked this case, we could spot some flaws: the absence of thumbscrews for opening the case, especially for a case on this price range; the floppy disk drive cage isn’t removable and since just a few people are still using floppies these days if the cage was removable we could either install more hard disk drives or more optical drives; and we think SilverStone should have added an eSATA port on the top with this case along the traditional connectors (USB, Firewire, etc).

If you are worried about your computer inner temperature, this case is one of the good options you have around if you can afford it.

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