Both sides of the case have holes in them for ventilation which is nice if you are trying to make your system silent like I am. With the cover removed I got my first look at the internal design which looks pretty nice overall.
The power supply mounts vertically rather than horizontally like it normally does to save space. Next to the power supply cutout there is a 3-pin, 60mm exhaust fan to pull air out of this desktop case. There are 7 slots for your expansion cards which is perfect for a HTPC or server. One of the slots is occupied but the cord for the VFD however we will take care of that later in the review.
There are 3 5.25″ drive bays total, 1 of which is hidden. Below the 5.25″ bays is a single removable 3.5″ bay for a hard drive. On the other side is a removable drive cage for 3 3.5″ drives, 1 that is hidden. Having these removable drive cages should make installation quicker and easier. Below both drive cages is a punchout for an 80mm intake fan so that you can get some cool air into your case. This fan would also do a good job cooling your hard drives which are right above it.
The VFD has a single plug on it that has a parallel cable and 4-pin Molex power connection on it. The jumpers are nothing special and typical of most cases, sleeving or some form of cable management would have been nice to see but that can be added later.
One of the best features that a case can have is a removable motherboard tray. Being able to remove the tray makes installation of your motherboard and expansion cards much easier. I’m happy to see that even in a desktop environment SilverStone went with a removable motherboard design. I also took out the single 3.5″ drive cage but left the other one in for the time being. The 60mm fan that comes with the case is an Everflow F126025SL which runs at 3600rpm, 25dBA as stated on SilverStone’s website. It does not say how many CFM it pushes however with a little Google research I believe that it pushes 16CFM (but don’t hold me to that).
