Silverstone keeps turning the PC building world on its side – and we like it.
If you like the topsy-turvy philosophy behind Silverstone's recent Raven cases, but don't like the Stealth bomber looks, the new FT02 series (gallery here) might just be the very thing you're after. Featuring the hard rectangular edges and curved accents of much of the rest of Silverstone's range, this new case hits a real sweet spot between classic design and innovative ideas.
If you're unfamiliar with the Raven, here's a précis of the design ethos: imagine the normal layout of the motherboard in a case; now place the board on the opposite side of the case, and rotate it so the expansion slots point upward. It might sound random, but when you think of one of the basic properties of hot air - that it rises - you start to see the advantages.
Silverstone's gone a step further and is giving nature a real boost with an awesome cooling setup. Three 180mm fans suck cool air in from the bottom, while a single golf-ball-dimpled 120mm fan assists in pushing hot air out at the top. It's up here that all your cables attach, too, so there's a detachable mesh panel that channels the cables out a slot at the top of case's rear. What you end up with is great air flow, supremely neat external cable management, and an overall elegant design.
The front fascia is restrained in its design, featuring just panels for the five external drives, and a Silverstone badge. The upper and lower edges curve back under the case, providing an inch of clearance for the main body - this helps a lot with the air intake for those three lower fans. The case's rear is alarmingly plain, too - with all the action on the case-top, all you'll find here is a removable filter that keeps hairballs out of the PSU (which mounts on the upper rear panel internally). The right side-panel features a window, and with such a unique build state internally, this is definitely something we like. What's more, if - like some of us, you prefer your case to the left of your workstation, this actually means you can finally take advantage of a windowed case. Win!
The internal build quality is almost without fault. All the lower fans feature removable filters, the drive bays are all tool-less (with optional screws for the 5.25in bays if you really want them), and the expansion slots are roomy and rely on old-fashioned screws - which is pretty much our preference for heavy video cards anyway. The mobo backing plate has heatsink cut out, and pretty solid cable management options; plus there's good room behind the plate to hide cabling away entirely. Two particularly cool touches are a single hot-swappable drive enclosure, and a dedicated SSD bay.
Our only niggle is the odd choice to only cover two of three 180mm fans with a meshed cover. The fan under the drive bays is partly open to the interior, and since gravity is such a harsh mistress, we expect loose cabling and dropped screws to unerringly find its way into this spinning maw of doom.
Slasher fears aside, the crowning glory of the FT02 is its lack of noise. Each panel is treated to sound dampening foam, the bottom fans are all switchable from high to low rotation, and at low speed all the fans are rated for 18-19db. For something that's obviously aimed right at performance gamers, this is great stuff; if you then kit out your rig with known quiet gear, you should have a perfect system for adding a good 5.1 speaker system too for glorious gaming noise. And quiet's just cool all by itself. For a unique, well-cooled and quiet gaming machine, there are few cases better than this one.
Issue: 133 | February, 2012