SilverStone FT03: Nothing Else Like It
by Dustin Sklavos on April 28, 2011 12:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
In and Around the SilverStone FT03
For scale, the FT03 is about the size of a small dustbin or a couple of shoeboxes stacked up. The Corsair Graphite 600T that now houses my personal machine honestly looks kind of silly and needlessly large compared to the FT03 at nearly twice the depth.
SilverStone offers the FT03 in both silver and black finishes; our review unit has the silver and white finish while the black unit will be seen in our upcoming system review. Externally there isn't a whole lot going on; SilverStone keeps the finish attractive, simple, and resilient. The front of the tower has a tasteful embedded SilverStone logo and a slot for the internal slot-loading optical drive, while the left side has a removable vent for one of the bottom-mounted intake fans. The bottom has a removable fan filter that attaches magnetically; the power cable for the FT03 also routes under here. Finally, the top of the case has a removable white plastic grate that fits well with the overall styling, and this covers the I/O shield, four expansion bays, hot-swap bay, and exhaust fan. There are indentations on the side panels to allow for cabling to route between the grate and the case itself, and there's a small panel at the tippy-top that has the power and reset buttons along with the bridged USB 3.0 ports (sorry, no motherboard header support yet) and headphone and microphone jacks. Overall it's a very clean and slick looking design, at least externally.
There are admittedly a couple of hitches, though. If you have to use any kind of video port adapter, like DVI-to-VGA or Mini-HDMI-to-HDMI, you'll want to use a flexible dongle or an adapter cable; the hard physical adapters wind up rising above where the grate would be and thus prevent you from using it. I also found myself frequently accidentally hitting the power and reset buttons when moving the case, which isn't a huge problem but isn't ideal either. Plugging in the system can also be a little difficult because the plug on the bottom is recessed, and the magnetically attached filter feels pretty loose. To wit: the review unit from the boutique builder I have doesn't even include that filter. I'll also go ahead and spare you the wait: I would've liked to have seen a fan controller included in the top panel. If wishes were fishes, etc. etc., but it would be a welcome addition.
When you get to the internals is when things start getting really interesting. The two side panels slide up and off easily (maybe a little too easily), while the face snaps on and off easily and securely. SilverStone engineered the guts of the FT03 in a very slick way that actually winds up maximizing the space inside. While we use a Mini-ITX board for testing, there's space in here for a Micro-ATX board and two large video cards. The power supply cubby also works remarkably well, and cable routing is smart.
If there's one area of concern, it's the side of the case designed to house storage. There's space here for two 3.5" (or 2.5" with adapters) drives and a 2.5" drive, as well as an additional 3.5" hot-swap bay complete with connecting cables. The essential problem is that there's virtually no airflow here. That's mitigated somewhat by the aluminum side panels which are good at radiating the heat off of the drives and allowing them to be passively-cooled, and the hot-swap bay in particular is cooled by a large chunk of aluminum affixed to the side panel itself. The design here is as smart as it could conceivably be, as the drive mounts are designed specifically to put the drives themselves in contact with the side panel. Later on you'll see drive temperatures measured were more or less in line with what hard drives in notebooks hit, and are well within drive tolerances, but if the FT03 has an Achilles' Heel it's here. To be fair, though, I don't think I could armchair engineer a better solution than what SilverStone has done.
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Rick83 - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Actually, it's 140€Which is still as much as STC cost, and much less case, but - it looks sexy, runs on 120mm fans and allows a very clean build.
Some people pay more for a certain piece of furniture, others for a certain car...For me, it's something desirable, mixed with a use, and thus I see no reason not to pay a price that the market bares - the first batch of these was sold out pretty quickly, so the price obviously isn't too high.
RagingDragon - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I like Silverstone's rotated motherboard designs. I like the tall and shallow design. If I were looking for a micro-ATX case this one would be contender. A case with full or extended ATX support and similar tall and shallow rotated motherboard design would definetly make the shortlist for my next case. At the moment this is my favourite:http://www.lian-li.com.tw/v2/en/product/product06....
Though to get *exactly* what I want I'll probably have to build my own case.
Jonathan Dum - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Give me this case in an e-ATX size and we'd have an absolute winner.Sabresiberian - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I think this pretty much says it about Silverstone, from the article:"He was upset because he felt like I gave the GD04 short shrift for griping about the noise levels, citing that once a fan controller is installed the case has exceptional thermal characteristics while being remarkably quiet. "
Man-up, Silverstone, don't whine and cry when someone says your case design is loud, and say it's the fault of the end user for not using a fan controller and turning down the fan speed. What if the components used NEED more fan speed? Idiot.
I have 3 Silverstone products. One is a PSU bought back when they were making their name and made some outstanding units, the thing is still powering a relative's machine today. The second is a high-end 1200W beast that has worked well enough, but had to be sent in for warranty because of a defect when I received it.
I had bought that particular PSU by reputation alone, and it's how I learned to never buy one by reputation - after sending it back I began to read articles about it. Turned out the issue I sent it back for had been documented in reviews many months before I bought my unit!! On top of that, instead of the unit performing at the top of the tests, it barely squeaked by some of them; it just wasn't up to the standards I expected from Silverstone.
The warranty service department snow-jobbed me very well. After being told that they were aware of the problem and had fixed it on their assembly lines, I requested a unit from that batch, What I got back was the same unit. When I called them, the word was "Oh, well, we don't have any of those." Okay, so, you've fixed the problem but you don't have any of the units with the problem fixed? Why didn't you tell me that when I requested a new PSU?
The other product I have is a case. It's a nice enough case, and has some features I like, and some I don't. Remember the brief flirtation with BTX? It's a BTX case One of the things it came with was a plastic shroud to help air move from the front of the case across the CPU to the back. Unfortunately, the shroud wouldn't work with any CPU that needed enough cooling that the shroud would be a benefit to, because it wouldn't fit around anything but a small stock cooler. It was essentially useless, and very fragile. The worst part though is that the case has started to corrode on the inside, on some of the steel edges. Not badly, but I have an Antec case twice as old that shows no sign of corrosion at all.
So, Silverstone is 1/3 for me, and the time I really needed them they failed. Well, I didn't believe they failed so bad that I refused to use the PSU, and it hasn't given me any trouble in 2 1/2 years, to be fair, but I'm not likely to buy anything else from them either. They are going to have to do something marvelous for me to change my mind.
This case certainly isn't it for me.
;)
DaveSimmons - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
SPCR reviewed this case too recently if you're looking for a second opinion Unfortunately they did NOT give it high marks for noise or cooling, apparently making the case this small meant using awkward fan placements that hurt the cooling and added noise.If you have the space for them, the regular ATX Raven RV02 / Fortress FT02 from SiverStone do offer excellent cooling with very low noise, and are about the best you can do for quiet air cooling of a gaming system.
Slayeristight - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Or is it just me?SquattingDog - Friday, April 29, 2011 - link
That is the EXACT thoughts I had when I saw it at a reseller evening at the end of last year. This is a great little case, and I am looking to build a gaming machine around it using my two 5870's and either Bulldozer or a 2600K (depending on what is better once bulldozer comes out, and what motherboards are available). The Asus P8P67M-Pro has the perfect PCI-e slot placement for this case, however...:Ddarkfoon - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I don't know if I am typical of the readership here at Anandtech, but I have been consistently reading reviews here since 2003.I like the new case reviewing process. I sort of wish there were more pictures of the system at various stages of being built, but that's what the video is for, I suppose. The testing methodology with the uATX/MiniITX and full ATX systems is also very welcome. I am curious about the shape of the room the acoustics are measured in, and the placement of the case in that room. Maybe this is nit-picking, but for example: my computer isn't terribly loud (I don't have any numbers to back this up) but depending on where I place it and my desk it can sound much louder or quieter. Right now, I have a corner desk and the case sits along one wall, with exhaust fans blowing back into the corner (with about 4 feet of space between the fans and the wall). This arrangement makes it sound louder than other places I've had it because the sound is reverberating off the corner and toward one ear specifically.
Since the acoustic readings for reviews are taken from one foot in front of the computer, I am curious if it is near a corner, or if the room is carpeted, etc.
I liked this review and it helped me to decide that this case is not the case for me. When I first saw the picture I thought, "Ooh! Pretty!" and continued to read on. The more I read, the more I learned that this case just doesn't meet my needs. Aesthetically, it does, but the size restrictions and the optical drive requirements have made it a no-go for me. I decide whether to read a case review based on the "Ooh! Pretty" response. If I get it, I read on. If not, I pass.
Keep up the good work with the new reviewing process!
Dustin Sklavos - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Thank you for the kind words. I love this case, too, but it just doesn't suit my needs either. Mercifully there's a Raven RV03 in my living room awaiting review...;)
james007 - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
If we're going to put together a system around this case, what about that optical drive? You say it has to be a slot-loading slim drive, but.. which ones fit this? You list in your setting simply "Slimline DVD+/-RW Drive" - which one is that?I'm also curious to know - are these micro-ATX mobos as overclockable as the full ATX mobos (I was thinking for example of the Asrock Extreme4 for a full-size ATX board, but I like the idea of a smaller package). Otherwise, thanks for creating this excellent review. James Hurst (New Orleans)