Nanoxia Releases Deep Silence 3 Mid-Tower
by Ian Cutress on August 4, 2014 5:39 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Nanoxia
- Silent
One of Nanoxia’s raisons d’être is for the ultra-silent cases, even if fans are involved. Part of the complexity of silent designs with fans is managing the air intakes and vents as this is where the noise will come from. The latest in Nanoxia’s quest for silence is the Deep Silence 3, a steel mid-tower sized chassis to fit ATX, mATX and mini-ITX sized systems. Compared to the previous Deep Silence models, this number three is aimed at the more budget and size conscious users without going as budget/small as the DS4.
Nanoxia is keen to promote its use of decoupled mounting of the hard disks and power supply along with anti-vibration feet and a dense foam padding designed to absorb vibrations. This foam is used primarily in the front of the case behind the vanity panel, at the top with the fan mounting holes and inside the case panels. The case can support eight storage drives (five 3.5”/2.5”, three dedicated 2.5”) and graphics cards up to 345 mm. By removing the hard drive cage, this length extends up to 430mm.
For cooling, the case uses two 120mm fans in the front and a third at the rear, with an integrated 2-channel fan controller. There is space for two 120/140mm fans at the top if the Nanoxia foam covers are removed, and another space for a 120mm at the bottom when the secondary HDD-cage is removed. The IO panel gives two USB 3.0, a USB 2.0 as well as audio ports.
Dustin has previously reviewed a small number of Nanoxia cases, some of which are distributed within the US. The Deep Silence 3 should be with distributors in Europe as of today, although no formal North America date has been announced.
Source: Nanoxia
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Qwertilot - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
Budget maybe but surely the DS4 is their 'size concious' model? That one is almost legitimately 'small', although more medium sized really :)(456*207*520 for this vs 380*200*480 for the 4.).
ochadd - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
I'm really digging this layout. Coming from an Antec P182 which has seen better days. Silent but with much easier access to components.Aikouka - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
My only complaint would be that I don't understand the aversion to allowing side-mounted case fans. I can understand the annoyance of having something attached to the object that gets removed the most (I recommend using an extension cable), but the biggest thing for me is providing the utmost freshest air to my air-cooled GPU. Bottom-mounted fans do help with this, but they aren't as good as side-mounted fans. Corsair has a silent case with a side-mounted fan in their Obsidian 550D, but as an ex-owner of one, I found it a little too small. I would've liked one to be the size of the 800D.Impulses - Monday, August 4, 2014 - link
While I agree that a side mounted fan is very effective, it's also a big liability if noise is a primary concern. For one thing, if that side of the case is facing the user then all the extra damping in a case like this will have gone to waste, since noise from the side fan and the GPUs will spill out directly unto the user.Second, a side fan is more likely to introduce vibration issues which can be worse than any amount of fan noise. Whether more airflow, more direct airflow, and low speed fans can compensate for lack of damping and baffles is another story... But this case is definitely taking the latter approach.
Personally, I really like innovative designs like the Corsair Air 540 with it's two compartments & Silverstone's Raven/Fortress with the internals turned 90 degrees... The maze of often unused drive bays in the front of most cases is airflow's biggest enemy, to say nothing of the S path they force by having too many 5.25" bays directly in front of the CPU.
raymondchan - Monday, November 24, 2014 - link
The only significant difference from my now 5 year old Fractal Design Refine R3 is a removable hard drive cage to allow video cards longer than the width of the motherboard. The remaining differences are mostly superficial.