SilverStone FT03: Nothing Else Like It
by Dustin Sklavos on April 28, 2011 12:25 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
Assembling the FT03
While most enclosures based on traditional design principles are pretty easy to figure out just by eyeballing them, SilverStone includes an instruction manual with the FT03 for a reason. Much like the GD04 we reviewed before it, there's a specific order you'll want to put the FT03 together in, but thankfully the order at least makes sense and the assembly is as painless as possible.
With this review we're experimenting a little and I've added something different. Below is a time-lapsed video of my scrawny, hairy Greek arms assembling our testbed inside the FT03 set to Chu Ishikawa's music for Tetsuo: The Bullet Man. We know video isn't for everybody (I personally like listening to music while I read reviews so something like this isn't necessarily my cup of tea), but it should be illuminating for those of you who want to get a good feel for how the FT03 gets put together.
The basic assembly of the FT03 involves removing the two intake fans and the extra fan mount at the top first, and the computer gets built essentially from the ground up. Mounting the motherboard is easy enough given the surprisingly copious space inside the case, with standoffs for at least a Mini-ITX board already built into the backplane. What's interesting is that while SilverStone recommends removing the case fans first and indeed that's what I did, it doesn't seem to be strictly necessary (at least removing the bottom one isn't). This isn't a toolless design by any stretch of the imagination, and the tiny screws used for securing the optical drive are pretty easy to lose, but it's as simple as it could be.
Installing the power supply is incredibly simple, too, although the plug used to route to the power supply (thus depriving you of access of the master switch) can have a tendency to bunch and get in the way of sliding the side panel back on.
Where I was really impressed was with the way hard drives are installed; the drive mounting standoffs actually glide into place on the case instead of making you hunt and carefully line up screws. I was admittedly a little puzzled initially with how to install the 2.5" drive tray (though that may have been 1am talking to me), but eventually it locked in exactly where it ought to go. You'll want to install the 2.5" drive with the connectors facing down towards the bottom of the case; the 3.5" drives can't be installed in any orientation other than with their connectors facing inward and down, thus helping with cable routing.
Routing cables is also handled about as well as it can be, but woe betide anyone who tries to install a non-modular power supply in this case. While it can probably be done, routing space for cables is at a premium in the FT03. There are pretty specific places the cables are supposed to route through and I found they worked as well as they could. While you can use a PSU from any vendor, if you're planning on building in this case it might be wise to cough up for a SilverStone Strider power supply specifically so you can buy short modular cables specifically designed to fit inside this case.
Honestly I'm left with few complaints in terms of the assembly of the FT03. SilverStone includes all the necessary screws along with cable ties, and their shorter modular cables fit perfectly. My only major issue is an old hand: there are three 120mm case fans included, but Micro-ATX boards with three fan headers are rarefied at best.
From there I have a series of minor gripes. First, as I mentioned before you pretty much have no choice but to use a modular power supply with the FT03, and SilverStone's shorter cables make a big, big difference. Second, you're stuck using a slot-loading slim-line optical drive. I can't complain too much; putting any other type in here would definitely ruin the aesthetic, but it does incur additional expense and I have to wonder if there wasn't another way. Maybe finding a way to mount a standard slim-line drive at the top of the case? Finally, the side panels are keyed and slot in easily enough (with some pressure, but nothing you haven't experienced assembling a hundred other cases), but they don't snap in and tend to feel a bit loose. When you move the FT03, you'll want to lift it from the front and back; the sides will slide right off.
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Rick83 - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Well, that's why I recently removed all mechanical disks from my tower and into the network. One SSD is all a system really needs, and I don't want spinning disks in my proximity. Of course, I was running ancient 80G and 200G disks which were proper noisy, so that may have been traumatizing. But in general, I don't want storage on my local machine, there's just no point, and to get where I'd want, I'd need a huuuuuge tower. This way, my disks reside in a nice Stacker, well cooled and as much out of earshot as possible, and my desktop system is reduced to a single 2.5" SSD that makes zero noise and has no trouble with getting a bit warmed up, as there are no mechanical tolerances that are impacted. I strongly recommend that approach for anyone who has more than one hard disk that they use...Also, with 3HDDs, why bother paying extra for less and getting a micro-ATX board? Most cases that fit 3 HDDs are so big, that they don't really take advantage of the micro-ATX form factor. (There are some, like the bigger of the Lian-Li cubes, and your P182, but these are already quite "big" cases...Going to a midi-tower is only about 3 cms of height away...
Spoelie - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Most NAS solutions have less than ideal performance (when moving >10GB files around) and less than ideal noise characteristics (high pitched 40mm fans, really??). My current flat is not that big so there is no out-of-earshot location ;). But to be honest, haven't explored that option very well.Instead I have one main, relatively silent desktop as the gaming/htpc/file/printer server, and smartphone/tablet/notebook "clients" for leisure computing. All 3 drives are 1TB WD Caviar Greens (EADS) though, and are a hell of a lot quieter than my older 250-500GB drives. In the current mounting mechanism, inaudible.
mATX boards provide everything+kitchen sink nowadays, ATX form factor is really relegated to multigpu and some htpc configurations with specialized addin boards. The premium is not that much IMO, just a tad over a $100 is what I paid.
I don't really have a genuine need for another case, but am always looking for improvement - and I have to say, something less heavy and less bulky with top mounted connections sounds mighty appealing. The P182 is a real back breaker to tug along. I just don't want to give up too much silence/cooling/mounting capacity.
Rasterman - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I did that too with my latest build, SSD only, NAS for storage. It works fine, but anytime I need to move large files its slow 15-25MB/s. I have been reading the green drives are very quiet and am considering one, but desktop is about as silent as it can get though (3 nexus fans at 500rpm), and ANY noise would be audible. The other thought I had was using a usb3 netbook for a NAS, that should provide much better performance than my synology and be: expandable, easily configurable, can host anything, while not using hardly any power, plus it has built in battery backup.rabidsquirrel - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth...Seriously, that thing is hidious. Hopefully its thermal properties make up for that for some users.
kevith - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Ehm, do You seriously mean, that 45 dB of noise in an enclosure without a discrete GFX is "not obnoxious" or "dealbreaking.I´m a musician, 45 dB is LOUD, man!
Spivonious - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Thanks for including more useful noise info. 45dBA is loud.Was there any explanation for the odd tilted fan mounts? You allude to Silverstone's exhaustive airflow engineering but never go into details.
Rick83 - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
45 db at one foot. Sound diminishes by the second power with distance.Commonly such things are measured at one meter distance. One foot is pretty close, much too close in most desktop scenarios, unless you have the box sitting right on the edge of the desk, and are bent forwards. Tripling distance leads to about a factor 1/9 for the sound attenuation, which results in a decrease of almost 10 decibel. (unless my physics are rustier than I thought they were)
Additionally, no mention was made whether certain directions are noisier than others. I'd expect most of the noise to come out of the top, due to this case's design.
Spivonious - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
I'm not sure of the rules for distance and attenuation, but it would mean that at 3 feet the noise level would be 40dBA (8/9 of 45dBA). Still pretty loud.I would love to see what Antec would do with this design. They could probably get it down to 35dBA with no impact on cooling.
Spivonious - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Looked it up http://www.csgnetwork.com/decibeldropdistancecalc....You were right that the attenuation would be around 10dBA (taking it to 35dBA). Much quieter and easily acceptable with a noise floor of 32dBA.
Voldenuit - Thursday, April 28, 2011 - link
Sound intensity decreases proportional to 1/r^2, but sound *pressure* (which our ears are directly sensitive to) decrease proportionally to 1/r. Most sound level meters measure sound pressure level (SPL) and it is the most common way of reporting sound loudness on tech sites.I've owned several Silverstone cases - a TJ08 and a KL01, and neither have been particularly silent or even quiet. Even swapping out the crappy stock Silverstone fans for 800 rpm Scythe Slipstreams didn't help much with the TJ08 - the KL01 unfortunately used a proprietary connector for its front panel fan, so I was stuck with its obnoxious sound volume and characteristics.
If you want *quiet*, Antec P183s and Fractal Design R3s can be made to hover around 14-20dB at 1m, and Puget Systems' custom builds live around 11-14 dB.
I love Silverstone's design and build (for the most part - the FT03 looks like a trashcan to me), but outside of a few exceptions like the FT02 and RV02, they are not exactly silent cases out of the box.