SilverStone FT03: Nothing Else Like It

Noise and Thermal Testing, IGP

We'll start with the tests run without the GeForce GTX 580 installed to get a general idea of how the SilverStone FT03 fares under the best of circumstances.

Right off the bat, the SilverStone FT03 is producing excellent thermal results with a lot of headroom to grow into. That's to be expected; as I said, this case is capable of supporting an overclocked Intel Core i7-2600K with a pair of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580's in SLI. Measured temperatures on the HDD were only ever maybe 2C at most above the SSD.

Given the relatively low thermal load and the low fan speed required to keep the components cool, there isn't a whole lot of difference here. The 45dB is definitely audible and the FT03 could benefit from a dedicated fan controller, but on the whole this isn't deal-breakingly obnoxious noise.

The takeaway here is that given the excellent thermal qualities of the FT03, at least early on in our testing, you could run the case fans at very low speeds and still keep the components at reasonable temperatures.