SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E: Devil in the Details
by Dustin Sklavos on February 10, 2012 6:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- mid-tower
Noise and Thermal Testing, Stock
One of the points of interest I noted while assembling the SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E was the use of an intake fan at the top of the enclosure rather than the standard front-to-back style of intake. This doesn't just fly in the face of traditional design, it flies in the face of SilverStone's own 90-degree-rotated natural convection style designs like the Fortress FT02 and Raven RV03. That said, there are other things to recommend those enclosures, but how does this choice affect the TJ04-E's performance?
Thermals are good if not great; the big loser actually seems to be the GeForce GTX 580 in our testbed. While the Intel Core i7-875K is getting cool air from the top intake, the GTX 580 has to make do with whatever's left from the hard drive cage. The temperatures aren't horrible but they could be better.
Though SilverStone rates the fans in the TJ04-E for low noise, they still make themselves known. Idle noise in the TJ04-E is pretty poor while load noise is decidedly middle-of-the-road. If you have a motherboard with robust fan controls you might be able to mitigate this, but otherwise you're probably going to want to splash for a fan controller.
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ckryan - Friday, February 10, 2012 - link
And this is pretty strange. My guess is the team at Silverstone must be a pretty unusual lot.earthrace57 - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - link
Personally, I think case companies such as Li-Lian or SilverStone should stop trying to innovate in the case design; the S design is pretty well proven. Instead, they should innovate in HOW they cool it, for example, take Alienware's "active cooling" to the next level. First, add those fin things alienware did, and, instead of just having them flip up and down uselessly, have a fan connected, so when they flip up, the fan starts up...little things like that that will help idle noise while not hurting performance under loadImpulses - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - link
That kind of solution requires far more money and engineering for questionable results imo... And the S design just sucks. It may be fine for 90% of systems out there, but it's far from optimal for any enthusiast or gamer running one or more high end GPUs (each one generating more heat than an old Pentium 4). You could argue that's a GPU issue but until that market slows down we're far better off with some innovative case designs.Impulses - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - link
Obviously this case is a miss on the GPU-cooling front... At least with the stock config, but I was speaking in general above (and with some of ST's other designs in mind). Frankly I appreciate these reviews for the usual in-depth scope most AT reviews have, but I think the performance metrics are rather worthless, specially as a way of comparison against other cases.I understand why it's done like this, and frankly I can't think of a fairer way of doing it... But I also can't picture any enthusiast worth his salt not making any changes whosoever to the stock cooling of a case in a DIY build, specially when we're talking $150-300 cases.
Sometimes the smallest changes can make a huge difference, it just seems equally unfair to write off some enclosures because they lacked an extra $15 fan. Different mentality I guess... I certainly don't follow the same logic when say, buying a car, even tho I know people who would.
earthrace57 - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - link
The S design hits the hard drives, CPU, RAM, and Chipset, only the GPU's are left to fry, but even then, in most cases (pun not intended) there is a side fan, which hits the GPU directly, so, just add a 10 dollar fan into one of those slots and the S design is all the sudden made quite a bit better. Also, I might just like to point out, to release a fully functioning case (as in not this), extensive tests have to be done, revise, test, revise ect. In this situation, even though the upfront costs are higher, you can get a product that works into the market quicker, without the extra cost and time that it takes to test and then revise a product. (And yes, this fan control would have to be revised, but it wouldn't take nearly the same amount of time as revising a case IMHO)lawrencekellie - Tuesday, March 17, 2015 - link
The Silverstone website does not state that a mini-ITX will fit in the case. Can you confirm or deny whether it actually does?Thank you