Nanoxia Deep Silence 2 Case Review: Trimming the Fat
by Dustin Sklavos on February 14, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- quiet
- ATX
- Nanoxia
Conclusion: The Case So Nice They Made It Twice
It's funny; while reviewing the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 felt like a revelation, the Deep Silence 2 has left me feeling strangely cold. Make no mistake, the Deep Silence 2 is another excellent case, but it feels like Nanoxia played this one too close to the vest.
The tradeoffs Nanoxia made in engineering the Deep Silence 2 proved mostly to be smart ones, though I continue to lament the loss of the removable drive cages. The DS2 does what a good product often should: offer performance comparable to its predecessor at a lower price. They've trimmed a lot of the fat off of the DS1 while maintaining a pretty high standard of build quality. Like the DS1 before it, the DS2 is a heavy, solidly built case with a nice fit and finish, and it's a welcome change of pace during a time when case manufacturers continue to trim their budgets on building materials.
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Thermal performance is competitive without being exciting, while acoustics are potentially excellent. The DS2 is likely going to be the standard bearer for quiet cases under $100. That assumes Nanoxia hits the price point in the States that they're targeting, much as some of the DS1's success rides on that same factor. Yet the DS2 sells for 89 Euros (and the DS1 for 119), and when looking at how component price tags transfer over to the American dollar, it's not too hard to see them hitting their targets.
At the same time, though, the Deep Silence 2 doesn't really feel different enough from the Deep Silence 1 to really merit a purchase. Yes, you'll be able to save $20, which for some users is going to be worth the tradeoffs. I'm not really a fan of buying a slightly inferior product just to save a paltry sum of money: if you're already this close to the top, why start being stingy? It's like the used games at Gamestop that go for a whole $5 less than new. What's the point?
Getting a case under $100 has a certain cachet to it, though, and that may be enough to justify the existence of the DS2. As I said before, this is by no means a bad enclosure. Quite the opposite, if you want a quiet system it's hard to do much better than the Nanoxia Deep Silence 2 without spending a lot more money. Given the choice between the DS2 and the more feature rich DS1, though, I'd take the Deep Silence 1 every time.
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Sabresiberian - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Seriously?You can buy a case today that will allow you to pop in a couple of high-end video cards without the need for even buying additional fans. A decade ago, you could hardly run one card without pulling off the side cover and setting up an external fan to blow into the case.
But case design is largely based on mainboard format, and the rest of the components that go into the build. Those haven't changed much in 20 years, so the appearance and function of cases is going to remain similar. How I'll agree with you is to say the ATX format isn't serving us well today (particularly those of us interested in building high-end rigs). No mainboard form factor advance is something of a limit to advances in case design.
Tech-Curious - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Having recently assembled a build in a circa-2001 case that was collecting dust in my basement, I'm a bit torn. Tthere've been innumerable QoL advancements in case design; 120mm fans, more flexible fan mounting options, more general recognition of cable management, fewer hard edges, and so on and so forth.My old case works surprisingly well, but it was also an unusually expensive product at the time, and I searched high and low for it (and I don't even remember which company manufactured it). Even so, it's noisier than it needs to be simply because it uses 80mm fans. Cable management is nonexistent; I had to bundle up and toss every loose cable into the drive cages. I had to jury-rig my own fan filters.
As others have pointed out, there's only so much true innovation anyone can impose on the ATX standard. If I have one complaint about current-day cases, it's that they all seem to come with a bottom-mounted PSU, which is fine if you plan to place the box on a hard floor or on your desk, but even a well-filtered down-facing PSU makes me extremely nervous when I'm placing the computer on a carpeted floor. Call me paranoid, but I'd like more options there.
crimson117 - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Dustin,I'm digging your reviews lately, but I really with you'd use an ATX sized motherboard instead of a mATX.
With an ATX motherboard in certain cases, it may be cramped / difficult to access:
- the SATA ports, when pushed up against the hard drive cage(s) (especially those mobos with SATA ports pointing sideways off the board)
- the front case header connectors on the motherboard, when pushed against the lower portion of a case
- the rear side of the 5.25" bays
Even if you continue testing with mATX for consistency, would you please consider temporarily placing an ATX motherboard in each case, taking a picture, and commenting on whether any issues arise compared to an mATX board?
crimson117 - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
*I really wish, not with. I don't have a lisp IRL.anynigma - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
I completely agree. With any case that fits an ATX motherboard, I want to know if I will have any issues with Sata cables and long graphics cards specifically, and everything crimson mentioned above as well.Dustin can you please follow up with an ATX space analysis, or as a bare minimum, a picture. as crimson describes above?
crimson117 - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Especially in these enthusiast cases like the Phantom 630 - who would use an mATX board in that thing?niva - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
And here I was thinking if it won't fit an EATX I'm not interested. Very valid point, test the biggest possible board the case was designed to fit.Hrel - Thursday, February 14, 2013 - link
Agreed, mini boards are for "normal" people.Dustin Sklavos - Friday, February 15, 2013 - link
Part of the problem is that there's no major incentive to use an ATX board in general anymore. I have one in my desktop, but even if I used SLI I'd still only need four slots total. :|The clearance thing is admittedly worth considering. I'm not sure how well I can address this without trying to acquire an ATX board to test with, and then you have to keep in mind that some ATX boards are not as wide as others; meanwhile, our Micro-ATX board is actually *wider* than most mATX boards are. So when you're looking at the depth of the board and its proximity to the drive cages (including the side-oriented SATA connectors), that actually *is* what a conventional ATX board's clearance will be. Our mATX board is as deep as a standard ATX board.
I'm pretty sure you guys are going to chop my head off and crap down my neck when you see what I'm planning for my super high stress testbed, but a lot of this is a matter of using what will fit the widest number of builds and allow me to get the most testing done.
crimson117 - Friday, February 15, 2013 - link
I'm rockin' a Sonata III with the popular GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 (12" x 9.6") and it's nearly impossible to access the SATA ports due to the hard drive cages - especially while my modest 6850 GPU is installed.Sonata III is an old, tiny case, but that's where I"m coming from, anyhow.
>when you see what I'm planning for my super high stress testbed
Mini-ITX stapled into an engineering-sample 900D? ;-)