AZZA Silentium Case Review: Knowing the Limits
by Dustin Sklavos on January 29, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- quiet
- AZZA
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
As I mentioned before, the overclocked testbed is expected to be a shade too much for the AZZA Silentium. It'll run, but thermals tend to overpower cases like this one and result in similar or higher noise levels under load than competing cases that are geared for performance rather than acoustics, and usually at noticeably higher temperatures.
Again I've included the test results of the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 and Fractal Design Define R4; note that both of these cases also offer decent radiator support (something the Silentium lacks.)
Uh oh. When we start seriously pushing the Silentium it loses measurable ground to the Ghost and the Define R4. The Define R4 is a more expensive case, but the Ghost is the same price.
The R4, Ghost, and Silentium are still basically on the same ground while Nanoxia's DS1 continues to operate in a class of its own.
Remember what I said about noise levels in silent cases? This is what happens. The Ghost is able to do the best job of keeping our overclocked testbed quiet, but again the DS1 is able to handle the increased thermal load more gracefully.
We have to keep in mind that the Silentium simply isn't designed for this usage scenario, and that's fine. But in the process, cases like the Ghost and R4 start to look like better deals. The R4 is more expensive, but the Ghost isn't.
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The Von Matrices - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Are all the pictures broken or has my browser gone crazy?csroc - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
broken for me too unfortunatelykarasaj - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
happened to me too, so I doubt it.colinstu - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
kinda pointless without the pictures!Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Our server was hosed, should be up with pictures now.pcfxer - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
What? No platter drives? I'm still trying to find a high quality "silent" case that is sharp, has more than just silicone drive mounts and isn't the SOLO or SOLO II.jimmyzaas - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Exactly, there should at least be one hard disk in there. I personally know many people have at least one hdd in their system. Just because they want it quiet, does not mean they want to sacrifice storage capacity. It's a shame no one else is doing suspension mounts like the Solo.Temps of SSDs are kinda silly. They don't even get that hot anyway. HDD temps would have been a better measure of storage cooling, which often gets neglected in these quiet cases.
hmaarrfk - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Seriously :|, how is only having a 1 USB 3.0 port at the front allowed for a case that cost $100. The review should have stopped there and declared the case as a "do not buy".ShieTar - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Why? Personally, I have yet to find a usefull application for even a single USB 3 port, as I don't transport data on physical media but rather just through network connections. And nothing else I connect to USB, like keyboard, mouse, printer, WLAN-Stick utilizes USB 3. Or needs to be connected to the front of the case.I also buitl 4 PCs for friends and colleagues the last year, and none of them had any USB-3 devices beyond external harddrives, and nobody ever mentioned he wants to connect two of those at the same time. So, I don't think a lot of people have any kind of interest in a second front USB-3 port.
As an engineer I can understand the annoyance with an odd number of case-ports given the fact that Mainboard-Connecters are always provided for pairs of ports, but still I would guess that for at least 80% of potential customers this fact is completely irrelevant.
Hrel - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
I transfer data from one external to another, via USB 3.0. 2 Ports is a bare minimum.