SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E: Fat Case in a Little Coat
by Dustin Sklavos on August 4, 2011 1:50 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Mini ITX
- SilverStone
- MicroATX
- Mini-Tower
Assembling the SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E
While generally I'm a true rebel, defiantly throwing instruction manuals to the wind before diving whole hog into an assembly, SilverStone's enclosures are seldom immediately obvious, and at first glance they seem like oversized puzzle boxes. Thankfully once you understand how installation is intended to go, these puzzle boxes seem to want to be solved like big black Lament Configurations, except instead of being rewarded with Cenobites and everlasting torment (pain and pleasure intertwined, etc.) you just get a sweet case with good cooling performance.
As I mentioned on the previous page, you'll want to remove the side and top panels, but I found the removable motherboard tray, while a nice feature, wasn't necessary for our Mini-ITX testing board. The motherboard would prove to be the easiest and unfortunately the only really easy part of the installation, a casualty of how densely packed the internals of the TJ08-E can become.
Virtually nothing about the SilverStone Temjin TJ08-E is tool-less, so have a screwdriver handy, and preferably a power one. Installing the SSD meant removing two screws to take the top drive cage off, another two to remove the bottom one, and then the SSD mounts to the bottom of the enclosure. I was concerned about cabling being difficult with the SSD, but the bottom cage actually has a cutout that sits flush against the back of the SSD, allowing the ports to be easily accessed. Installing a hard drive in the top cage is fairly old school, requiring you to screw it in on both sides: nothing tool-less here. Installing the optical drive means unscrewing the drive bay shield and popping it out, and while drives can be slid in through the front of the case, you'll still need that top panel off to cable them.
Installing expansion cards is unfortunately also more involved than we'd like. Because the back of the enclosure is almost perfectly flat, an extrusion is needed to mount the cards. For the sake of looks, that extrusion is covered by a small ventilated piece attached with two screws, and that piece has to be removed before you can mount anything. I'm not necessarily sure there's a much easier way to go about this short of making the entire case a little longer and using a more traditional mounting system.
Finally, we come to the worst part: installing the power supply and routing cables. This is probably where the biggest sacrifice had to be made to fit everything into this enclosure. The power supply has to be "dropped" in from the top, and it's preferable to install it upside-down so the PSU's intake doesn't steal air from the GPU fan. Power supply clearance is at a premium, too: you'll need a 160mm PSU, period, end of discussion, and honestly you may want to see if you can find a fairly short optical drive as well. Our BD-ROM is about 185mm long and while there's enough room to cable everything, it's miles from ideal.
I also strongly suggest builders use modular power supplies wherever possible and here it might actually be a requirement. There's clearance behind the tray for routing cables, but unfortunately routing everything was just a little bit too fraught, and so our end testing build winds up feeling more cluttered than I'd like and I'm sure more than SilverStone would prefer.
Honestly for this build it seems like the best choice for end users may very well be to just use a single HDD and a single SSD, and get rid of the top drive cage entirely. Likewise, the Samsung BD-ROM we use for testing is a popular one and there may be smaller drives; if you can find one that might be a smart route to take too.
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slagcoin - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
You say the case will not work well with dual graphics cards, but you did not even test it. You should test it.I concur with the 160mm modular power supply. Should also find an optical drive about 170mm in length.
I recommend avoiding both CPU air cooling and 3.5" hard drives in the hard drive cage. Put 3.5" hard drives in the bottom and/or media bays. The length of the hard drive cage is perfect for 2.5" hard drives with adapters. Consider SSDs and/or notebook hard drives for the hard drive cage.
Andrew Rockefeller - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
I've often wondered if a left hand mounted mobo would be better for passive graphics cards.. heat sink on top seems rational to me. That said, im no master of thermal and fluid dynamics, any benefit may be negligable to none. I see an experiment in my near future.Rick83 - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
Well, I"m not sure, because the fans are usually sucking air into the card - in this case they will get the air from the warmer, upper section of the board, whereas normally, the y get it from the bottom, where cooler air is supposed to be.If you"re running passive or with custom fans though, it may be beneficial. Still you have a heat source below the card, with all the VRM and CPU, so it may not be ideal.
Andrew Rockefeller - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
I have a passive graphics card. Ran my experiment. It would appear that thermal conductivity has a far greater impact than orientation. 'Negligable to none' confirmed.IMPL0DE - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
are barely visible, because you used a white font on bright yellow.PorscheMaD911 - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
Thanks for the review, I was seriously thinking about buying this case for my build (parts just arrived today). In the end I went with the Antec Three Hundred instead, and looks like I'll be glad in terms of ease of assembly. This is a really nice looking enclosure though!7Enigma - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
Last system I built for my dad's gaming/video rig used the 300. Very spacious and easy to build with. Some sharp corners if I remember correctly, but other than that no complaints and the huge fan on the top on the low setting (fan has low/medium/high) is virtually inaudible and moves a LOT of hot air out.Only long-term issue I can think of is dust issues inside but that's what the air compressor is for once or twice a year.
Good choice.
PorscheMaD911 - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
Awesome, thanks for sharing your experience. I'll watch the sharp corners and keep an eye on the dust level!marvdmartian - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
1. When photographing a black case with a black interior, illuminate it with a LOT of external light (try to minimize shadows), BEFORE pointing the camera at it. Trust me. Your photographs shows a lot of black on black, with minimal illumination, which showed much less detail than it should have, for this type of review. Remember, some of us aren't kids with sharp eyes anymore.2. Remember to take some angled pictures of the interior of the case. Some of the best details of any case can only be discerned while looking at it from an angle OTHER than straight on. Close ups are also lacking, especially in the drive areas.
3. When reviewing a micro-atx case, doing so with a mini-itx motherboard just seems like cheating to me. You're complaining about crowding, but you really don't have a problem fitting a motherboard that small in the case. Seeing a micro-atx motherboard in there would tell a much better story, especially if you're complaining about space (or lack of).
Nice case, but not really worth that price point, IMHO.
antef - Thursday, August 4, 2011 - link
Dustin,Thanks for this review. I'll be doing a new build in the near future and am very interested in microATX or maybe even mini-ITX because I don't need that many components (no optical drive, only one HDD, SSD, and video card). The TJ08-E looks nice but the difficulty in installation kind of bothers me for something that costs that much and I'd prefer to keep my PC P&C Silencer 610W if I was using a microATX case. Can you comment on something much cheaper such as the Cooler Master Elite 341? I know the materials and maybe thermals won't be the same, but I like the size, layout, and price.