Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 Case Review: You Asked For It, You Got It
by Dustin Sklavos on November 27, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- quiet
- ATX
- Nanoxia
Assembling the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1
While Nanoxia's Deep Silence 1 has a fairly smart layout and is reasonably convenient, there are were still a couple of hangups when I went to assemble our testbed inside it. There weren't any major issues, just a series of small annoyances.
The motherboard went in easy enough, but I would've appreciated a center-mounted guide post similar to how I've seen in recent cases (including BitFenix's Ghost), and I had an unusually difficult time getting the motherboard's I/O shield to snap into place. Routing case headers to the motherboard was also mostly easy, but there's nothing inside the DS1 that keeps the cables from slipping into the optical drive bays; you pretty much have to have an optical drive installed to keep that clean. Depending on how you route the cables and if you removed the top panel at any point, you may also find that the I/O hinge at the top of the case actually sticks. Nanoxia says they've already solved the problem, so hopefully if the DS1 gets to retail in the United States end users won't run into it.
Installing the optical drive and SSD was pain free. Toolless installation of the optical drive was easy and Nanoxia smartly includes toolless clamps on both sides of the drive; better still, the drive bay shields are similar to the snap-in ones that NZXT uses, which feature a locking lever. The drive sleds themselves are durable metal with rubber vibration grommets for 3.5" drives, but they're not toolless; both 2.5" and 3.5" drives need to be screwed into place. Thankfully the sleds themselves fit securely into the drive cages.
Getting the power supply in, on the other hand, proved to be more challenging than it needed to be. Nanoxia features two rubber studs that hold up the back of ther power supply, but there's no guide for the front of it, causing it to easily dip and thus requiring some Arm Fu to get the PSU lined up and screwed into place. This could've been avoided by just putting a slight lip inside the case to hold up the front.
The graphics card was also difficult. I'm used to having to bow either the bracket or the case to get everything to line up, but the DS1 required more force than I expected. This can be kind of a crap shoot, but it feels like the measurements here were ever so slightly off.
Thankfully, getting everything wired together was fairly easy apart from two minor complaints. The routing holes in the motherboard tray are all very intelligently aligned and spacious enough, and the grommets themselves stay securely in place. My only issues were the aggravatingly small hole for routing the AUX 12V line above the motherboard tray where I accidentally snapped one of the clamps after it got caught on a rivet, and the use of a molex connector for the fan controller instead of a SATA power connector.
Finally putting the side panels back on wound up being easier than I expected given the old style notched mounting system Nanoxia uses to lock them in place. They include a healthy amount of space for routing cables behind the motherboard tray, though they'd do well to consider dedicating cabling channels around it similar to how Corsair designed the Vengeance C70. Doing so could make the DS1 that much easier to wire and keep neat.
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Grok42 - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
What are you thoughts on the Nanoxia's door? I like the split door compromise.I personally have moved from loving doors for providing a clean look to wanting cases with no external bays and no door for the same clean look. However, given the size of the Nanoxia I can't fault it for some external bays as cases of typical size typically have 5 or more bays. If you scaled up most mid-ATX cases up to the Nanoxia's size they would have 20 5.25" bays.
johnsonjohnson - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Looks like the Define R4's twin. If only they could merger into one..johnsonjohnson - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
..which they did to become the DS2. I'm sure Dustin will be looking at that one too. I wonder how it would fare against its future twin (R5) though.vhx - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Looks more like an Antec P280 to me.martyrant - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
First off, well written and informative review Dustin.Second, sans the things you already mentioned (that were of course quite minor) the only major flaw I see that was not mentioned is the lack of a SD/card reader. They're already eating up the top 5.25" bay with the fan controller/reset button, there's obviously room to put at the very least a SD card reader there, which would mean most likely people would not need the 5.25" to 3.5" adapter.
Thanks for this review, I hadn't heard of this case before and would very much like it to come to the States in time for Haswell!
FragKrag - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Doesn't really seem like that big of a flaw to me... I don't know any cases off the top of my head that come with an SD card readermartyrant - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
NZXT has one I believe, and if you already have almost everything perfect, there's no reason to not attempt pure perfection.Death666Angel - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
It would for some people. :DI personally don't need a card reader and don't want one either. All my stuff is handled by a USB cable to the necessary device (camera, phone, tablet...). If this had a reader, it would take away from the clean look and give me something ugly that's never getting used.
martyrant - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Are your eyes not working? Ignorant? Not read the article or look at the case at all?The card reader would be behind the top front door...and would not effect aesthetics at all.
Death666Angel - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link
Wow, you clearly have no issues with criticism.It would not destroy the aesthetics, except when I use anything that is behind the top front door....