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
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
Stock results for the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 with the case fans set to low were admittedly pretty poor outside of the noise levels, and that made me nervous about testing it with the testbed overclocked. For what it's worth, the DS1 was able to run our overclocked testbed, but I wouldn't be comfortable with the low-90s temperatures that the CPU reached. You'll see, though, that if you let the fans stretch their legs a little, Nanoxia's design starts to come into its own again.
This is the first time keeping the chimney open has notably improved cooling performance, but the DS1 is starting to have trouble competing with the performance-oriented enclosures and is only able to tie the Ghost and 550D. Everything else runs reasonably cool, though.
Fan speeds are much more competitive, though. The low fan setting has a hard time keeping up, but the high fan setting proves the case has a healthy amount of fight in it.
And then the other haymaker. Once again the DS1 is able to meet or beat the other silent cases while offering competitive if not superior performance. This isn't the coolest running case, but it's the quietest. Out of our high end cases, the only one that can produce comparable acoustic performance is NZXT's Phantom 820, a case that's going to cost at least twice as much.
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Grok42 - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
I with you I too have absolutely no need for a card reader and consider them to be at best a legacy device. Really they are more like the zip drive which some people really needed and used and a lot of people never needed or used.That said, I certainly would not care if they included one. I wouldn't see it much different than all the front, side, bottom USB ports they tend to litter cases with these days like blue bullet holes. Sure if I had my choice they wouldn't be there but they don't bother me either. Given that they cost $5 retail it should be a very cheap way to move any case up market for little additional manufacturing cost. The one critical caveat is that they not just install it in an external bay but make it like the USB port an integrate it into the case in a discrete way.
roberta - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Good Day Dustin,Thank You Very Much for a SUPERB review....
I hope the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 (DS1) becomes available in Australia in time for Haswell.
Best Regards,
Roberta
nevcairiel - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
At least the DS1 is available here in Europe already (guess it helps being from the same country as the company making them), but before i go out and buy it, whats the outlook on future cases, like the DS2? Its not available yet, but i would love a comparison to the DS1 to decide if waiting is worth it.Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
From what I can see, the DS2 looks like a slightly cut down DS1. If you want a DS1, pull the trigger on it.HollyDOL - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
I think openable chimney starts fulfilling it's purpose when you mount radiator under that...pdjblum - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
The materials used to construct the case are important to at least a few of us, if not more. It would be nice if they were listed in the spec table. I have left a comment to this effect a few times already, but to no avail. Please consider.monkey23 - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
I'm glad you finally got to review the case Dustin.I had my mind set on the Fractal Design R4 for my silent built even with all the Nanoxia DS1 reviews on the web. After reading your review, however, I'm not so sure anymore. It looks like you prefer the DS1 to the R4 since it has better performance and is "more solid". I agree that the DS1 could use some more refinement but aside from performance I thought that the R4 is more solid of the two. I guess I would like to know how the two compares on the ease of assembly, quality, features, etc. In other words if they both perform about equally at the same price, which one would you prefer?
I know that the DS2 has been announced and it looks very similar to and shares many of the features of the R4. Maybe that could be the perfect case I'm looking for if it continues to improve on what they did with DS1.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
I reviewed the R4 and still have it on hand. I was going to build a system for a friend in it, but now I'm going to use the DS1 instead. They're also sending me a second one in the anthracite (gunmetal) finish, and I'll be moving my desktop into that most likely.That should be about all you need to know.
monkey23 - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Thanks for the reply. I know you like the case but I didn't expect you to move your desktop into it though. Maybe you will have to make another move in the future (into the DS2.) I guess we'll have to wait and see.monkey23 - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link
Here's an afterthought: how would the R4 perform with Nanoxia's fans? I know Nanoxia started out making fans so they have the advantage on that department. I wonder if the R4 might perform at least as well given three better case fans. I know that would drive up the total costs and make it an unfair comparison though.