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.

In and Around the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 Testing Methodology
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  • Grok42 - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link

    Sounds like an interesting concept. Can you give an example of a case that does this? My pet peeve are external bays but I also think internal ones could be designed better and have been trying to find someone doing something new in this area.
  • Death666Angel - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link

    Don't you guys have import in the US? I can buy stuff from all over the world and have it shipped to my door step in Germany. :D
  • karagiosis - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link

    Just a small errata. On the noise level chart (overclocked) the labels for the fans at low and high speed should be swapped
  • Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link

    Nope, it's correct as posted. The higher fan setting for the case improves airflow so much that the CPU and GPU fans don't spin as high.
  • dehemke - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link

    Where are the Antec Performance One series in the comparison charts?

    This thing looks like a P18x/28x inspired design, I'd like to see how well it stacks up against those.

    I'm still running a jet black P180 and a Mirror finish P182, but I had to do some modifications to get them to play nicely with the new longer PSU's and video cards.

    Is this the right successor?
  • jjwa - Wednesday, December 12, 2012 - link

    I am still running my main rig in a P180 :). It rocks. And it's used for gaming, playing server and everything else at the same time. While overclocked. The only problem I have now is that I have put so many HDDs into it (replacing the upper stock HDD cage) that I reduced it's air intake too far :(.
  • mascotzel - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link

    What is the high low significance in the review?
  • Galcobar - Tuesday, November 27, 2012 - link

    It's explained in the first paragraph of the Noise and Thermal Testing section, just above the charts.
  • mascotzel - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link

    so why are the fans on low noisier than the same fans on high in the charts?
  • flyingpants1 - Wednesday, November 28, 2012 - link

    In my opinion, the only sources of noise in most modern computers should be two 140mm+ fans: The CPU fan and the PSU fan. The 140mm CPU fan on a 120mm heatsink can be ducted to the rear exhaust port - no need for case fans. SSDs make no noise. Hard drives make no noise when idle, and when running they require no active cooling, see the Google hard drive study. Integrated GPUs obviously don't need extra cooling.

    It's possible to eliminate the PSU fan by using a fanless PSU, but this limits your GPU choices. As for high-end GPUs like a GTX680, one could easily imagine an aftermarket GPU heatsink with a 140mm which spins at inaudible speeds on idle.

    Combine all that with a quiet case and an inch of soundproofing stuff, and your computer will be literally inaudible by human ears when idle.

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