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
Assembling the AZZA Silentium
The nice thing about assembling standard sized cases is that I don't scratch myself up or have to work my dainty hands into weird corners; they typically come together easily and they're usually not too heavy to move. AZZA did put some thought into making assembly fairly easy, so users looking for a simpler build will probably find a lot to like in the Silentium.
Ignoring my griping about removing and replacing the side panels, I appreciate that the motherboard tray essentially comes ready for an ATX board to be installed. Snapping in the I/O shield is easy enough, and even for our testbed's Micro-ATX board, there wasn't too much effort involved.
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Installing 2.5", 3.5", and optical drives is varying degrees of fraught. The trays themselves are fairly sturdy and designed to bottom-mount SSDs as is typical of modern designs. That said, I'm not convinced the side-mount pegs are particularly secure. The twist-clamps used to lock the 5.25" drives into place are also only used on one side as is typical (but not wise.) These don't feel very secure either, but thankfully the button in the front door lines up pretty perfectly with the eject button on our test optical drive. The power supply and video card went in easily enough, though, nothing really to report there.
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Where things get hairy is in the cabling. Barring the waste of headers, there are no places to route the exhaust fan lead (which is molex and not 3-pin) or the AUX 12V line. Both of these cables wind up having to stretch across the motherboard to the routing hole behind the 5.25" drive bays, and it's an absolutely silly omission. Space behind the motherboard tray is also a bit minimal, though the extruded side panel does help pick up a lot of slack. For what it's worth, outside of the issues inherent to notched side panels, the Silentium was surprisingly easy to close up.
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AZZA makes some good decisions with the interior of the Silentium, but it's really obvious there's room for improvement here. There needs to be a way to route the exhaust fan and AUX 12V lines behind the motherboard tray, and as I mentioned on the previous page, AZZA could probably safely do away with most of the external 5.25" drive bays. This is the kind of bold step only Fractal Design and SilverStone have really been taking lately, but it needs to catch on. I have three bays in the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 I'm using for my desktop, and I use two, only one of which I even need. Realistically, USB enclosures and peripherals have largely nullified the need for 5.25" bays.
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Stuka87 - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
But do you plug those drives into the front of your case? I plug my drives into the rear, and if I have a temp drive to transfer data to/from, then that one drive will plug into the front.cjs150 - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Need better thought than this.Because I have no need for a full ATX board, Silverstone could do a fantastic silent case.
Take the TJ08, widen it slightly to allow room for dampening material (and cable management), maybe a revamp to the front so that (so similar to Antec 180), look at PSU mounting (lots of silicon dampening) and my personal bug bear - will someone please include some anti vibration mountings for optical drives!
Grok42 - Wednesday, January 30, 2013 - link
First, simply don't install an optical drive and it will add 0dB of noise to your system. If you can't handle not having "lasers" inside your computer then realize that spinning a 16g polymer plastic disc at 10k+ RPM is going to make enough noise that any vibration transmitted to the case will be incidental.ShieTar - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
How is the Ghost doing the "best job", if the DS1 outperforms it in almost every single measurement?
And how does the R4 start to look like a better deal, if it is noisier than the AZZA with higher GPU temperatures, while being more expensive?
It seems like those conclusions were written without looking at the measurement results at all.
Hrel - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Man I want that to case to come over here.UNhooked - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Given how we have so many All in one watercooling solution it would be nice if you started to incorporate a small section for watercooling with the mainstream coolers. Corsair H100, H80 etc.Ananke - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
I look at the picture, I read till " it's cheaper to use a single USB 3.0 port and a single USB 2.0 port by a couple of bucks" and decided that this is a $19-29 market case at best. At $99 it is a joke. My Dell workdesk PC is dead silent regardless its canny thick case. There is no reason this AZZA plastic POS to be $99 expensive.Beaver M. - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Seriously, dont do it. Buy a case which is not like Swiss cheese and do it yourself accurately.Even cheap cases will turn into sound eating monsters (especially weight-wise).
Plus they will be completely air tight, so the air flow of the case fans will be excellent without any increase in temperature.
Sure, getting off the side panel and back on, will be more work, but it will really eat sound like nothing and will be more than worth the 12 hours spent to get it done. I can actually run my fans on much higher speeds before I hear them and I never have issues with other noise. You wont believe how quiet my DVD drive is.
Pre-insulated cases are placebos.
althaz - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
Whilst an air-tight case would definitely be quieter, it's not an option for most people as they don't wish to replace their entire computer every day after it is damaged from excessive heat.If there's not fresh air coming in, your computer will gradually get hotter and hotter until something in it melts.
A closed design case will be quieter than an open design, but even closed designs need to allow for sufficient air to flow out of and especially into the case.
Tech-Curious - Tuesday, January 29, 2013 - link
I think he meant air-tight except for the fan vents. ;)"Plus they will be completely air tight, so the air flow of the case fans will be excellent without any increase in temperature."