SilverStone ML04 & ML05 Slim HTPC Cases Review
by E. Fylladitakis on April 18, 2014 2:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- HTPC
- SilverStone
- desktops
Final Words
Slim desktop cases are a special category of products that typically do not adhere to design conventions and thus their size, flexibility, and compatibility depends on the designer/manufacturer alone. It would be a mistake to compare them directly with other case designs that have been made with entirely different goals in mind. As they are designed to fit into cabinets and match A/V equipment, their compact proportions dictate that sacrifices need to be made. With both the Milo ML04 and the Milo ML05, Silverstone is trying to balance just about everything; compatibility with common components, upgradeability, aesthetics, and a reasonable price tag. The size of the cases will inevitably come with certain limitations, mostly on the compatibility and upgradeability fronts.
These limitations are not extremely significant with the Milo ML04, as it can hold Micro-ATX motherboards, common ATX PSUs, and 3.5"/5.25" drives. There are limitations regarding their size and only a small number of drives may be installed, but such components are common and relatively cheap. It is not difficult to build a very good HTPC inside the Milo ML04, and you can even install a modern low profile GPU, such as an R7 250 or GT 640, for some casual gaming (and improved video codec support). With an R7 250 installed, the system should be capable of handling 4K video material as well. Considering the 0.016 cubic meters this case occupies and the height of only 105mm, that's not bad at all.
Despite the fact that the Milo ML04 is their entry-level slim HTPC case, Silverstone paid attention to many little details and features. For example, it is possible to lock the power button on the door to prevent children from pressing it, and a simple dimmer has been installed to lower the intensity of the power-on LED if the user finds it annoying. The company also reinforced the chassis and tried to make it as versatile as possible, allowing end users to choose their ideal configuration. However, each component selection sacrifices something else. For example, if you install an optical drive, you cannot use the same cage to install a 3.5" or 2.5" drive. If you choose to go with a 2.5" drive on the plastic cage, you cannot install a 3.5" device there as well. Moreover, if you choose to go with a full height expansion card by using a riser, you severely limit the height of the CPU cooler.
Aesthetics are a subjective matter but we feel that certain things could be improved. It is understandable that Silverstone focused all of their attention on the faceplate, as it will be the only directly visible aspect if the Milo ML04 is installed inside a cabinet. However, in any other scenario, the body of the Milo ML04 will look entirely out of place. Moreover, some other details could be improved, such as the massive gap between the plastic faceplate and the metallic chassis, which is obvious once the door opens. We have to stress that this is an entry-level HTPC case however, retailing for $74.99, so we cannot ask too much from it.
Silverstone reduced the proportions of the Milo ML05 even more, creating a tiny design that is very discreet. Although it's not as small as the Antec ISK 110, the Milo ML05 is a good compromise between minimum proportions and the more versatile Milo ML04. As the Milo ML05 is smaller than the vast majority of A/V equipment, it is most likely intended for a minimalistic environment comprised of just a tiny HTPC and a nice TV, rather than to match other A/V equipment. The tiny size of the Milo ML05 however reduces upgradeability and versatility even more. Aside from the obvious motherboard size limitation, as only Mini-ITX boards may be installed, only SFX PSUs will fit -- tightly. If the multipurpose bracket is used for an optical drive or extra cooling, the installation of a 3.5" drive is not possible at all. Even if a 3.5" drive is installed on the multipurpose bracket, it will reduce the maximum height of the CPU cooler by several milimeters.
It is very easy to be lured by the very low retail price of the Milo ML05, which currently sells for just $39.99 incl. shipping. However, the low retail price is misleading, as the components required to build such a small system can be quite expensive. The SFX PSU is not much of a problem, as a low-capacity unit should not cost more than $50. If you wish to include an optical drive, however, you can only use a slot-loading slim SATA drive that will cost $69.60. If you skip the optical drive, you may install additional cooling or drives, or nothing at all; in any case, you will end up with a useless slot across the faceplate of the system, as there is no way of hiding it.
Building a budget HTPC in the Milo ML05 is still possible. It is not difficult to find a board with an integrated CPU for less than $100 (our demo Asus C8HM70-I/HDMI retails for $78.99) and a quality SFX PSU for $54.99. Add some RAM and a mechanical 2.5" HDD and you will probably manage to have a fair HTPC for less than $250 total. This is not all that bad for a case that occupies less than one fourth the volume of a Mini-ITX case designed to take high-performance GPUs, such as the Obsidian 250D.
If you want more power and/or features, with a proper selection of components the Milo ML05 can become a small powerhouse; however, the price will start increasing rapidly as well. The optical drive alone will cost over $60 and an 1150/FM2 based board with a good CPU will increase the budget by at least a hundred dollars. If you want to add a good low profile GPU, that will be yet another hundred dollars more. Then you will have to seek a low profile CPU cooler and most likely you'll want to install an SSD as well, bringing up the cost of the system from about $250 to about $650-700. While it may be interesting that you can build a rather powerful system within such small proportions, it can be a costly endeavor and we do not really recommend it, unless the intended use of the system is much more than just typical HTPC functions.
Overall, the Silverstone ML04 and ML05 are reasonable cases, and provided you're aware of their limitations -- and are willing to put a bit more time into researching the best components as well as assembling the system -- they can work well as entry-level HTPCs. If you want something more versatile, you'll generally sacrifice on size at the least, and perhaps cost as well, while devices that are even smaller will have to cut additional features. As a low priced alternative to other HTPC enclosures, the ML04 and ML05 fill a niche and should keep their intended users happy.
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Daniel Egger - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
I'm not sure I understand the testing method. I just built a HTPC using a Lian Li PC-C50B case. With a Intel Core i5 4440S, a H87 Board, a 300W Be Quiet PSU (the lowest I could get), a GTX 750 Ti OC, a Samsung 840 Pro SSD and 8GB of Crucial XMP 1.3 RAM and the two connected case fans the worst case wall consumption using benchmarks I could get in "performance mode" are around 120W. Your 230W for a far weaker system are sort of ridiculous.BTW: Some further wall values would be 54W for Windows 8.1 Update Login screen, 36W for idle Desktop, 44W for watching Amazon Prime HD content in Firefox.
DanNeely - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
With a 65W CPU and a >60W GPU (could only find stock TDP) you're probably at least 20 wall watts short of maxing your system out. That doesn't mean that the least unrealistic part of the test was after the fake CPU shut down in the mITX case.Playing around with a few PSU wattage calculators gave 3-6W/dimm. The HDD numbers appear to be for 1/2 3.5" drives; in order to run in spec over 1 or 2 USB ports 2.5" drives would need to consume less than 2.5 or 5W. The only VRM efficiency data I was able to find was for VRMs from a decade ago which were 70-85% efficient under significant loads. And with only half height card slots, the GPU should either be in the 30-40W or not present at all.
Going for a plausible high load config I'd suggest a 75W CPU, 15W VRM (splitting the difference), 12W ram (using the high value for 2 full size dimms), 45W for a GPU and 15W for a 3.5" HDD; total 162W.
At the lower power end, 40W CPU, 8 W VRM, 6W ram (using lower value for sodimm -probably too high), no GPU, and 3W for a 2.5" HDD/SSD; 57W total.
With these cases being sold without any installed fans; meaning they're expecting to be fully cooled by whatever the CPU fan pushes around and what the PSU fan exhausts, something in the 50-90W range is probably about right for a fair test.
Were I a case vendor, with the current test being designed to fail cases designed for medium to low power loads where component fans are intended to do most of the venting, I'd refuse to offer anything except either cases intended for totally fanless operation (eg designs with no room for a GPU and heat pipes running from the included CPU cooler to the chassis) or cases designed for high power over clocking gamers with multiple fans installed at the factory.
Using a tower cooler in a case optimized for a down blowing OEM heatsink, or a blower style GPU in a case designed for an open cooler could result in a few degrees of test result shifting either way. It would still provide more useful information than the current tests which severely penalize all cases except those with huge numbers of factory installed fans. As it stands, the only useful information in the reviews (not available from vendor/retailer pages) now is the subjective data: eg build quality, ease of installation and cable routing, etc.
E.Fyll - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
Correct; you do not understand the testing method.When performing thermal testing, you induce a constant, passive and significantly greater load than the worst case scenario. Reducing the load would yield similar results anyway, their magnitude would be lower and it would take too many hours to reach a thermal equilibrium. The testing is being performed only in order to provide a basis for proper thermal performance comparisons between similar cases. We can only tell you which case performs better than another, not the exact operating temperatures of every possible configuration that could be installed in it. Trying to correlate the figures of a thermal testing station with the numbers of actual PC's is fundamentally wrong. You cannot correlate with something that you do not know anything about, including (but not limited to) its actual thermal losses, and which not only is active (addition of airflow, sensors and their positions, BIOS programming, etc.) but variable as well.
You cannot use a typical PC to perform any kind of thermal testing. It is an uncontrollable, unknown and active load, with myriads of variables, plus each single system is unique. No matter what results one could get with a single system, no other user would get the exact same results, even if the system were to be identical, let alone a different configuration. Therefore, no matter what kind of numbers I would get by "testing" cases using a typical system, you would only be guessing how your system could correlate to those. Furthermore, I would not be able to compare cases to one another, as that is an active load and introduces myriads of variables that affect the results (you could easily end up with much different comparative results if the configuration of the PC changes). Such a procedure is meaningless.
The figures which you are denoting are the power drain, not the thermal load. These are two different things. The thermal load typically is significantly lower than the power drain. You are mentioning the AC power drain too, most likely read by a very cheap energy meter (unlikely to be the RMS value), not the actual energy consumption of the PC. The actual power drain of your PC probably is 20-50% lower than you think. Be careful with those numbers of yours.
Daniel Egger - Saturday, April 19, 2014 - link
> When performing thermal testing, you induce a constant, passive and significantly greater load than the worst case scenario. Reducing the load would yield similar results anyway, their magnitude would be lower and it would take too many hours to reach a thermal equilibrium.If that is the case you could just use any made up number (what about 1000W?) and check how long it takes until thermal overload. However those figures are completely irrelevant. When buying a case I'd be interested in knowing whether the design is good enough to cool down a reasonably dimensioned system not whether it is better than another system in unrealistic loads, just as DanNeely said.
I'm also not sure why you'd assume that those values can be scaled linearly because we're talking thermodynamics here and those are defined by in some cases very complicated differential equations where even approximate solving (eg. via FEM) can take some time.
> The figures which you are denoting are the power drain, not the thermal load.
I fail to see how they would differ much. With Semiconductors they're usually identical since energy doesn't simply vanish but only transforms into other forms, in this case almost exclusively heat (except for the LEDs and Lasers) and of course power which is consumed outside of the case e.g. to USB devices; but why complicate matters....
> You are mentioning the AC power drain too, most likely read by a very cheap energy meter (unlikely to be the RMS value)
That's a nice assumption but I do have equipment here with proper power factor calculation. And BTW: Even cheap energy meters are nowadays *very* accurate for switching loads >5W with an error of around 0-1%. For most uses it's not required to have a calibrated ZES ZIMMER LMG95 around...
E.Fyll - Saturday, April 19, 2014 - link
No, you cannot use any "made up number", because you will reach a thermal breakdown (much like it happened during the testing of the Milo ML05).I never assumed that the values would scale *linearly*, that's an assumption on your part. Furthermore, using FEM to solve such a complicated system would require days from a large CPU cluster, it is impossible to perform even mundane calculations using a typical computer.
If all energy would convert into heat, then they would not be semiconductors but simple resistors. Semiconductors do work and they require energy for it, which does not get converted to heat. I will not go into the details, you need to expand your knowledge of electronics a lot more before you can understand how the mechanism works if you now believe that all energy will just be converted to thermal.
If you think that cheap energy meters are accurate, then you have no understanding of electric energy at all. Such devices are impossibly inaccurate when used to resolve complex waveforms, especially when these include harmonics. A switching PSU will induce both a phase angle shift and will generate harmonics, thus trying to measure its power drain using such a device is like trying to calculate the distance between the earth and the moon by using a ruler. Their "1% error" suggests that they are at their optimal measuring range and metering a perfectly Ohmic load.
My apologies for the short, vague reply, but I simply do not have the time to give you a much more thorough answer.
Daniel Egger - Saturday, April 19, 2014 - link
> No, you cannot use any "made up number", because you will reach a thermal breakdown (much like it happened during the testing of the Milo ML05).That's sort of my point (and DanNeelys) point. It does not make any sense to test a higher output than a sane system will ever reach.
> I never assumed that the values would scale *linearly*, that's an assumption on your part. Furthermore, using FEM to solve such a complicated system would require days from a large CPU cluster, it is impossible to perform even mundane calculations using a typical computer.
That's very much wrong. For such a simple system of differential equations it would be more like a couple of seconds on current hardware. However you'd need a proper model of each case and proper starting conditions which might take a long time to make up.
> If all energy would convert into heat, then they would not be semiconductors but simple resistors. Semiconductors do work and they require energy for it, which does not get converted to heat. I will not go into the details, you need to expand your knowledge of electronics a lot more before you can understand how the mechanism works if you now believe that all energy will just be converted to thermal.
No, I think you'll need to learn the basics of electronics. Does your CPU move or light up by any chance? How about running hot? And yes, of course there's plenty of resistance in there. You do know how a "transfer resistor" aka transistor works, right?
> If you think that cheap energy meters are accurate, then you have no understanding of electric energy at all.
The German magazine c't conducted a test of 15 power meters somewhen in 2013:
https://www.heise.de/artikel-archiv/ct/2013/21/126...
3 out of 15 sucked rocks while the rest where surprisingly accurate. I do have Fluke True RMS meter and a certified (means good for billing in public networks) smart meter here providing very accurate readings but honestly when my own tests and the c't both say my energy meter is somewhat accurate (+/-1% is good enough) even in tricky cases I don't bother pulling out and connect the complicated gear (not a big fan of having testing probes and other loose electrical connections in the living room where the kids play)...
flashbacck - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
I'm glad you guys still do the occasional HTPC article. I feel like HTPCs have been dumped for the appleTV's and Roku's of the world. The software scene is so dismal now :(korben44 - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
Well, as for the software scene and htpcs... I would recommend only one solution.... Xbmcmeacupla - Friday, April 18, 2014 - link
The one thing that keeps me away from these HTPC from silverstone is the slot loading slim BD drive.It costs as much as a BD deck and the BD deck I don't have to buy 3rd party software (that needs to be updated every so often) to use.
Larry Endomorph - Saturday, April 19, 2014 - link
Again with the line charts that are useless to color blind people!?Come on!