SilverStone GD04 HTPC Case: Cool, Not Quiet
by Dustin Sklavos on December 25, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- HTPC
- SilverStone
- GD04
Conclusion: Good, With Caveats
First, let's be clear, the SilverStone GD04 isn't a poorly designed case; on the contrary, it's actually very well designed. Aesthetically it has a nice minimalist feel to it, and at no point did I ever feel like any of the parts used in its assembly were particularly cheap. It's solid, the feet don't feel like they're going to peel off at the first sign of trouble, and the internal design is fairly smart given the generally small overall character of the case. It's not the smallest case I've built in, but it maximizes both the space it gives you and the cooling power it can have within that space. Which is part of the problem.
Three 120mm fans at high speeds make noise, and that's a real concern when you're dealing with a media center case. For other builds it may not be as big of an issue, but if the GD04 is going to be sitting in your living room it needs to draw as little attention to itself as possible. So while the LED on the front is a low key blue, in a quiet room the case in a typical configuration is going to be very audible. Having to go back and buy a fan controller to keep noise down to a reasonable level wasn't what I had in mind when I bought this case. You could probably get better results by carefully selecting your motherboard, or you might even swap out the default fans for something quieter (or disable one or two fans), but that all adds to the cost as well and may have undesirable results.
Everything else about it is at least understandable: while a more tool-less approach would've been appreciated, it's not absolutely necessary and more of a convenience. I do appreciate how solid the case feels overall, and I can't stress this enough: it feels sturdy and you don't end up feeling ripped off by the $99 price tag it typically commands (shopping around may find you a better deal). That price is actually a good deal lower than what you'll spend for many other HTPC cases, so if you don't need an LCD front panel or anything fancy it's a fine choice. Just know that when you order the GD04 you're going to want to factor in the cost of an additional fan controller, and it's probably going to be the Xigmatek I used since that was the only expansion slot-mounted fan controller I could find on NewEgg. That adds another ten bucks to the price of the case.
At the end of the day I can recommend the GD04 with that caveat: if you think noise in a quiet room will be an issue you're going to want to buy a suitably quiet CPU cooler and a fan controller or a motherboard with enough fan headers and decent fan control. Other than that, the thermals are reasonable, the case looks good, and the price is right. Just keep your screwdriver handy.
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RobertR13 - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
How can anyone choose to post noise levels, with no frame of reference? We have a bunch of pretty graphs and lot of nice numbers, but what are we supposed to compare them to? And what is the noise floor of the test area? And who on earth measures exclusively at one foot and exclusively on the side of the case? That would be like wanting to know how loud it is driving a car, and measuring sound a foot from the exhaust. You don't drive from behind the car and you don't watch movies from a foot away from the side of your computer.The writing itself isn't terrible, but a bit obviously amateurish, and the whole article is just a subjective analysis.
RobertR13 - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
Oh, and I nearly forgot, you can put some VERY long power supplies in this case, you just have to swap out the side fan. The side of the case is drilled for both 120mm fans(as included) and 80mm fans for those with longer power supplies who would still like some ventilation on that side of the case.8steve8 - Monday, December 27, 2010 - link
agreed, noisy compared to what?RobertR13 - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
I'm forced to continue making observations about this article in re-reading it.In the first paragraph the author states that he chose not to go with another case because it didn't have any vibration dampening for the optical drive bay, so he chose this case, which has no vibration dampening for the optical drive bay. Wait, what?
Also, Silverstone pretty plainly has stated in the past that the extra expansion slot above the power supply was designed for expansion cards to high end audio devices like the Emu-1212m or the Asus Xonar HDAV series with daughter cards, but that it would work with any other expansion items, like SATA or USB or what-not.
What research was one before purchasing this case?
Finally, I noticed that there is no sound measurement given with just the case fans powered up and not the CPU or GPU fans powered up, like that's not going to make a HUGE difference in the sound levels and types produced.
Hrel - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
he said he didn't want to have to put tape on the led on the cd drive, which is why he chose this case, read more carefully.RobertR13 - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
Maybe you should re-read the article, he said he chose this case over the GD-05 because he wanted to hide the LED on the ODD, but that his whole reason for looking for a new case was because his LG BD\HD-DVD drive was getting too noisy so he wanted a case with some sound dampening on the ODD bay, which this doesn't have.Stuka87 - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
They always measure from the same distance, this is so that all reviews that have sound levels are measured in the same way.As for frame of reference, a deciBell is a deciBell. What frame of reference do you need?
As for noise floor, any half decent tester allows you to calibrate out the ambient noise level.
RobertR13 - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
1: Who is they, there are no other people or cases in this article2: I'm fine with measuring from a fixed distance, but measuring from 1 foot away, from the side is rediculous.
3: dB are a standard frame of measurement, sure, but if you have a purpose built theater with a noise floor of 11dB and the case makes 36dB it is going to seem a lot louder than if you are just putting it in your family room with a noise floor of 25+dB.
4: That would invalidate the experiment all together because if you wipe out the noise floor, then you have to say so, and state what the noise floor is so that people can actually use the number for something, and two, if it screens out tones, that you are telling it to consider ambient noise, then you might be missing a specific sound frequency the fans are making.
MeanBruce - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
You know my floor is pretty noisy, of course that could be my neighbors downstairs.C'DaleRider - Saturday, December 25, 2010 - link
To answer your petulant, childish nitpciking, which is making you look like the 12 year old you seem to want to be noticed as,1. They are the testers at Anandtech. They have a standard set of testing requirements, such as noise checked at 1 ft. distance, to make the different testers' findings be comparable to other findings from other testers.
2. Why? If anything, it presents a worst case scenario.....the noise perception will only get better as distance increases.
3. Why worry about the floor/ambient noise? It'd only be worth noting if the ambient noise was too high to hear the noise the fans in the case generated....and then it'd be worth noting. Otherwise, once the generated noise overcomes ambient noise, the ambient noise becomes irrelevant. Noise, in this case, isn't additive.....such as adding ambient to case generated noise. Doesn't work like that.
4. Just too stupid an argument to respond to.