SILVERSTONE Fortress Series FT03S Silver Computer Case

Comment:
Looks classy. Silverstone's 90-degree rotated motherboard mounting method is cooling genius. This case has a smaller footprint and decrease price than the Silverstone FT02 with no forcing you to compromise on elements. I was in a position to fit a normal micro-ATX motherboard, full-size video card (hd 6870), a tower-style cpu cooler (artic cooling freezer 7 pro), complete-size PSU and 3 3.five" challenging drives. none The excellent, engineering and consideration to detail is far beyond that of even the most high priced Antec situations. I will in no way drop one more dime on Antec.

Comment:
Nicely engineered(!!), high high quality materials down to the print high quality/stock of the instruction manual, gorgeous..., compact, well priced(@ one particular six nine), actually progressive.Silverstone thought a LOT about this case just before/while creating it. "Heat rises" is the standard principle driving the design of this case and every decision made in the course of this case's creation was created along that line.All intakes are filtered, all connections are hidden, all cables are routed "manditorily"(lol bless you!), hdds are cooled as the completely aluminum case itself is 1 big heatsink.There is one "hot swappable" hdd bay behind a rapid-release door connected to a spring loaded ejection assy simply accessible from the top. That drive sits in a harness built into that assy which possibly pulls it further into the case than the other three.5" drives? So there's an aluminum BLOCK the length of the assy molded into the interior of that aluminum access panel that joins the hdd to the rest of the heatsink. The latch on the door to the "hot swappable" hdd bay doesn't quite open as simply as I believe it was designed to. The latch is plastic and there's a small ridge of plastic along the edge of the latch that contacts the case and keeps it from just popping straight out at a slide of the latch.I thought about trying to file it down a bit but I'm not the DIY kind and the case is so incredible I just sat there for a good minute opening and closing the latch so I could locate a way to mitigate it without having trying to improve upon perfection.I only mentioned it for the advantage of the case's designers since they're obviously working so tough to great their craft!! I can't cease smiling as I sort all this!LOL GO, Silverstone!! The two optional 80mm fan mounting points (bottom) can not be occupied WITH the 120mm at the bottom of the case. There isn't sufficient clearance so it's one particular ƒx 80mm) or the other Ƒx 120mm). I purchased 2x 80mms I can't place in there so be conscious.I'm a low-earnings American so I know that "you get what you pay for" is not completely accurate.One particular eight six following shipping is completely too substantially for a laptop or computer case. That mentioned and having purchased this a single, I'm sitting here (still smiling) and tickled brown to have place out the funds to help folks clearly working so tough to get it ideal.Silverstone have raised the bar.Client make: i7-2600K, [ASUS P8P67-M PRO], Kingston HyperX T1 Series, 2x WD Caviar Black WD5002AALX 500GB, Sony Optiarc AD-7690H-01

Comment:
Great air flow for cooling. No active cooling for HDD, slim Slot load optical only. Affordable plastic side vent. Type of large for a mATX case. This could have been the killer mATX but fell brief on a couple of key places. Tough drives require to be kept cool and their passive approach just doesnt cut it. Slim Slot load optical drive? This really limits construct possibilities, not to mention I personally hate slot load.

Comment:
Excellent materials -- in a pinch, you could possibly use the side panels and some duct tape to armor up your auto. Seriously... the aluminum panels are HEAVY duty.Looks fantastic. Really clean and smooth. Even the brand sticker is a chunk of aluminum rather of some cheap silver plastic.The heat-goes-up cooling is excellent... granted I chose components on the low wattage side (i5-2500, gfx460), but even soon after gaming there is a cool breeze coming out of the best of the case.Included fans are really quiet. I'm sure I could get quieter with some appropriate rubber mounts and separate fans, but i usually wait on those to see if its definitely necessary; and i doubt i will upgrade.I'm not positive how typically the hot-plug SATA port will be useful, but its pretty cool and works properly. Larger than expected. About the identical height and a little wider than a standard ATX tower, although only about half as deep. That stated, you nonetheless get half depth with a lot of room inside for CPU cooling and a full size video card.The power and reset buttons are on top, and are a little too effortless to tap by accident. They must be recessed.A major hunk of aluminum is glued to a side panel to cool the hot-plug disk drive... it had fallen off (no surpise, its HEAVY). Luckily it was still tacky and stayed rapidly with a bit of pressure.The side panels slide or snap on, which is nice if you take it apart a lot, but it would be good to have some screws fastening them in spot. A bit of the material quality appears lost with the soft mounting, as the panels don't quite line up perfectly.Locating a slim/slot load optical drive is a discomfort, but I suppose is the price you pay for the perfectly smooth aluminum front. Like it a lot... would adore it if it were a bit smaller, but, that may well just not be physically doable with out sacrifices that just wouldn't be worth it.

Comment:
This case is a bit of a disappointment, for the most part the quality is substantially lower than most other Silverstone cases I've come across. The whole design concept is very, very good, just poorly implemented. Maybe Silverstone should try for another revision.Good stuff:The exterior finish of the case is absolutely impeccable, the sandblasted aluminum finish looks great in light and is very fingerprint/smudge resistant. I just can't stress enough how nice the finish on the shell is. Very few rivets are used and the side panels are mostly tool free. However, most of the screws used to hold the case together were not threaded properly. (this could just be an unlucky QC issue) Cable management was very well thought out with this case, I was able to do an incredibly clean job, cleaner than most mid tower builds I've done. (which is a pretty big deal) They also use a very thick awg14 gauge extension cord for the PSU, which is nice but difficult to route. All of the motherboard standoffs that are common to m-atx and mini itx/dtx standrds come pre-installed. The included fans are fairly quiet with decent static pressure, but still require undervolting for silent operation.Mediocre stuff:The aluminum panels are of two different thicknesses, ~3mm and ~2mm, not the advertised uniform 2.5mm. There are also very few external IO options. But the rear IO is right next to the external stuff anyhow.Depending on CPU socket placement on your motherboard, the CPU intake fan bracket will interfere with the front fan of most tower coolers.There's a giant aluminum slab used to cool the hot swap drive, but it honestly doesn't do much except bring up the cost. A cheap thermal pad would have been more effective.The case requires a slim slot loading optical drive, which only Silverstone has readily available at a minimum cost of $70 at time of posting.The expansion slot covers are made of flimsy steel with a poor finish. Nothing like what's used in the separately sold product or the ones used in other Silverstone cases.Thicker 24 pin cables will interfere with video cards longer than 9.6", although the case advertises compatibility with 12" cards.The plastic top cover feels flimsy and does not fit very will.Bad stuff:The interior steel body was a pretty big disappointment and it's not because of the fact it was steel. The paint job is very shoddy, some parts of the case had a few layers of white gloss, but others barely had half a layer of paint on them. (the grey colour of the steel is just visible) To be honest, Silverstone's budget $35 cases have a far better paint job.The fitting of the side panels was not done very well. It started out too stiff, but after taking them off a few times they're too lose, causing annoying aluminum vibration noise. They did use tiny foam pads to prevent this, but they definitely don't work very well.The fan filters both have gaps and holes that render them useless. The bottom filter is magnetized and sits flush enough, but the 80mm fan ports aren't fully covered.The side panel filter only covers most of the intake for the CPU. Not only does it not work, but due to design limitations it recycles hot air from the PSU into the CPU area.The front panel HD audio gets a lot of static, its not even usable. However this could just be another unlucky QC issue.The launch for this case was originally delayed because Silverstone needed to find ways to bring down the cost of the case. It went from being a full aluminum body case with a few plastic parts and AP121 fans to an aluminum shell with a cheap steel body and plastic parts and no AP121's. Given how much they cut back on the quality, I find this case to be completely overpriced at its current MSRP. ($170USD) I did get a PM for $155 though, which made the price a little less revolting since I've been waiting for a long time for this case to launch.All in all, it's a great concept but poorly implemented with questionable quality and an outrageously high price tag for what you get. Feels like a pre production sample of a good product.