Silverstone SST-GD08B - Tower

The introduction of Grandia GD07 and GD08 cases from SilverStone ushers in a new era of home theater computing like never before. For the first time, the power and storage capacity of a server can now be neatly stowed beautifully and quietly in a home theater environment. Completely reengineered to fully utilize all available spaces, the Grandia GD08 can accommodate an incredible amount of drives (up to twelve) and high-end components (graphics cards up to 13.6 inches long) with minimal sacrifices. It is even possible to fit SSI EEB (12” x 13”) extended ATX motherboards in the GD07 despite maintaining an exterior dimension similar to SilverStone’s previous generation full-size HTPC cases. With a wealth of lessons learned from building the best performing tower cases in the last several years, SilverStone engineers upgraded GD08’s cooling performance tremendously with up to five 120mm fan options. And to make sure owners can easily maintain their cases’ cooling ability over time with the lowest noise possible, custom designed removable filters surround the case for positive pressure to work effectively and quietly. To complement the tremendous new design, the GD08 is built with the thickest aluminum front panel of any SilverStone case with a styling that pays homage to the most popular HTPC case ever made, the Lascala LC17. For HTPC enthusiasts all over the world, this case is truly a dream come true! SPECIAL FEATURES Positive air pressure design for excellent cooling/quietness and dust-prevention Support expansion cards up to 13.6 inches Supports Extended ATX motherboard Quick access filters to prevent dust buildup Aluminum front panel with premium styling LED indicator with adjustable brightness Impressive storage capacity of up to twelve drive bays Review: Roomy, easy to work on, quiet and includes fans - best case I've worked on! - I tend to build a fair few computers for myself and others so I've worked on a reasonable amount of cases. This one is fantastic. It looks great but it is also very well thought out and allows you to remove awkward bits like the hard drive caddy in order to get better access and fit everything you want without any trouble. WHAT I PUT IN IT Standard ATX motherboard, i5 3750K, Zalman CNPS8900 heatsink, a corsair TX850M PSU and a few disks. Pretty standard really - I did try my HD 7950 in it and that fit with lots of room to spare and that's a large graphics card so you shouldn't have much issue with fitting in what you need. LOOKS Looks wise this case is lovely. Mine sits on top of a cabinet next to my wall mounted TV. It's full exposed from three sides and it doesn't look out of place in its surroundings. It's a bit larger than my VSX-922 AV receiver and obviously the polished/brushed aluminium fascia is slightly different in colour but this case can happily sit next to your usual audio visual equipment without standing out at all. My wife doesn't mine having this case on show (she made me hide our previous Cooler Master Elite 120 and rightly so) which must mean it doesn't look too bad! BUILD QUALITY It's not as tank like as a Fractal Design Define XL Black Pearl with that cases super heavy construction and sound proofing but it is strong, sturdy, coated evenly and all the parts feel premium. When building the computer I didn't really give a second thought to the build quality of the case, I could just tell straight away it was well made and would last a long time. COOLING AND CPU HEIGHT This case uses positive pressure cooling system. Basically it forces in lots of air by having the fans all draw air into the case. This helps keep dust out by creating a steady stream of air flowing out from all the 'non-fan' holes around the case. Obviously, to stop the fans themselves drawing in dust you need filters and this case has them on all the fan slots themselves. What's more, you can remove those fan filters from the outside without having to open up the case and without needing any tools. This is much better than other designs that put the filters on the inside or even screw them to the fans themselves which makes cleaning the filters a huge and annoying job. The case isn't particularly tall so you need to take account of that when using a third part CPU cooler. The stock coolers with any processor will fit easily with a lot of room to spare but you won't fit some of the larger air cooled units in here. I used a Zalman CNPS8900 which is pretty large and that fitted with ease. Anything 'low profile' will undoubtedly fit in here with no issue but take care if you are planning on putting in a larger unit. ACCESS AND EASE OF BUILD The entire top of the case comes off and you can remove the hard drive caddy in order to get full access to the entire inside of the case. It was incredibly easy to fit in everything I needed and to route all wiring neatly with no disruption to air flow. There is enough space in this case that it doesn't really matter too much in which order you build things. I'd recommend putting the PSU in first, then motherboard with fitted CPU and cooler, then any ancillary cards, then wire in the power, fan and control headers and finally put in the disk caddy and wire up the SATA connections. That's the way I did it and it allowed me to work cleanly and quickly put everything in place. WHAT'S INCLUDED My case came with three fans that were in a slightly different configuration to what the manual said. I added an extra 120mm fan to fill out the last slot. I think there were some screws and things too, can't quite remember. I've got some many anyway I didn't really think about it. THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR When fitting a DVD drive be careful to make sure that the drive is pushed forward enough that when you hit the eject button on the case it hits the eject button on the drive. Because the case hides the drive you'll need this to work correctly in order to open the drive tray. I got this wrong and mine doesn't currently open when I push the case eject button as the little arm doesn't hit the eject button on the drive itself. It's an easy fix but I just haven't bothered yet. Do this carefully and test before you install in in the cabinet to save yourself the hassle of rectifying it! FAN NOISE The included fans are low RPM and are essentially silent bar a tiny bit of wind noise. This will vary based on how you power the fans and how your BIOS handles things of course but mine is about as loud as the sky box I have when it spins up it's disks. In fact, the PSU fan on something like a Corsair CX600 is way louder than the case fans and are some of the louder Western Digital Green drives I have so don't worry about the case fans being the noisy part of the build. CONCLUSION I'm really pleased with the case, it was easy to work with and looks great. The included fans are good quality and silent, there is space for a lot of drives, build quality is excellent and the external filters make long term 'always on' use more palatable with the ease of cleaning they provide. I don't hesitate in recommending this for an HTPC build that need to sit in full view. It's a great addition to our living room! Review: A spacious, cool-running, and generally ideal HTPC case. - A very nice case, that sits wonderfully next to an AV amp. It is pretty much as big as you'd ever want an HTPC case to be, though: it just fits with a reasonable air flow gap above and to the right side intake fans. Double-check you can fit it comfortably. The ability to adjust the voltage on the combined Power (blue)/HDD (red) LED window via a slider on the underside of the case (located right under the LED) is a brilliant attention to detail. I've set it bright enough to see it active, but low enough it's not distracting in the dark, as blue LEDs in particular can be. No blu-tak needed on this one! Mounted 3x120mm ULNs at the front, and 2x120mm PWM on the side, with 2x80PWM exhaust. A few people have complained about the CD drive button: while it does give the impression of being a tad fiddly a first, once you figure out how to shift the moveable auto-lock tab back to the left - the part which applies pressure to the button on the drive itself (I used a small flat head screwdriver just lift the locking-end of the tab slightly) - it's easy enough, only you might have to readjust it a couple of times until you're happy with the pressure response. The only obvious significant downside these days may be the lack of a front panel USB-C port, but at least the front header is USB3, and I've hit 220MB/s with an appropriately fast USB3 drive attached. While ostensibly ATX compatible, I've remounted my existing ITX setup from my previous Silvertake case, which was starting to run a bit warm. For an HTPC, I suspect this is still the way to go even in this bigger case as it gives you more space to cleanly route and attach cables around the MOBO to the bottom of the case, since you can't route under it as you usually can in towers. Also note that if upgrading from a smaller case that used an SFF power supply, this case will require you to get an SFX mounting bracket for it, otherwise you'll have to get a SFX power (luckily I had one spare). My only concern going forward is the upgrade path for an old GTX960 card to a modern monster, though the case is rated up to 13" in length. However, given the complete lack of availability of anything now or probably ever again, it's rather moot ;)