I thought I'd write a mini-review of this case as currently there seems to be a shortage of opinion about it on the net, and I can imagine a lot of people - like me - are considering using it for a quiet media/home theatre pc and want to know what it's like.

In general terms I'd say the case is very nice. It has a good build quality: the aluminium pieces are well finished; the steel parts have a pleasing and durable-seeming sprayed 'powder' finish; my case at least shows no obvious mis-alignments or misfits. However: there are some sharp edges on the formed-steel internal parts; and the magnets that hold the front-panel flap shut were more or less demagnetised, although they were easily magnetised with a strong permanent magnet. In my beholder's eye I'd say it's attractive in its own chunky kind of way. And most importantly it's only 360mm deep resulting in a comfortable fit in an AV cabinet. Bizzarely, like Corsair power supplies, it comes in a drawstring bag. I don't know who thinks this is a good idea - I can't imagine anyone would ever want to carry the thing around in such a bag.


Pretty pretty

The thermal design of the case seems largely sound. The lower panel is vented at the front, and the side panels are vented along their length. Two 80mm exhaust fans at the rear of the case draw air through the case, front to back. Vented expansion slot blanks are provided. The area above the motherboard is free from obstruction providing a free airflow path from the vents over the motherboard/cpu cooler to the exhaust fans. Perhaps the case's only weak spot, thermally, is the hard drive placement. The hard drive bays are "shadowed" by the power supply, resulting in limited airflow. [In my build this is exacerbated by a fanless PSU, but I suspect it will be similar with other PSUs that often don't provide airflow from their rear face.]


Nice and roomy given its small footprint

I can't hope to provide a description of its acoustic performance to spcr standards, because of lack of experience, expertise and equipment. But I can give a subjective account for my particular build. I've build a system around an Asus P5E-VM HDMI motherboard and an Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 processor (one of the new, cool-running Wolfdales, with the stock "low profile" cooler). Power comes from a SilverStone nightjar 300W fanless supply. I'm using an old, hot and not that quiet Western Digital IDE 160GB hard drive. As yet, I've not fitted an internal optical drive. The system draws about 60W of wall power idling, and a maximum of 105W fully loaded, so I'm certainly not pushing the case hard thermally. All listening was done with the computer in an open fronted, wooden AV rack.


Unused PSU cables can be conveniently stashed on top of the PSU

Plenty of room to route cables without impeding airflow

The stock 80mm case fans, branded SilverStone, but not a model they list on their website, are surprisingly quiet. At full speed they are certainly not silent, but neither are they as loud as I would have expected. Their 12V rotational speed is about 1950rpm. My motherboard has a single temperature controlled fan output so my first test was to connect one of the case fans to this, and the other direct to 12V. The noise output was dominated by the full speed fan, which was clearly audible from 2m away in a very quiet room (at night, no road noise). The noise was inoffensive, a low pitched whoosh with no whine or hum, but much louder than I'd be happy sitting with at night in my living room.


Surprisingly quiet fans

Temperatures were well under control, so my next test was to disconnect the second fan altogether. The motherboard was configured to stabilise the system temperature at 43C, which it did with little trouble. The fan ran at about 1000rpm idle and 1200rpm with the system under stress. In this configuration I found the fan noise to be inaudible from anything more than 20cm. The system noise was dominated by seek noise from the ancient HD.

[Rubber grommets are provided for HD mounting, which are very effective in isolating vibration noise, but seek noise is clearly audible as the HD is positioned immediately adjacent to the side venting. A quieter hard drive would be a welcome improvement.]

The single fan arrangement kept chassis temperature under control, even under full stress. However it didn't do so well at cooling the hard drive. I suspect with a single fan, the hard drive found itself in an airflow dead spot. Stress testing the HD pushed its temperature up to 57C, which is a little too warm.

With this in mind my final test kept one fan connected to the motherboard's controller, with the other ran at 7V by modifying the included 4pin to 3pin converter. Both fans in this configuration are inaudible (at PC idle) in a quiet room from more than 20cm away, to my old ears at least! This was tested with the HD disconnected to avoid any masking effect of its noise. Airflow seemed to be improved with HD temperatures never exceeding 52C. In this configuration the system is stabilised at 43C at around 1000rpm on the chassis fan at idle. Under full load the chassis fan ramps up to 1250rpm and the cpu cooler to 1300rpm. I find that, even loaded, the fans are inaudible in a quiet room from more than around 30cm away.

Overall, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the case to someone who is looking to build a low-power quiet system. I'd speculate that the thermal design of the case is sound enough that a higher powered system could also be build quietly, perhaps with the replacement of the stock fans. I'd suggest any potential buyer invest in a low-power, quiet hard drive (as I soon will) as hard drive cooling is perhaps the case's one flaw.

I, too, have been building up a new HTPC using this case and would like to add a few comments that the previous poster didn't mention.

First, the optical drive eject button didn't line up with the button on my LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD drive. When installed, the SilverStone button just missed the LG button by a few thousandths of an inch (it actually contacts the bezel of the drive just below the button). I had to take some spare acrylic and glue it to the back of the SilverStome button, and then file/sand it flush with the original contact point. In essence, I increased the "footprint" of the contact area of SilverStone's eject button by about three-fold in order to make proper contact with the eject button on the drive. I'll try to post pics of this mod later on.

Secondly, and more importantly, you must pay particular attention to the combined depths of whatever optical drive and PSU you decide to use. The GGC-H20L is 190mm (7.5") in depth -- considerably deeper than most other optical drives. To use this drive, the depth of your PSU cannot exceed 145mm (5.7"). This combined component depth total of 335mm is the absolute limit, and you will be well advised to find a slightly shorter PSU to provide at least some clearance (or you'll be forced to "shorten" one of the lower rear corners of your drive by a wee bit).

Even with the demise of HD-DVD (unless you haven't already heard, Blu-Ray won the format war over the weekend), the GGC-H20L's usefulness as an all-purpose std-def/HD-def DVD drive still has its merits in a case with only one external 5.25" drive bay. If you choose to use this drive, you must be aware of its overall mounting depth. Not only will it physically interfere with PSU's deeper than 145mm, but its extra depth will limit your choice of CPU coolers...

Originally I had intended to use Scythe's new Shuriken cooler. The Shuriken is only 64mm tall, which is actually shorter than the older Intel E6xxx factory heatsinks. I thought "how can I go wrong?" The trouble is, the Shuriken is also quite wide in both directions -- wide enough for the back 1cm of the optical drive to interfere with it. Even if I had used a shorter optical drive, I doubt that there would have been room for the necessary cables. The Scythe Mini-Ninja (aka: "Minja") is physically short enough to fit inside this case, but will likely be to big to work with any optical drive that you plan on using. I haven't actually tried to make a "Minja" fit, however.

My solution for the CPU cooler was rather unique, and very environmentally friendly too. I picked up an older Intel 775 quad core stock cooler (from a local computer store that they shelved after installing an aftermarket cooler on a customer's machine) and installed it on top of a new E8400 CPU. The difference in height between the older duo & quad core stock coolers and the "low profile" stock cooler that comes with the new E8xxx CPUs is huge -- the new coolers are less than half the height of the old ones due to the lower heat output of these new 45nm processors. Furthermore, the new coolers are an all-aluminum design, unlike the old stock coolers that were copper/aluminum. I'm figuring that if the new "low profile" all-aluminum cooler is good enough for Intel to cool these new processors, the older coolers would be easily able to handle the reduced heat -- thereby running their PWM fans at a lower RPM and produce less noise. I certainly can't hear it running inside the case when everything is all buttoned up and installed in my A/V rack. FWIW, Legion Hardware has overclocked one of the new E8400 to 3.6 GHz using this puny "low profile" cooler, so my solution should work for nearly every HTPC enthusiast that wants to build a system inside this case and wants better cooling for the new 45nm processors.

What else...? Oh yeah. Thirdly, I had a problem powering up my system for the very first time. Many of you know the frustration that sets in right after you double-check all of the internals, tidy up all of the wiring, and then hit the power button. For me, the resulting "total lack of ANYTHING" was like getting hit with a sledgehammer. Double-checked the PSU to make sure it wasn't DOA... everything was fine. Jumpered the power switch connectors on the MoBo... fired right up. As it turned out, the power button on this case fits rather poorly inside the hole in the stamped steel front of this case. The button on my case is already partually below flush with the surrounding bezel. When I would push on it, the button would move inside its mounting hole just enough so that my finger tip would contact the bezel before being able to push the button sufficiently inward to turn the computer on. The solution was to flip the case on its face, apply some epoxy around the base of the switch, and then apply downward pressure to the switch itself while the epoxy dried.

Forth, the case doesn't use any thumbscrews. I don't consider this a fault, considering that thumbscrews usually belong on a case where their owners frequently like to swap out components. This is a HTPC case, afterall. Still, someone out there likely will be disappointed in this fact.

Other than those issues, I didn't have any real problems. Someone on the AVS forums mentioned clearance problems between the front of his PSU and the back of his HDDs. Perhaps he used a PSU that exceeds the mounting depth limit I mentioned above, but he didn't mention any clearance issues with the back of his optical drive. Someone else later pointed out that SATA cables with 90-angle connectors would eliminate this problem. Someone else mentioned the possible concern of using a modular PSU in this case, yet I can tell you that my Corsair HX520W works perfectly well inside my own case (without the hassle of dealing with unused wiring).

The GD-02 is definately a nice case, although some might be inclined to go with the GD-02MT with its added touch screen. The GD-02MT will only accept a slim-line optical drive, however, and nobody makes a combo optical drive that will play all of today's media yet (and may never will). I haven't looked inside that version but I'm at a loss as to why they couldn't move the screen downwards so that the case could accept a standard 5.25" drive like the GD-02, except to say that maybe they wanted to center the screen with the gloss black bezel that runs across the face of the front.

PS: yeah, the Corsair HX520W is 150mm long and the GGC-H20L is 190mm... yeah, that exceeds the 335mm limit... yeah, I had to trim the back of my optical drive 5mm... but everything works!

That's a lovely looking case, Where did you order it from Jony?

Scan Computers were the only uk supplier I could find that weren't charging way over the odds. They seem to put silverstone cases on their "today only" list every so often, so if you're not in a hurry you could save a further tenner that way ...

I was hoping you weren't gonna say Scam...oops I mean Scan, I have only ever used them once and I have always said I would rather poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick than use them again

Time to put the sharp stick away I guess

[edit]
Bugger, they want £7 more for the black
[/edit]

I like the looks of this case myself and it is at the top of the list for a HTPC case if I were to build one today. I don't understand why so many so-called HTPC cases are either 18" deep -- try pairing that with you modern TV, where even rear-projection models are < 14" deep -- or super thin -- forcing you to make very hard component choices. For those concerned about the issue of PSU depth, it would seem a good solution might be to use an SFX PSU. These can easily be had in up to 300W, which would be plenty for an HTPC application. Of particular interest to me would be the 250W 80+ unit from Sparkle. Question to those of you who have built an HTPC from this case: what did you do about a remote control? It seems a shame to ruin the looks of it by having the dangling wires of an external IR receiver . . .

Would there be room for a 2.5" notebook drive in the bay under the HDD cage?

Thanks!

I hear you on the "less than 18 inches deep" issue. The GD02 is 14.25" deep and was on a very short list of cases that I was trying to choose between. The LC02 and LC04 cases are even smaller, but they require an expensive add-on PCI-E riser card if you want to expand beyond AGP or onboard graphics. The "feet" on the GD02 are also located at the outer corners of the case, which doesn't sound like such a big deal at first. What it does mean is that this case can't overhang a shelf slightly like most A/V equipment, who's feet are tucked inwards a bit. The shelf this case ends up resting on must have a surface area of at least 14.25" deep by 17" wide.

As for a lack of an IR receiver, the face of this case does share some simularities with the GD02MT, which does have a built-in IR receiver. When viewed from the outside, the gloss black acrylic strip that spans the case horizontally incorporates the power switch/light, HDD light, and the IR receiver. When viewed from the inside, it appears to simply be missing on this model. It might be possible to dismantle the front panel and make something work. The acrylic strip is solid all the way across, but there seems to be a "window" behind it. You'd have to be pretty brave to attempt such a mod, however, and I think I'll just find a nice out-of-the-way place to hide the receiver that came with my Hauppauge tuner card.

There is indeed room below the twin HDD cage for a third 3.5" (external) device, be it a card reader, floppy drive, or even a third HDD. It uses a "pinching" method to secure the device in place, however, so it wouldn't offer any sort of vibration isolation for a standard 3.5" HDD. And if you wanted to resort to Velcro and/or double-sided tape, there's room for a half dozen 2.5" drives inside this case.

So I could put one 2.5" drive in that slot below the cage and just leave the stock front plate on the bay opening, correct? To take it a step further, what is taking up the space BEHIND that shelf for the external bay? Thinking of using 1/2 the bay for a card reader (modified to cut the depth in half) and mount the 2.5" drive directly behind it.

One more question; do you find the power LED obnoxiously bright?

Thanks again...don't mean to beat the horse but before I spend almost $400 on the case with the touchscreen I want to cover all my bases. Using a spare laptop drive for my system drive, I can install 2x750gb or 1TB drives for music (one for backup, of course...).

Your time and willingness to share experience on this new and highly anticipated case is very much appreciated.

Yes. The removable 3.5" bay front plate is actually quite nice as well and has a brushed aluminum finish. That's a nice touch, considering that the large swingdown door hides it most of the time anyway.



If you are referring to the external 3.5" bay, then the PSU sits atop 3/8" tall rubber "feet" and not flush with the case floor. This is to provide some clearance for the PSU air intake incorporated into the design of the bottom of the case. You have approximately 2 3/4" of space between a typical PSU and the back of an un-modded card reader, and you might be able to free up some more space by "cutting it in half".

More so, there still is about 3" (+/- 1/4") of depth between the front of the case and the leading edge of a motherboard, from the HDD case all the way to the left side where the power button is located, and there is a lot of room vertically to work with (provided that you're not using it for excess cabling).



Yes. I knew this going in when deciding on this case, because I know of a few people that already own SilverStone cases. I found the brightness distracting on a friend's LC14 (he uses it as a HTPC enclosure, just as I am planning to do). I find the harshness of the bright LEDs a direct contrast to the subtle style of SilverStone cases in general. I like to think of SilverStone as the Mercedes of computer cases -- stylish and graceful, without drawing attention to itself. Thermaltake, OTOH, is for the custom Honda ricer crowd -- with 20" Dubs and underbody neon light kits.

http://www.scan.co.uk/todayonly/

Silverstone listed today.
Personally speaking I have found Scan to be the most reliable AND competitive UK retailer and recommend them.

Obviously you must have had a negative experience with them once.

Arrrggghhh - figures newegg is out of stock in black (best US retailer IMO)...

I saw that Scan had the Silverstone's were on the Today Only, trouble is my brother hasn't made his mind up yet, I will be checking every day so hopefully it will come up again.

Yes the first time I tried to buy something from Scan I had a really bad experience, never even looked at them since and that was about 6-7 years ago.

I'll give them them another go as they are the only UK suppliers currently.

Yes. I knew this going in when deciding on this case, because I know of a few people that already own SilverStone cases. I found the brightness distracting on a friend's LC14 (he uses it as a HTPC enclosure, just as I am planning to do). I find the harshness of the bright LEDs a direct contrast to the subtle style of SilverStone cases in general. I like to think of SilverStone as the Mercedes of computer cases -- stylish and graceful, without drawing attention to itself. Thermaltake, OTOH, is for the custom Honda ricer crowd -- with 20" Dubs and underbody neon light kits.[/quote]

Nice analogy! Ordered today, figure a resistor soldered into the LED line and I'm all set!

Thanks for all the info.

I'll likely do the same. Just gotta figure out a good resistance value and crack open the case one last time.

I built a pc using this case I'm very pleased with it. I'm finding trying to tidying the cabling inside a bit of a problem.

I'm using a mini ninja at the moment which prevents a optical drive from fitting (even without the fan). Can anyone suggest a cooler that is the equivalent in terms of cooling and noise of a mini ninja but isn't as tall or any wider? (I'm using a q6600).

i saw a review of the thermaltake DuOrb cpu cooler yesterday, dont know if the cooling is comparable with the ninja mini, however i instantly thought it would fit perfectly in the GD02.

Thank you i'll check it out

When you figure it out, please share...

Hmmm... a Q6600 needs some serious cooling and might be too much for a system built inside this case. The reason being, cooler dimensions are almost always directly related to cooler efficiency, and there aren't many coolers that will fit. Then again, it all depends on your MoBo too, and where exactly the CPU socket is located.

The maximum height limit for a cooler is approximately 115mm, but shrinks considerably if the heatsink is overly wide in the other two dimensions. I was considering running a Minja without a fan as well, before I decided to try the Shuriken. My problem with the Shuriken was that my optical drive was too deep and came in contact with the top of the slim-line 100mm fan. Maybe a "smaller" 92mm fan would clear, but you may also have problems getting the connectors to clear. An optical drive around 160mm deep might clear a Shuriken...

Another cooler I considered was the ASUS V60 (118mm tall but the fan is "internal"). I didn't really search much further than that, since I was sure that the Shuriken would fit. I already outlined my solution in my first post, and to tell you the truth, I can't hear the stock cooler over the fan inside my Samsung HL-S5687W anyway (not that it is loud by any means). My fridge is louder and it's twenty feet away.

Thanks for your comments. My interim solution is to run the ide and power cables through the cd drive cover and connect the optical drive when i need it which isn't that often to be honest. Its not a major problem. I think eventually i'll just buy a usb ide adapter so I can tidy the cables away.

You could always try sanding the top of the LED down rather than soldering a resistor in-line. This will create a more muted unfocussed light. You can sand a lot off the top of an LED so don't be scared of it. Just as long as you don't go down as far as the electrical connections inside the LED.

and/or use a black permanent marker on the LED, it won't completely obscure the light but will tame it down to less obnoxious levels.

I've settled on 1k ohm 1/4W resistors. YMMV, depending on how sensitive your eyes are and the amount of ambient light in the room while viewing. To be honest, I didn't really find the LEDs to be too distracting, providing that what's on the screen is interesting enough. My case is located about 3' to the right and slightly below my 56" DLP so it also depends on where you have your equipment set up.

As for painting the LEDs with a permanent marker or sanding down the surface to defuse the light, that isn't really practical with this case. The "ON" LED is built in to the pushbutton switch, and cannot be removed for sanding. Painting it with a marker would be temporary, depending on how often you physically have to touch the switch. The HDD LED, OTOH, is hidden behind tinted acrylic. You could probably paint or sand that one, I suppose.

Anyone knows if Silverstone NT-01 v2.0 CPU cooler fits the case?

Link to Silverstone NT-01 v2.0:

http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/ ... 2&area=usa

A store in Taipei, Taiwan carrying and demoing Silverstone products recommended the specific cooler for GD02 when I told him the stock (Intel) cooler isn't quiet enough for me.

Alan Hsu

I cannot get the touch screen to work with the supplied or any other software. Has anybody else had any problems?

Thanks!

Hi, I've just completed my build based on the OP's system and thought I'd share my experiences.

First of all the NT01-v2 heatsink is compatable with the case and the ASUS P5E-VM HDMI board (probaly most other boards too). It fits very neatly with less than 1mm of clearance to the optical enclosure above it! Silverstone should really make the point that these components are designed to work together on their site as I tried a few different heatsinks before taking the plunge and ordering an NT01.

Cooling is excellent I get core temps between the mid 30's to mid 40's according to Real Temp, I reversed the case fans to blow inwards and have one set at around 1200 rpm (the slowest the Mb will allow) and the other down to 800 rpm with a fanmate controller, I've ordered another fanmate to slow the other fan, Its barely audible at the moment but I'm a bit anal about noise and should be able to get it pretty much totally silent with that extra tweak.

The stock intel cooler was rubbish, even at minimum speed it had a quite a growl to it and core temps were higher so I can thoroughly recomend the NT-01, One thing to note is that Silverstone have brought out a new version called the "Evolution" which has 5 heat pipes rather than the current 3, its not available to buy anywhere that I can find yet but may be worth waiting for.

I'm using the Intel DG45ID mobo and E8400 CPU, and estimating, it appears that best-case I'll have 90mm clear-height. What heatsinks are ppl using?

Tentatively I've ordered a Thermalright XP-120 (63mm) and Scythe S-Flex 1200 fan (25mm), but am concerend about the spread of the heatsink and possible interference with the optical drive (as yet unbought).

Looking at box heatsinks, this one seems to be even taller:
Ebay item 270259639697 (damned forum won't let me post links)

And it would be hard to retrofit a Scythe fan to this one:
Ebay item 290249994686

Needless to say, the stock fans on these are unacceptable.

So what other options are there?

Edit: Damn, I've just discovered that the S-Flex fan does not have PWM modulation for dynamic speed control. The Kama PWM does, but it only has a sleeve bearing. Jeez, need at least ball-bearing in a silent 120mm PWM fan.