Customer Reviews

SilverStone Aluminum/Steel Micro ATX HTPC Computer Case GD05B (Black)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Absolutely love this case. Top-notch quality and craftsmanship. Super quiet, great design for cable management.

My build for those who wonder what will fit:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-800GMA-UD2H Micro-ATX
CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 3.0 Ghz
Scythe Big Shuriken 120mm low profile heat sink & cooling fan ( Fit easily )
Memory: G-Skill Rip Jaws 2x2gb DDR3 1600Mhz ( Placed in outer two slots )( You could get two more in slots 1 & 2 if you place them in before mounting heat sink and cooling fan. ) ( Nothing any taller than Rip Jaws will fit slots 1 & 2 with the Shuriken)
Hard Drives: Crucial 64 gb SSD ( 6gb/s Sata III ) boot drive, Western Digital 500gb AVP hard drive ( 3gb/s )storage
Power Supply: Seasonic X-Series 560W Modular ( Highly recommend )
Optical Drive: Lite-On Blu-ray drive
TV Tuner Card: Hauppage 2250 Dual TV Tuner Card
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

This case is exactly what I was looking for. It is very stylish, and is perfectly sized too. It fits in very well with my other components, being almost exactly the same size as my Yamaha Receiver.

I have been looking for a HTPC case for about a year now, have looked at and read reviews on a plethora. I took a leap with this case, partially because of the reviews, but also because I was tired of looking. Man did I come out on top. It does not have any of the bells and whistles of a lot of the HTPC cases out there, but who actually uses any of those features anyways? Volume knob on a case, lcd display? Most people just end up complaining about them. The case layout was fine for me. I was not building a super high end PC as I will be using it mainly for movies, so i do not have any oversized extravagant components. If you do, you may run into problems with space.

Airflow and noise were a great concern of mine. This was one of the reasons I ended up going for this bad boy. Most of the other "nice", more expensive cases came with a couple 80mm fans, and you know they are going to be way too loud trying to keep you system cool, and you're eventually going to have to mod the case to add larger quiter fans. The GD05 comes stock wth three quiet 120mm fans that do an excellent job of cooling and maximizing airflow. The HTPC is in a smallish enclosure with limited airflow, and so far these fans have done an excellent job.

There is not much info out there about the CD/DVD tray difference between the GD04 and the GD05. I ended up going with the GD05 because my brother has a case with the fold down door, and it has caused him nothing but problems. I wanted to stay away from that, and was fine with the look of the drive mounted and showing on the front of the case. I have a black drive, and it actually looks good.

Some people may complain about the option of only having space for 2 3.5" hard drives, but to be honest who is actually going to install more than that in the case itself. I have 1 drive running the OS, and one as storage. If wanted more I would buy a NAS box. Keep the noise level down, and run the drives in RAID as back up.

If you have been looking at cases for a while, you can't go wrong with this on. I am extremely happy with it and for me, can't think of any cons.

Silverstone did an excellent job with this case. It has great airflow, it's roomy for its design, and it looks absolutely gorgeous albeit simplistic. The case comes complete with small rubber feet for your PSU, some ties for cable management and plenty of extra screws.

If you look inside the case, you'll find that they not only provided places to tie down your cables, but they even provided preinstalled grommets for your 3.5 drives in order to dampen sound. Lot's of bang for your buck to be had in this little beauty.

As with any design, there are a few flaws and this case's flaws are in a few oversights in its design. First off, when you are looking at the front of the case with the top open, you'll notice that the PSU attaches on the left hand side directly underneath where the hard drives attach which works well for attaching the SATA connectors to them. The issue is that that puts it quite a distance from the P4 PSU connector on the motherboard which is on the front right on most motherboards. The motherboards are designed like that because in a tower, the right side (looking from front to backplane) is oriented towards the top of the PC where the power supply is. In order to get around this, you have to either have a 19.2' (roughly) P4 cable from your power supply or an extension in order to route it around the board instead of having to stretch it across the board.

The second flaw I found was the fact that there are 2 LED's (power and hard drive) and only one LED hole in order for the light to shine through. I guess that wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that they are the same color (blue) and it's hard to tell when your drive is being accessed.

Another thing to note about this case is that it is steel and plastic with a thin aluminum skin over the plastic. The thing is HEAVY if you are used to aluminum cases.

It's hard to imagine but of all the parts that went into my new HTPC/Media center the case was the one I spent the most time looking for. I wanted something well made, in micro ATX, that fit in a normal A/V cabinet AND would support full height expansion cards. It needed good airflow and a near silent design. And hopefully come in under $100.00 The GD05B delivers on all of this.

Start with the size. This case is almost identical in size to a normal A/V receiver. The big key is depth. Most micro ATX cases that claim to be designed for HTPC use are still 17"+ deep and this is too deep to fit in your standard entertainment center cabinets. Others are compact but only take low profile cards. The Silverstone comes in under 13" and has room to spare in the rear. It will take 2 3.5" hard drives - one in front of and the other directly above the PSU, and 4 full height expansion cards.
It comes with 3 nearly silent 120mm case fans that do a great job keeping it cool.

Room is tight but the case is so well thought out that it's not really an issue. If you are using a tall CPU cooler you might have an issue with the optical drive but other than that it's great. The stock AMD cooler had plenty of room. Cable management is well done, but again tight. A modular PSU would be a good idea but I had no problems stowing the extra cables from the Antec Earthwatts 380 I went with. The case has tie down points throughout, but being made so tight there is no compartment under the mobo tray or anywhere else specifically designed for stowing extra cables. Just follow the manual and tidy the extras nice and neat below the front HDD.

Build quality is also excellent. Everything fits together great, even the manual is outstanding - and that's saying something for what you normally get with a PC case.

Also note - the GD04B is identical to this one with the only exception being the optical drive bay. The 05 is a standard 5.25" bay opening, while the 04 features a fold down flip for the optical drive. That type has never been my preference but either way if you want to build a low noise, low heat, energy efficient HTPC for your entertainment center you can't go wrong with this case.

This case is of good quality and a perfect size for an HTPC. It will blend right in with all of your other AV equipment. Here are my pros and cons:

Pros:
1) Nice Looking w/o excessive LED light - good for HTPC use
2) Included fans are good for exhausting air from the case
3) Cable management is OK, but there is not much space in the case, so plan accordingly

Cons:
1) Like other reviews have stated, the optical drive will overlap your CPU fan by about 2 inches. As long as you have a fan <70MM everything will fit. I used the CPU Fan/Heatsink that came with my Phenom 2. Not sure how much the hot air from the CPU fan will affect the optical drive over time, but time will tell

2) It would have been nice if there was an additional 3.5 or 5.25 drive bay. Most mobo's (like mine) only have one CHA_FAN connection. The case fans come with an adapter that you can use to hook all 3 fans direct to the PSU, but doing so sounds like a tornado. With no extra drive for a fan controller, I used a PCI slot fan controller that I picked up for $10. It does the job of keeping the fans quiet by lowering speed, but the PCI controller seems to burn out more frequently based on reviews on the products I researched and ultimately bought. If you have the opportunity to purchase your mobo after the case, I highly recommend that you get one with (3) case fan connections (3 pin).

3) Lastly, if your wallet allows, I would suggest purchasing a modular PSU for this case. It was a fight placing all the PSU cables on a non-modular PSU.

Overall, its a nice looking case that does the job. Features are average, which is why I gave 3 stars.

Silverstone makes some nice looking cases for the HTPC market but their pricing and compromises in each case can be frustrating when selecting a case. Not so for this case which is perfectly priced and a good value where you dont have to compromise much. Primarily because it comes with the fans. Consider their ML series which they pitch as the entry level case below this. But if you have to put fans in it, then it is more expensive than this one!

This has enough capacity for a HTPC or even a powerful desktop. The rubber grommet for mounting drives are great and essential in any case. They do wonders for keeping the noise level down from the drives and less vibration is transfered to rest of the chassis. A modular power supply will help a lot to reduce wiring sphagetti. Plenty of thoughtful places in this case to tie wires down help.

The fans provided are quite good with no mechanical sounds I can hear except for a slight hum when your ears are next to them, not a problem for regular use. However, the air flow from these large fans is turbulent enough to make wind noise audible when not drowned out by audio in use. A problem is that most motherboards used in this kind of a case do not provide connectors for all three fans to control speed based on temperature. Typically, there is just one for a case fan. The case thoughtfully includes a molex to fan connector adapters so that fans can be connected to the power supply directly. But that means two of the fans are always at full speed with the wind noise. Most of the time, the typical use of a case like this does not require all 3 fans and you can leave then unconnected. The temperature increased by 2 degrees when I did that. But then there may be a few times you really need them so it is a pain. You can buy a fan controller but most arent cheap and come with too many bells and whistles you dont need and most provide a manual control. I wish the industry would fix this problem. Case manufacturers could fIx this by providing an active connector to the single case fan header on the MB and combine it with power from PSU so that they take the power from PSU and speed signals from the MB.

How you fit in 3 drives is not obvious. At least one of them has to be a 2.5" drive as stated in the specification. The left front section has space for a 2.5" drive and a 3.5" drive (or a 2.5" with an adapter) stacked one above the other. The back section can take a 2.5" or a 3.5" without an adapter.

The only negative for me is the lack of a hole for an IR remote. HTPC cases with no remote make very little sense. Support for IR doesnt necessarily mean coming with their own receiver, electronics and a remote, especially for a lower priced case like this. All they have to do is cut a small hole in the front face and fit it with a plastic piece that lets IR through so people can mount their own IR receivers without having to drill their own hole. It would have been 5 starts with something like this.

The only problem I had was that one of the wires from the front usb/audio panel to the sound connector was left unconnected and so connecting it would create a loud hum in audio from any audio out in the back or front. This is not something you can fix without the right crimp tool. But an email exchange with their support address quickly resulted in a new harness as well as the front usb/audio connectors (it is a single part) arriving promptly in the mail. Fantastic customer support.

I highly recommend this case and the company.

This case is solid and looks good enough for the living room. It stands out in two areas. First, it fits in most any cabinet with its under 13 inch depth. Second, the ventilation is exceptional. Three large fans on the sides draw air in and it exhausts out the back. The fans can be heard at full speed, but if you slow them down a bit, they can be almost silent with plenty of air still flowing through the case. A great choice for a micro ATX HTPC case.

To repeat a comment of a previous reviewer, there is NO hole drilled in the case to see the HDD light, so I drilled one. In the process, I fixed the problem with the sticking POWER and RESET buttons. When I replaced the button unit after drilling the hole for the HDD light, I didn't screw it in as tightly as it was originally which prevented the buttons from sticking to the case. Bad engineering. It would have been nice to include an RF sensor on the front panel, but that's a gripe, not a comment on the construction of this unit. My biggest complaints are with the sound produce by the BD/DVD unit and the fans. The fans are 3-prong and cannot be controlled without adding a seperate unit. That means that they run full speed (1200rpm) all the time and are not the quietest. I solved this by replacing them with Silvestone SCOOL121 units that have a temperature sensor that can be placed wherever needed and controls the speed of the fan. My 3 fans now run around 180-360rpm and cannot be heard at all (I put the sensors by the Southbrige, Memory and CPU). I have NO heat issues at all. Now the BD/DVD noise is a different ballgame. The BD/DVD unit is SOLIDLY screwed to the chassis. The front feet on the chassis might as well be steel because they don't isolate the chasis at all. When I play a BD or DVD the hum sounds like I'm on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. I put one of those shipping airbags under the front of the chassis and stole the rubber grommets they have for a 2nd HDD and used them to isolate the BD/DVD player. It's OK, but looks stupid! So close to being a great unit, just not quite there yet.

This case is laid out wonderfully as long as you pay attention to the sizes of the components that you're planning on putting in the case. I originally plan on running 2 3.5" hard drives, but discovered that the rear mount above the power supply doesn't have nearly enough cooling to keep the back drive cool (I was using an extremely low power wd green drive). The rear hard drive was still reaching around 51 degrees Celsius in a 75 degree Fahrenheit room which I consider to high! The front drive, however was only running around 35.

The build quality is wonderful though and it blends right in with the rest of my home theater system, I also really like the shallow depth as it allows the computer to set completely flush with the front of the system.

Overall I'm very impressed with the case and would definitely recommend it to friends.

This is a great case, not much else to say. It is currently being used as an HTPC case. Air flow is VERY good!