Building With The SilverStone Kublai KL04
Like the Storm Enforcer, SilverStone’s Kublai KL04 (KL04B for black; add –W if you want a side window) uses a bottom-mounted SSD cage behind the hard drive cage. But with room for six 2.5" drives, the KL04 holds three times as many SSDs. Its 3.5” cage also has more capacity (up to eight drives) in the removable portion and one hidden bay in its base. What's more, the SSD cage can be moved from the KL04’s base onto the removable hard drive cage.
SilverStone’s attempt to cut cost without sacrificing durability or performance shows through in places like its missing internal grommets and folded-out card holder tab, both of which appear out of place on a case with such a flexible storage configuration. One of the ways SilverStone retains its hallmark quality is through rolled edges on all cable holes, which really make grommets superfluous.
The KL04’s installation kit includes a 5.25”-to-3.5” external bay adapter, a USB 3.0-to-USB 2.0 header adapter, and a bag of miscellaneous mounting hardware complete with cable ties and a miniature screwdriver.
A ribbon-style front-panel lead and HD Audio support (no AC'97) clean up and simplify the KL04's cable bundle.
Elegant simplicity is found in the KL04’s external drive latch. If the latching tab doesn’t appear secure enough to you, holes in the mechanism also support screws.
We installed our SSD without removing the cage, since the case has screwdriver access from both sides. The rest of the enclosure is large enough to accept our slightly oversized motherboard without blocking its cable access holes.
The finished build again looks more like a workstation than a gaming PC, but that’s fine with most of us. Reduced noise is a benefit of the windowless, ventless panels, and we look forward to finding out if fans and vents in other parts of the chassis can still give us the cooling performance we require.
