While price-to-performance is often a top priority in our reviews, the quest for quiet gaming compels us to rebel against our value-seeking norms. Before we discuss build quality, here’s how today’s three cases stack up when it comes to relative efficiency over relative price.

The extensive use of steel and plastic allows Nanoxia to produce a relatively high-performance noise-dampening case for only $120. The lower cost of steel doesn’t necessarily imply a lower-quality case, and this is especially true for the Deep Silence 1. This case employs extra-thick steel to dampen noise, and the application of asphalt mat to many of its internal surfaces furthers that effort. However, that combination of heavy construction and heavy dampening materials weigh equally on the Deep Silence 1’s portability, with a finished product tipping the scales at 25.5 pounds!
Nearly half as hefty, the $170 Lian Li PC-B12 uses even thicker aluminum panels to provide lightweight rigidity. Medium-density acoustic foam provides similarly lightweight noise dampening. Aside from its lower weight, the main benefit of anodized aluminum is that most people think it looks better. It’s also chip-proof and scratch resistant. But we’re just not sure if many of our readers would willingly pay an extra $50 for a lighter-weight, better-looking case.
SilverStone’s FT02S-USB3.0 tops our performance chart, even if most of our graphics card's exhaust noise reaches our ears. But remember that we test our cases from 45° from the front panel, and that this case is designed to sit on the floor. The expense of a wraparound aluminum design combines with the weight of a thick steel body, resulting in a $260 product that everybody wants, but many cannot afford. Ironically, the folks who do have the money for this case often have even more demanding performance expectations, and it's possible that they simply won't accept the amount of noise that escapes from its top panel.
Nanoxia’s Deep Silence 1 looks like the value, performance, and quality pick in today’s comparison. On the next page we'll compare it to the other six cases in this series.
- Nearing The Quiet Gaming Goal?
- Lian Li PC-B12
- Inside Lian Li’s PC-B12
- More PC-B12 Features
- Building With The PC-B12
- Nanoxia Deep Silence 1
- Inside Nanoxia’s Deep Silence 1
- More Deep Silence 1 Features
- Building With The Deep Silence 1
- SilverStone Fortress 2 USB 3.0
- Inside The Fortress 2 USB 3.0
- More Fortress 2 USB 3.0 Features
- Building With The Fortress 2 USB 3.0
- Test Settings
- Heat, Noise, And Heat Versus Noise
- Quality And Value: Part 3 Cases, Analyzed
- Quiet Gaming Case Quest, Series Conclusion
Thanks for that; I was wondering when it would arrive.
He is running dual AMD 5850's with axial fans and a Corsair H50 water cooler cooling an AMD 8150, it's very quiet even at full fan.
In my P280 I have a OC Intel i7-3770k with an Antec 920 water cooler and 2 scythe 2k rpm fans, with the scythe at full power and the 920 on aggressive thermal settings it keeps he 4.7ghz oc under 50 deg c under almost all loads while not being excessively loud.
It would be interesting to repeat the tests with an axially-cooled graphics card. After all, that style of cooler would be the choice of someone building for low noise. Of particular interest would be the resulting temperature differences, especially of the Silverstone.
Toms, thanks for doing this series it was really nice to see the time and in depth detail put into this. I will be bookmarking these for reference on my future builds.
Half finished building with it last night. Once you get th R4, you can tell that a lot of thought went into building this case. I'm still a novice when it comes to cable management, but FD makes it real easy. For $80, IMO, you're getting a steal.
Yea this competition combined with the killer R4 price is a no brainer for me. I was going to get the corsair 550d but not now.
I'm disappointed that the Corsair did so poorly with noise reduction, I thought from previous tests elsewhere that it did fine with that but had some cooling issues that could be resolved by removing the HDD cages and loading up all the fan postions. Unfortunately it seems that it would be louder still in that configuration.
Nice review, guys. I appreciate it...
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/rv02-e-lian-li-sonata-iv,2946-6.html
P183 ould have been interesting alternative. It should be more silent than p280? but harder to build because of dual chamber solution. Still it would be nice to see it compared to P280, if there are any real differences. If I am building silent gaming machine the case can be even a little bit more expensive if it can achieve good results. You can get gaming casis really cheaply, but they are definitely not silent...
What are you referring to?
(just curious...)
Maybe ask for your money back?
Sorry, but it bugs me when people whine so much about such minutiae. You're getting a lot of informative content for free. How do you think they feel after doing all this testing and writing to see snarky comments like these?