Silverstone Cases Promise Improved Air-flow with Fewer Fans
The Raven 4 is a plastic case fitted with a "Hi-Flow air filter" that Silverstone maximizes airflow, offering improvements of up to 30 compared to previous solutions, and improved dust buster capabilities. Silverstone has removed the rear grill to improve air flow and these two differences help Silverstone reach the same cooling performance of the previous model with one fewer fan. The FT04 is the same case but it's fashioned out of aluminum as opposed to plastic.
Silverstone also had on hand a new mini-PC called the SG-09 with a 23 liter capacity as well as a micro-ATX motherboard, a standard PSU, space for two HDDs and four SSDs, two fans, standard length VGA cards, and two USB 3.0 ports on the front.
The Raven 4 will be available in Q4 priced at €130, while the aluminum FT04 will cost €180/€200 (also available in Q4).
May want to add a unit there...
That must be a typo. Anyone think they can fit 23 1 liter bottles in their case?
About time one of the case manufacturers did that. I've been removing fan guards, perforated mesh, and grills from the rear panel for years. Improves hot air exhaust, especially if an exhaust fan on the rear panel is aligned with cpu heatsink fans.
Might not be such a good idea if you have curious cats and little children.
Thank god for the Dremel
Well, you could put the case in a large chicken-wire box. Very minimal airflow disruption while keeping paws and hands away from the fans.
You could encase the tower with a large chicken wire box. Does a handy job of keeping out paws and hands with little airflow disruption.
May want to add a unit there...
Just make the FT03 ENTIRELY aluminum and call it a day. Until then, I'm keeping my Lian Li.
I require a heavy steel case, and I require that there be absolutely no fragile plastic components. It must be stiff, indestructible, well ventilated and preferably easy access with hot swap bays.
If you do a bit of maths, you will notice that 23 litre is not that big. It is smaller than 20x30x40cm.
Actually, they are EATX cases.
BTX (unfortunately in my opinion) died with the PD processors. It was not only an alignment of the case fans with the mobo fans, it also put the cpu, northbridge, and card slots in a line so that all of your major heat generating components were able to get maximum airflow. Things like ram, headers and rear IO shield were moved to the top of the board for easier access to fat fingers like mine. Power supplies and disc drives also made a line at either the top or bottom of the case for easier cooling as well (most power supplies used in BTX cases had a fan on the front/back of the supply instead of the bottom of the supply like we see today). Lastly BTX cases were mounted on the left side of the case instead of the right. I'm not sure though if that was part of the standard, or if that was just the popular way to do it to visually differentiate themselves from 90% of the ATX cases out there.
This is just an EATX case that takes an ATX mobo and better aligns the fans and the case while mounting it 'upside down' on the left side of the case. Still a good case, but hardly groundbreaking compared to other offerings available today.
BTX is not needed today for the sake of heat dissipation, but I would love to see it come back for the sake of visual appeal. The bulk of the headers and connectors are on the top of the board, instead of just everywhere like they are on ATX. Most GPUs and other ad-on cards have some amount of artwork on the right side of the card... which normally faces down in an ATX case, and makes it harder to see. In a BTX (or left mounted case in general) such artwork faces up where you can see it. Also, by facing up the heat is better drawn away from the card. Having all of your interesting components (cpu, gpu, and mobo heat spreaders for mosfets and northbridge) in a line also means you can do easier and more interesting lighting, or smaller windows that still show off your stuff. I don't know, maybe it is a form factor that is an electrical engineer's nightmare, but it seemed like a step forward to me, and I was sad to see it die off.
Right there with you. Lian Li is one of the few case mfg that dont make over the top gaudy crap. It seems that all the high end cases look like a neon strip club from the 60/70s. My desktop and HTPC are both Lian Li. The computer I built for my parents (and the office we run our busness out of), Lian Li. The CAD workstation I am building my aunt for her interior design, Lian Li. Ill pay a little extra to get the solid aluminum, and vibration isolation excesories. They are quiet, effictive, and they have nice clean look. And those of you who dont want plastic parts, the only thing on the lian li that could use an upgrade are the tool less clips for the 5.25 bays. Those are plastic. But I just use screws old school style.