Silverstone has launched a new compact desktop case in its Milo family. The Silverstone ML11 isn't yet listed on the firm's official product pages (Milo models only go up to 10 according to the family album), but it is for sale at China's electronics retailer JD.com. In brief, this is a 10-liter Micro ATX low-profile desktop case with slimline optical drive bay. Pictures show the ML11 in both horizontal desktop and tower orientations. In the former setup it looks like an old-school piece of stereo equipment.
(Image credit: Silverstone / JD.com)
If you are not familiar with Silverstone cases, the company offers a wide variety of sizes and styles, but it seems to have something of a penchant for compact home theater PC (HTPC) case designs. Many Silverstone designs will be horizontally orientated desktops, and quite compact. Often they are designed to sit beside Hi-Fi and AV separates, without looking out of place. The Silverstone Milo ML11 follows this unassuming style.
Without an official product page from Silverstone, we don't have an extensive specs list. But the Chinese retailer, and ITHome, have shared some of the essentials. First of all, we have several stats about the size. The measurements of this case are 330 x 110 x 285mm, and the capacity is 10.35 liters. Remember, this is a low-profile design, so any expansion cards (there are four slots at the back) will have to be low-profile cards, or come with a low-profile bracket option.
Inside this case, you can fit a Micro ATX motherboard, which will give you plenty of choice over platform. If you are thinking of adding a graphics card to this build, there's room for GPUs up to 10.6 inches (27cm) long. That should mean it's fine for nearly every low-profile single and twin fan graphics card design available. Not that there have been many gaming-focused low-profile cards in recent years.
Other components you can fit in this ~10 liter machine include: a CPU cooler up to 90mm in height, two 2.5-inch drive and one 3.5-inch storage device, the aforementioned slimline ODD, two case fans (max 80mm) and a Flex-ATX power supply.
The interior of the case looks pretty simple, but there isn't much space for intricate or fussy design here, and it clearly isn't designed to be to be stuffed with high-end components for its low-profile HTPC duties.
(Image credit: Silverstone / JD.com)
Looking at the case from the front, you can see Silverstone has a provision for an upper-central positioned slimline optical disc drive (ODD). This decision fits in with consumers deploying these cases as HTPCs. On the lower-right of the case there are (from left to right) four USB-A ports, a headphone/mic jack, a system power light, and a power/reset button with an activity light beneath.
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On the Chinese retail site, this compact Micro ATX PC case is said to be available for 299 Yuan, which is roughly $45. We don't have any details about availability or pricing outside of China at the time of writing.
Mark Tyson is a news editor at Tom's Hardware. He enjoys covering the full breadth of PC tech; from business and semiconductor design to products approaching the edge of reason.
