Azza Silentium 920
Azza goes right for this throat in this round-up, which emphasizes quiet computing, by adding bulges to the side panels of its Silentium 920. The bulges are padded with noise-dampening foam, which helps suppress noise, but doesn't create any extra room for components.
The Silentium 920 is the shortest case in today's comparison, and we imagine that it's intended to sit up on top of your desk, and probably to the left side. With your PC in that position, it's easy to open the drive door, reach all of the drive bays, and access front-panel ports.
Although they are exposed neatly, the I/O accessible up front is pretty scant. You get just one USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 port, plus a couple of 1/8" audio jacks. Otherwise, you'd need a 3.5" drive bay adapter to bring more connectivity up from a motherboard header. Oddly, the case’s lowest 5.25” bay actually is 3.5” internally, requiring the use of a 3.5” adapter cover (fortunately, it's included).
If you'd rather keep that front bay door shut, you'll like the smaller door on the top 5.25" drive bay, which is supposed to drop when you hit your optical drive's eject button. The tray on our Plextor drive was too wide to fit through the access hole, though, so we had to remove it.
Two grommets on the back of the Silentium 920 allow the passage of tubing for external liquid coolers, while one 120 mm exhaust fan removes heat from the CPU zone. That noise-supressing foam bulge on the left side is also present on the right.
