Silverstone FT01 review



For the benefit of those of you who have been hiding under a rock for the last few years, Silverstone is arguably one of the world’s Premiere case and PSU manufacturers. They are most
widely known for their high-end Home theatre PC cases and target the types of tower users who favour case manufacturers like Lian Li for their builds.
The FT01 (dubbed the Fortress) is Silverstone’s latest addition to their ATX Mid-tower range and is aimed at the likes of people who don’t go all-in for a giant tower case sitting on their desks, but who still want to be able to cram piles of good componentry in whilst still keeping it cool running, and of course, good looking. I’m exactly the type of person that this case has been built to address. Call it personal preference, but I hate full tower cases in my home. They’re like some giant monolith which you can’t see over when you put them on your desk and I’d prefer to not have a case that’s comfortably filled out; as opposed to having everything spaced a foot apart. My ideal case is one that can house EVERYTHING – a water cooling system, 6 hard disks, dual optical drives, fan controller and of course a full-sized set of guts that are overclocking-friendly!
The FT01 looks promising in regards to fitting this need. It’s very loosely based on the case which almost single-handedly catapulted Silverstone into the good-graces of many modders and enthusiasts alike – the TJ-07 – whose one piece aluminium, “unibody” frame combined with oodles of features made it an instant hit. But will this mid-tower redesign yield the result in a similar vein to its larger predecessor; or has the lineage been watered down to accommodate this form factor? That’s what I hope to find out.

Specs:
Full details are available from Silverstone's Website:
http://www.silverstonetek.com/products/ ... 1&area=usa

Material:
3.0mm ~ 6.0mm uni-body aluminum outer frame and aluminum body

Motherboard compatibility:
ATX, Micro ATX

Drive Bays:
External 5.25" x 5
Internal 3.5" x 7

Cooling System
Front 1 x 180mm intake fan, 700rpm, 18dBA
Rear 1 x 120mm exhaust fan, 900rpm, 18dBA
Top 1 x 180mm intake fan, 700rpm, 18dBA

7 x PCI Expansion Slots

Front I/O Ports
USB2.0 x 2
IEEE1394 x 1
Audio x 1
MIC x 1

Power Supply
1 x Optional standard PS2 (ATX)

Expansion Cards:
Compatible with expansion card up to 12”

Net Weight: 8.66kg

Dimensions:
211 mm (W) x 486 mm (H) x 494.5 mm (D)

Extra
One CP05 included for single hot-swappable SATA hard drive, additional CP05 can be purchased separately

MSRP:
USD209 or USD219 for the window panel version

The case arrived after a long UPS journey in a massive carton and upon opening it I was glad to see that Silverstone had been sure to pad it out sufficiently enough that it’ll arrive to the end user in top shape.




Aside from the case itself, all that was included in the carton was a small carton containing a printed manual, 3-pin to molex fan adapter and the mandatory bag O’ screws.

Once freed from its plastic, the first thing that struck me about the fortress was its slick finish – the panels are top-notch brushed aluminium and have been anodized black. This model features a nicely finished, laser-cut window as well.




The Unibody of the case really surprised me as well. You really have to see it in person to note how different this is from traditional case designs.




I am used to thin, panels riveted to a case frame and I had initially thought it would be similar in appearance and feel to the side panels – I was way wrong. The aluminium here is a single sheet, 3-6mm thick, bead-blasted and-hard anodized. This is one heck of a solid case from the outside. As it turns out, Silverstone’s designers appear to have had a dual purpose in mind for this (apart from making people like me drool incessantly) but we’ll get to that shortly.

The front of the case is very plain – A large mesh grill with case badge, five drive bays finished just like the side panels and a single, sturdy power button and LED – that’s it, no case door, reset or anything else – simple and very understated.




The top of the case is a bit busier. Silverstone have incorporated all the IO ports and reset switch into a matte-finish plastic housing and… mounted them on an angle. This is one feature that you’ll either love or hate. Personally, having ports on the top really only becomes handy if I have the case sitting on the floor, and as such doesn’t do it for me – although the aesthetics are still unobtrusive. There is also a large mesh fan grill towards the rear of the case under which the 180mm fan resides.




The rear of the case is constructed from thinner alloy than the main body but is still very sturdy. There are twin rubber grommets for external water cooling runs and a pair of lockable, spring-loaded latches keeping the panels in place which are backed up with thumbscrews to ensure that nothing rattles around. Further down, a set of Silverstone’s Aeroslots PCI slot covers are used for increased airflow. While these may seem a bit pointless at first glance, this actually forms part of the overall cooling system (which we’ll come to later).



Holding everything up off the ground, two thick plastic strips with rubber inserts make up the case feet and are screwed on for easy removal or replacement. There is also a large mesh grill and dust filter covering an intake at the base.

Getting inside this case, you can see that there’s a fair bit of ground to cover. Immediately obvious is the matte-black powdercoating on everything except the panel retention slider. This makes a pleasant change from bare metal all through. I have a thing for dark case interiors in order to hide my black cables and little touches like this score big in my book even though you’d sort of expect them given the price tag.
The panels are thin aluminium and include pre-applied acoustic-dampening foam to hopefully quiet things down.






I was pretty amazed to note the lack of any supporting struts running along the length of the case – you know the ones I mean – the ones that run a beam across from the back panel to the front and use it to support the PSU and stop the case from twisting when it’s loaded up. While it’s a sneaky spot to mount your lighting or cable runs, it’s just ghastly looking if there’s a large window in the case.
This is part of that dual purpose I was talking about earlier – by designing the unibody this way, the whole chassis is able to stay far more rigid than traditional case designs. The benefit of this (besides the ugly crossbar being safely ditched – paving the way to cleaner looking internals) is that you end up with a more rigid, heavy-set and less “tinny” frame that helps reduce vibration from things like fans and HDD’s – which should mean that a system in this case should be quieter than you would expect too.

Looks and quietness aside, one of the other major features of note (for this modder at least) is that almost everything inside the case is attached to the thick unibody by screws! No more drilling out a million rivets if you want to take this baby apart. I removed all of the drive bays, fans, filters, power switch, IO ports and grilles in about 15 minutes with two screwdrivers (you need a short one to remove the 5.25” clips) Given a bit more time (and the need), The motherboard tray could have also been removed by drilling out nine (non-pop rivets) and removing another six screws as well.







If you do take the Fortress apart though, be warned that re-attaching screws to the frame must be done very carefully to avoid stripping the extremely fine threads that have been tapped into the case. If you cross-thread a screw, there’s no way to re-attach it without making the hole (and screw) larger and tapping it appropriately. For you people that rush in and slap things together haphazardly, consider yourself warned – while this case is tough, aluminium is still a comparatively soft metal, especially where screw-threads are concerned.

The 5.25” bays are “tool free” with a simple rocker-type button being all you need to secure anything installed; although you do need to remove two screws to take the drive bay covers out initially. There are also back-up screw holes if you want to be doubly safe. The distinctive 3.5” bays are made of steel with the drive caddies being made out of plastic. Both appear to be designed to minimize airflow restriction as much as is possible when no disks are installed. The caddies include rubber anti vibration mounts which help cut out a fair amount of vibration noise.





Now, before you start crying “plastic equals cheap!” and grabbing your torches and pitchforks, using plastic caddies should help reduce vibration transmission further between the disk and the rest of the case – albeit at the expense of sturdiness – I’d rather see metal handles as opposed to plastic, as this could possibly be a point of weakness in future; especially if drives are being swapped out regularly.

The feature that had really grabbed my interest about the internal design of the fortress was the thought given to cable routing. The motherboard tray has large holes above and below it that allow you to run cables behind the motherboard tray and out of sight very easily. Similarly, there are three holes (surrounded with rubber edges) that allow you to route other data, fan and front-panel connectors through and behind the drive cages.




In front of the cages we come to the behemoth 180mm fan behind an easily removable dust filter. The fan and filter mount are removable via a set of screws. Looking at the fan you can see it’s a monster – no flashy LED’s here folks. At the time of writing, there are virtually no aftermarket 180mm fan options freely available, so if you want to swap this out simply, your only option is to go down the 120mm route as there are a set of standard 120mm mounting holes, judging by the size difference though, any LED fans in this spot will probably look a little inadequate once lit up as there is a lot of space around them.






The same fan/filter system is used in the top – as an intake with a single 120mm fan used as an exhaust





Now I’m not a fan (no pun intended) of intakes in the tops of cases as fighting dust in the air is hard enough, let alone airborne dust being assisted by gravity as well as a giant fan. So why do it? Two reasons: The first is that by having an intake fan blowing right onto the system’s CPU and power regulators (AKA “the hot bits”), you can be guaranteed that your core components will stay cooler than in the standard scenario where the main intake’s airflow in the front of the case is being restricted (and heated up) by the hard disks directly behind it.
Secondly, positive pressure airflow– In a nutshell, this denotes that the case has more intakes than exhausts. There are divided opinions as to whether positive pressure is a better all-round cooling solution than negative pressure (i.e. more exhausts than intakes) in a PC, and I’m not about to start picking sides in this review. The Aeroslots come into the picture here. With only having the single 120mm fan removing the air pulled in by the two giant 180mm fans, in order to let extra air out nicely, the perforated PCI slots (as an exit) “direct” turbulent air around your graphics card on its way out.

While we’re up here, I should point out the only design flaw that I managed to find in the case design. The top dust filter is not able to be removed due to a support of the motherboard tray being right in its path. This is a pretty big oversight, given that the fan is designated as an intake and being gravity-fed dust 24/7. The only way to clean the filter is to remove the entire mounting bracket. While not difficult, it is still rather fiddly and would probably prove to be a bit of a pain with a system installed.

I took the opportunity to install my workstation rig into the FT01 - the goal was to include a non-modular PSU, ATX motherboard and a modest watercooling kit whilst keeping everything totally internal and most importantly – as tidy-looking as possible. Installing the motherboard was a snap, as were al of the peripheral cards, drives and PSU. The FT01 is not totally tool-free, but given that all I needed was a Phillips screwdriver, it’s safe to say that the raw install experience was pretty darned painless.



That was until I started the tedious job of cable management. The only area I found that gave me any hassle at all was behind the motherboard tray. While I had thought that this was going to make cable management a dream, there wasn’t quite as much room as I would have liked to stash cables.



Routing a very thick, sleeved ATX power cable made it very difficult to close the side panel due to the acoustic foam – after a lot of persuasion, cable ties and adhesive mounts, I managed to get it all shut. The foam has since compacted in where the panel lies, but if you have a ton of cabling that you want to hide, it may be easier to lose the foam before installation.



Of course, take my issue here with a grain of salt – depending on the PSU and degree of cabling you need in the case, your results will vary.

The two single fan radiators were pretty easily installed – one in front of the 120mm exhaust fan and another one mounted via velcro behind the HDD cage. I could have installed one in the top intake or removed the lower cage for cleaner airflow, however I wanted a sense of what the final noise level was with this case as loaded up to the gills as I could get it. For users that want to use dual, triple or quad-fan radiators, you will either be chopping up the case top or mounting them externally.



Performance-wise, the case definitely held its own. My last (beloved) case was a custom modified steel cube case that I had modified to fit the cooling system I wanted – Radiators in two front intakes, hard disks at the back and a ton of quiet and strategically placed fans made it exactly what I needed and optimized for my cooling needs. Now I didn’t expect the FT01 to be able to match its performance in this configuration at all (as the lower radiator was pulling air off the hot HDD’s), but it still held its own with only around 3 degrees Celsius difference between CPU temperatures in each configuration. Bearing this in mind, with a small amount of case-cutting, and radiator repositioning, I’m certain that this case will match its performance. For an air-cooled system, the 180mm intake almost guarantees that this case would help in yielding close to “open-air bench” results. Graphics card cooling would be better served by an intake in the case panel or removal of a drive cage, however in its stock configuration, the amount of airflow is still adequate.
Case noise was a lot lower than I would have expected given that this case is aluminium. The biggest area of noise actually came from the six hard disks installed in the case – not the fans!

All in all, the FT01 is a very nice case. It has very high build quality and enough features to justify its price tag. It easily and rather effectively does the job of keeping a ton of hardware cool and quiet; and looks very nice (even in its stock form) too. It’s certainly not for everyone though. Users that really want to load up a machine with elaborate water loops and more than two full length graphics cards will probably end up looking at something like the FT01’s big brother, the TJ07, or cousins, the TJ09 or TJ10. I can’t honestly say that this case really exhibits an awful lot of the characteristics that I would consider a “blank canvas” for basic modification either, as a lot of the work really has already been done and incorporated by Silverstone’s designers. This case does redeem itself though to the hard-core modders out there in the sense that it can easily be taken apart if you have some elaborate plan in mind.
So, does the Fortress deserve to be classed in the same league as the TJ07? I’d think so. It certainly shows lineage in appearance and design as well as in its performance.

Rating:
Build quality and features: 9/10
Price/Value 8/10
Performance 8/10
Moddability 6/10

Overall: 7.5/10

Special thanks to Silverstone for letting us get our hands on their latest product.

Very Impressive!

It looks very very very nice good review

I like the Modular ness of all the parts being able to take them all out and glad to see they made the internals black that would save anyone having to get it painted/powdercoated if they wanted it modded

Also i couldnt see where you put how much it was...?

Josh

Bottom of First post, Josh. $209-$219USD. Thats around £115 , which is very cheap/competitivly priced.

Great review Peter. Easy to follow and well presented.