Details
Price: $187.19
Manufacturer: Silverstone
Website: www.silverstonetek.com
Silverstone's Fortress range already
comprises of two currently available cases. The FT01 is a beautiful
all-aluminium midi tower chassis, while the FT02 is arguably the finest air
cooling case on the market, but both look positively orthodox when placed next
to the latest model in this innovative manufacturer's line-up. The FT03 has a
bizarre form factor for a PC case. Firstly it' has a positively tiny foot print
of just 235 x 284 mm, yet is as tall as a normal midi tower, at nearly 500 mm
high. It has no visible I/O plate area at the back and there's no space for a
conventional optical drive. Despite this, there's no debating the design,
because the FT03 is undeniably beautiful. This particular example is decked out
in titanium grey, but the chassis also comes in black or silver.
Remove the side panels and the FT03 starts
to make sense. Firstly, the entire layout is a flip design with space for a
micro-ATX motherboard rotated 90°. The I/O ports sit under a hatch on the roof
of the case and there's a large cubby hole for the PSU (180 mm deep maximum) at
the bottom. This is connected to the external power plug via an internal
extension cable. Only a single slot-loading optical drive is supported, but the
system supports two 3.5" hard drives (one via a hot-swap caddy) as well as
a 2.5" SSD. Air is channelled through the case by two internal 120mm
angled fans before being exhausted out from the top, and there's enough space
in the chassis for two gigantic video cards in SLI or CrossFire - even the
12" 6990 fits in with an inch and a half to spare.
Even the most experienced of system
builders will need to refer to the FT03's instruction manual during
construction. The various mounts work well when you know how, but the chassis
has as much in common with a conventional ATX case as a laptop chassis does.
Despite this, the build quality is excellent. There are only tiny gaps between
the various panels and everything clips in perfectly.
In terms of connectivity, the FT03 is quite
minimalistic. There are just two USB 3.0 ports plus audio jacks, with no space
for eSATA or dedicated USB 2.0 ports, and there's no fan controller. We'd
recommend users invest in a PCI slot-sized rheostat if they have enough spare
space, because the standard fans, although far from deafening, are noticeable
when ramping up to full speed.
Despite its odd form factor, the FT03
provides super temperatures. GPUs exhausting heat vertically rather than
horizontally clearly works well, as the GPU temperatures of this case are joint
best on test. The CPU temperature was also extremely impressive, just going to
show that you don't need a case the size of a bus to house a heavily
overclocked i7 chip.
Given that the FT03 requires PSUs of up to
a certain size, micro-ATX form factor motherboards and a slot loading optical
drive, it may not be suitable for those wanting to simply transplant their
existing PC into a new case, but for those wanting to build something unique
and beautiful from scratch the case is definitely worth the investment.
Asus
Rampage Gene Z77 motherboard
For this group test we tested using an Asus
Rampage Gene Z77 motherboard and an overclocked core \1 3770K running at
4.6GHz. We used the Akasa Venom Voodoo Cooler and a GTX 670 EVGA OC edition
video card. To maintain a fair testing environment, the GPU fan was locked at
40% for the duration of each test. For fans with a built-in fan controller, a
medium fan speed was employed to provide, where possible, an equivalent setting
where we feel users would set their own fan speed for a given specification.
|
|
Corsair*
|
Xigmatek
|
Cooler
Master*
|
Fractal Design*
|
Silverstone
|
|
Price
|
$232
|
$222.4
|
$464
|
$143.98
|
$187.19
|
|
Temperature(CPU)
|
73°C
|
75°C
|
75°C
|
76°C
|
74°C
|
|
Temperaure (GPU)
|
72
°C
|
66°C
|
70°C
|
70°C
|
66°C
|
|
Temperature
(Mainboard)
|
44°C
|
42°C
|
43°C
|
44°C
|
44°
C
|
|
Noise level
|
Moderate
|
Quiet
|
Quiet
|
Very
quiet
|
Quiet
|
|
Height
|
507
mm
|
618
mm
|
704
mm
|
464
mm
|
487
mm
|
|
Width
|
265
mm
|
230
mm
|
344
mm
|
232
mm
|
235
mm
|
|
Depth
|
592
mm
|
663
mm
|
664
mm
|
523
mm
|
284
mm
|
*tested at medium fan speed
