Wow, that's beautiful. And whoa, that
was weird. It's not often I step through a time portal on the Computex show
floor, but it sure is cool when I do. Meet the Silverstone
FLPO2, a followup to their April Fool's
joke that became a real product and evidently one that was so successful
they felt it needed a sequel. And I got to say, if the goal of a sequel is like
the first one but better, man, have they ever nailed it here. It has a more
thoughtful design with respect to cooling and some really incredible
touches. Check this out, you guys. It has a turbo button that ramps your fan
speeds up to 100% when you press it and
a lock that disables the power button so that your pesky kids won't get on the
computer when they're not supposed to. Floppy disc style bay covers and
stealthy IO are nice touches. But what I really have to know is whose stroke of
genius was the mismatched color on that front fan controller. I mean, we can
always make the adjustments for production to solve for sample. What?
No, no, no. It's great. I assumed it was on purpose. What do you mean? The
mismatched color. That's on purpose, right? Whose idea was that?
Oh, engineer. That's awesome. See, this adds a touch
of authenticity that most companies would miss because everything was Beij.
Nobody could settle on one beige. Hey, we're all different. It's even got a
period accurate dome sticker. But don't let its aesthetic fool you. Silverstone
says this is every bit as capable of handling high-end hardware as other
modern cases. And are so confident that they're going to allow me to build in it
right here on the show floor, even though it's uh still kind of prototypy
in some ways. What could go wrong? Well,
I can tell you something that went wrong. They have insulted my honor for
the last time, Tony, by putting a nonLT
screwdriver in front of this computer. Fi on your
screwdriver. Fi, I say. I brought my
own. Although, I might need this depending on how they did the IO layout.
So, I'll keep it in my back pocket just in case. Right out of the gate, I'm
appreciating the modern creature comforts. Captive thumb screws on the
side panel. Support for up to a 140 mm radiator in the back. Look at this. They
even got support for a vertical GPU mount. Oo, with an anti-ag brace. You'll
love to see it. We won't need this boy for now. So, we'll just go ahead and
slide it a little bit out of the way. Let's go get our motherboard. Oddball
configuration for this one. We've gone with a Core Ultra
9285K and a Radeon 9070 XT. I guess it's
a throwback to when Intel gaming CPU and
uh ATI Radeon graphics would have been the go-to. Trying to do the math here. I
think this RAM at 48 gigs is eight times
the capacity of the hard drive that my
family owned when our computer had a lock on the front of it like this. Now,
normally at this point, I'd love to put my cooler on and then throw the whole assembly into the case, but Silverstone
has gone and provided my arch nemesis, the AIO water cooler. So, I'm going to
throw that in the case first. Silverstone's been debating me off
camera about my installation method for the AIO. They tell me, "Linus, it would
be easier if you installed the fans on the radiator and then just screwed the
radiator into the top." I go, "Look, I know, but I don't like demoing that
installation method because it's so much harder to clean." This way, pulling air
through the radiator, all the dust just sticks on the fins and you just go and
then it comes off. To which they countered, well, if your case had proper
dust filtration, then that wouldn't really be a concern. And we do. And then
I was like, "Okay, fine. I am installing it the way that I don't prefer
illustratively, but if you don't have perfect dust filtration, I do strongly
recommend that you have the fans pull the air through the radiator just to
make it a little bit easier to clean. You happy? I'll do it your way. I'll do
it your way. Oh, that's a nice touch. Maneuvering the
radiator in here is a little bit tricky with all those 5 and 1/4 in bays in the
way, but once it's in there, boom, no
problem. It supports either a triple 120 or a dual 140 mm rad in the top. Man,
you wouldn't believe what I would have given for cable management like this
back in those days. Room behind the motherboard tray, little grommets to
hide everything. Awesome. All right, let's get this board in here. Oh, nice.
Silverstone's got that helpful little uh standoff with the lip that you can just
rest the motherboard in there if you're a crazy person like me and you build
your systems upright. Most people would probably just use it to have it in the
right position when it's lying flat, but I'm usually building for camera. So, now
we've got another modern creature comfort that I don't know how I lived
without CPU cooler cut out in the motherboard tray. Seriously, if I had a
dollar for every time I had built a computer back in the day and realized,
"Oh crap, I have to take the motherboard out so I can put the back plate on my
CPU cooler," I wouldn't have to do this job. I could just live on that. Andy, we
might have to take it out anyway. There's a peel. I missed a peel. Left it
in there. I missed a peel. No, it has to come out. It's not coming out. Gave up.
Since we're back here, it's a perfect time to talk about how we're going to route all of our cooling cables. See, I
could run this to the CPU header on the motherboard like normal, but then I
couldn't use my turbo button. So, let's have a look at the built-in fan
controller in that front 5 and 1/4 in module. Got SATA power coming in here,
support for up to eight connected fans, and oh, this is cool, PWM control off
the motherboard. So, I can just throw this header over to the CPU header, and
that way my CPU temps will control all my system fans regardless, unless I hit
the turbo button. This is looking like a
nice little build. It's coming together, hey, they just told me they're leaving
this assembled for the rest of the show. So, uh, to avoid any embarrassment, I'm
putting in the rest of the motherboard screws. Oh, I guess I probably could
have put the SSD in a while ago. Oh my
goodness, look at this thing. 2 terb.
Got to be Gen 5. Oh yeah, 14 GB a
second. Not that it matters, but hey,
you can. I guess the idea behind this was bringing back the sound of old
computers with their whiny little 40mm fans. I'm going to go ahead and make a
choice here, boys. And uh I'm taking off this fan. Man, what a power supply they
picked for this Tybernetics Platinum 2500 watt. That is one hell of a power
supply. The question is why? Oh yeah.
The answer is AI. Not going to lie, I'm feeling a lot more pressure about this
now that I know that this is one of their showcase PCs for the show. Oh my
goodness, that is a fat unit of a power supply. Good thing this bottom 3 and 1/2
in bay can be removed to get at it slash
just removed outright if you don't need a ton of hard drives. This thing
supports a lot of hard drives though. Hey, four. And I guess you could get 5
and 1/4 in carriers for them too if you really wanted to. So that would be
eight. Hey, do you guys still make that triple 5 and 1/4 in bay to four three?
Yeah, we do. You guys never discontinue anything. Yeah, there's it's needed. 5
and 1/4 in base exist. I mean kind of.
Yeah. Okay. All right. I used to use that thing in my like system builder
builds back at NCIX when people wanted like multiple hard drives in RAID for
more performance. That was why it existed then. I have no idea why it
exists now. Giving Silverstone some real-time feedback for their product
development. Uh the EPS connectors on this power supply are a little bit short
considering its length and how deep the connectors are on the power supply. And
then I was struck by the uh the contrast
between that and the world's longest HD audio cable. You guys will get the
length sorted out. You'll get the length sorted out. I did find one thing that
reminds me of old school cable management in a way that I don't love.
Whenever you run anything to the fan hub, it's right here. So, you're going
to you're going to see it. This is cute, though. a little accessory product that
helps you plug your front panel connectors in as one block, but doesn't
interfere with having anything installed over top of them. Say for example, uh
GPU or other expansion card. All right. Uh
yes, quick update. By the way, I had originally planned to have my PWM hub
operate off of the CPU fan header, but Silverstone says they've seen some
compatibility issues. So, we're going to go ahead and plug that into chassis 1.
Looking good. Well, almost good. Looking
incomplete. Let me grab my GPU. The Radeon RX970 Steel Legend from ASRock
uses a blowth through cooler design that uh should work pretty well in this
chassis. We've got our intake fan down here. And it looks like there's actually
a spot where we could put an assist fan here that would help cool hard drives
slash bring more fresh air up into our GPU. Oh. Before we put that in though,
we're going to need to take out these PCI slot covers. I think the boys are
missing a rivet right
here. It's okay. I'll allow it. And uh
Oh, look. The reason that we removed 3
and 1/2 in bays from the front of cases. Let's go ahead and pull these out. Got a
bit of a clearance issue with our GPU. I don't love the mechanism that has you
unscrew these from the front and the back, but I do think it's cool that they
can actually be height adjusted depending on where you have clearance
issues. And looking at it, it seems like this is
actually modular as well, which is super cool. So, I could put hard drives up
there. Obviously, these 5 and 1/4 in bays wouldn't correspond with the actual
openings at the front anymore if I move them, but it appears to be an option.
Right now, it's not actually close enough to the GPU to support it. But ah,
yes. Nice. We can move it a little bit closer. All right. The only thing I'd
like to see improved is if I could take this one and lower it down onto the top
of the card so that it doesn't have room to move during transport. Thanks to SY
for sponsoring our 2025 Computex coverage. It might not seem like it, but
this venue is huge. With two halls and four floors each, being able to keep in
touch with everyone is a must. And with SY's affordable eim plans, you can stay
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s.com/shortcircuit or download the app and use code shortcircuit for 15% off a
SY eSIM plan. All right, there we go. And check this out. These hard drive
cages totally fit. That's awesome.
Nice. Now all I need to do is close the backside panel, never to be opened
again. And we're done. Now we just got to get it ready for their demo. Period
accurate mousing surface size. You'll love to see it. Wait, dude. Where did
Silverstone find the one modern motherboard with PS2 for the keyboard
and mouse? You can run both PS2 peripherals and also Thunderbolt. Ah,
I'm grounded. My parents have locked the
computer. Also, I left the power supply switch off. Oh, this is so cool. This
readout tells you the current PWM percentage for the fans. Like, so cool.
This is so much easier than building a sleeper PC in an old case, by the way,
cuz I mean, the ATX standard hasn't changed much in decades. So, you can
absolutely put the hardware in, but the issue is getting enough cooling. We've
had to do some pretty creative stuff. This completely solves it for you. You
maintain that retro aesthetic, but you've got dual 120 mm front intakes.
You've got plenty of exhaust. You've got filters all over the place. Modular
cages, so you can fit long GPUs. I flipping love it. Here, let's see how
our GPU held up. This is great. We're at
61° on the GPU. It's already almost
completely flat. I'd be shocked to see it go over 65. And the best part, I
haven't even pressed the turbo button yet. You ready? Getting the closeup.
Nice. Boom. Let's go.
There we go. Turbo.
Wow. Even on the show floor, I can actually hear the system now. It was It
seemed silent. Oh yeah, there she goes. She's moving air now, boys. 59. Yep, we
already dropped one degree. Great work, Turbo. And great work, Silverstone. For
those of you wondering, by the way, will there be a side window option? The
answer is no. As it would be period appropriate, you will need to mod your
own. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.