welcome to my unboxing of pretty much the coolest thing ever this is the
Silverstone Fortress series F3 mini okay
the new desktop computer Paradigm in smaller size so they have an F3 it's an
matx case however this one is Mini ITX
and if you guys know have watched a few of my videos you may already know that
I'm pretty into the whole small things
that are extremely high performance so the concept of the F3 is to have a very
unique internal layout that allows for outstanding
Cooling and very high performance
components in a very small enclosure so
you might compare this to something like you know a um well here let's have a
let's have a look at it and then we'll see how it Stacks up to some of the
other products and hopefully it's okay bear with me
here guys oh that was clumsy it's a good
thing that Silverstone packs their products pretty well because even when
uh someone like me goes and Nubs out and
breaks it it should still be okay cuz there's pretty good foam down there y
not a scratch excellent
okay right so there are other products that claim to do this whole extremely
high performance PC in a very small enclosure thing however I would argue
that the F3 mini is actually smaller than some of the other ones that uh that
claim to be doing that so let's start with the outside of the unit and let's
take uh take this off first oh I love
Silverstone cases another thing that you guys will probably know if you've uh if
you've watched more than a few of my videos is that Silverstone really does
it for me with certain things that they do like um excuse you bless you and all
that stuff like this beautifully curved
thick aluminum pieces that make up the
construction of this case that is just H
amazing and then the anodizing finish that they use on their cases I know for
a fact is phenomenally durable because I have one case my tj7 that I've had for
years that has been subject to all kinds of abuse and the anodization still looks
amazing this one's actually just a this one's
perfect wow just absolutely beautiful can you can
you see it can you see kind of the finish on it just beautiful aluminum
case so there's only four pieces going around the outside curved piece here
straight panel here curved panel here and straight panel here what you find on
the bottom is also really cool this is a 140 mm air penetrator cooling fan it is
a filtered fan and one of the things that Silverstone has really pioneered is
the whole positive internal air pressure with like a rotated ATX l layout they
first did that with their Raven case and now they're taking it to like a whole
new level so if you filter an intake and
you have nothing but intakes you achieve a couple of things one is it becomes
very difficult for dust to get into your case because you've got a filter over
the fan and if you have positive air air pressure inside the case it means that
air can't be sucked into these little cracks whereas if you were using all
exhaust then Dust could easily be sucked in in other places and that's more just
one thing that you're achieving so let's just leave it at that because I forget
where I was going with that uh the filter can be easily removed all you do
is undo this go wash it in water let it dry and then pop it back into place just
like that air penetrator fans by the way are awesome if you didn't already know
that then you do now you can take my word for it they're outstanding they're
some of the best fans on the market for a couple of reasons number one is they
have extremely good static pressure properties so that means that if you
have just one fan and and you have to push air through something big you want
it to be an air penetrator um also they're very directional so you see
these fins on the other side of the fan blades those direct the air to where you
want it to go where you actually point the fan which is awesome so normal fans
you can see if you have like smoke blowing into them they just kind of blow the air all over the place air
penetrators blow like a cyclone of air
in a column away from the fan itself so they will directly cool whatever you
point them out which is awesome as well rubber feet on the bottom and I think
that pretty much wraps it up for the bottom of the case I'm going to go ahead
and fill the filter here's another thing that Silverstone just gets it for
certain things that other manufacturers don't you see the big gap between the
filter and the fan that reduces turbulence and improves the efficiency
of the fan pulling air through the filter dramatically Silverstone A+ they
know what they're doing all right let's flip this bad boy
over and this case comes with very specific instructions for how to uh
disassemble it and reassemble comes with a very thick book so I'm just
going to I'm going to have to do that off camera but we'll show you the steps as we go I just want to finish up with
the outside so slot loaded optical drive Silverstone logo in the middle very
clean very nice looking um and then at the top you've got a very very open mesh
with a handle right here to pull it off power reset two USB 3 and front audio
ports as well as your indicator LEDs so you can pull this off and that gives you
access whoa I was not expecting that to happen okay okay so you know what I
guess we'll just take it off because we're going to disassemble it anyway so that gives you access to your power
supply so that's an sfx power supply as
well as your two expansion slots that you get on well one expansion slot and
then one empty slot for like a high performance dual slot video card as well
as your rear IO and you can actually see
right through to the very bottom of the case now where that cooling fan is going
to be blowing air right up over the CPU socket as well as directing some air
towards kind of the back of the video card where it will be able to get the
cooling that it needs and blow that out the back of the case or the top of the
case as well so let us disassemble this a little bit and we'll be back so slick
and I are so impressed with this case we're going to have to do a high
performance build in here just to show you guys how it all fits together so
three of the four panels just snap off using the
little uh there we go just using these
little guys right here and there's sound dampening here like Silverstone really
does think of everything to make sure the panels don't vibrate all that good
stuff in terms of Hardware installation it's pretty simple actually all you got
to do is take off this cage then you lay it down like this you have full access
to everything you need including mounting your motherboard here installing your power supply up here
this is a really cool thing Silverstone like they oh man they just thought of
everything on this one check this out so it's a 140 mm fan in the bottom here but
they put 120 mm fan mounts here here
here and here why did they do that because they left
room for you to install and they even recommend they're like look if you're going to put a high performance CPU in
here throw in a liquid cooling radiator so if you use a slim radiator such as a
Corsair h60 you can Orient the tubes
here and run them straight down along the back of the video card over to your
CPU socket which means that the cooling
in here doesn't have to be Mini ITX level cooling it's off the floor by
enough that you're going to have ample air flute air flu air flow going through
that radiator and uh yeah it's just like
awesome they really did just think of everything right expansion so you do
have to use a slim slot loading Optical
I mean I think it makes it makes the front look really nice they're not that
expensive you can find them so it's not that big of a deal so you mount that in
here you've also got room for a 2 and 1/2 in storage drive here and a 3 and
1/2 in storage drive here so you can fit
everything you'd need for a high performance system in this thing without any issues high performance graphics
card high performance CPU SSD or even up
to three ssds if you use 3 and 1/2 in to dual SSD Mount and a high performance
graphics card however there are some caveats if you put in a high performance
graphics card you want a rear blower card so one with the fan oriented here
and blowing the air out the back because that will cooperate with the natural air
flow in this case something like a GTX 590 which blows air out the back as well
is going to fight the air flow of this case so even though the case can
probably fit it oh it can't anyway well
there you go um so even though the case could potentially fit cards that have
fans here blowing out the back or here blowing out both sides you want to make
sure that you're optimizing your configuration for the case that you're
planning to use so that means fan here blowing out the back and then you won't
have any issues I think that pretty much wraps it up other than that yeah we're
just really going to have to do a build in here because this thing is amazing
much smaller than something like a bit Phoenix prodig however you can still fit an
unreasonable amount of Hardware in this
little mini ITX enclosure from Silver Stone so thank you for checking out our
unboxing and first look at the F3 mini and don't forget to subscribe to Linus
Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos oh yeah and I have
to give Silverstone huge Kudos their manual isn't in uh is isn't in color or
anything however this is the most complete and instructive manual that
I've seen other than the last Silverstone one that I looked at that
they even give you a full installation guide with like lots of little tips and
tricks and how to how to actually do it
not just how to you know give you an instruction that's sort of vague and
then walk away they even give you like limitations here's your PSU limitation
CPU Cooler height diagram and limitations CPU Cooler so here's a
recommended liquid CPU Cooler here's how to install it here's how to orient the
barbs correctly here's your GPU coolers what's optimal like they just spell
everything out for you and make everything really really easy upgrade
and maintenance fan filter removal guide fan filter removal guide fan removal
guide just awesome
stuff heart okay that's not a heart but you get the point heart silver Stone