Silverstone Grandia GD08 Ultimate Media PC Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,990 words · ~14 min read
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today we've got something pretty cool to take a look at this is the silverstone
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grandia series gd08 this is according to
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silverstone an amazing home theater server case with incredible storage and
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cooling capacity that pretty much sums it up so basically in a similar form
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factor to their previous home theater cases and you know similar form factor
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as well as similar style meaning you've got a nice thick aluminum front bezel
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you've got the slick elegant looks
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they have managed to cram and you know cram is such an inelegant
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word to describe this product which isn't really fair but to cram
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and up to 12 hard drives
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and compatibility for an ssi that is
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like uber eatx motherboard
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and and long expansion slots meaning you can install
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any graphics card pretty much as many hard drives as you want and pretty much
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any motherboard you want in what is basically not much bigger than a regular
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hd pc case so i'm very excited to take a look at this they've actually got a
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warning right here this is a unique product please read the included manual
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before proceeding with installation so i'm guessing they had to make some sort
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of weird arrangements with the internals in order to make all of that stuff fit
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with uh with pretty much yeah zero compromises configuration
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capability without uh without overdoing
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the size you know i mean it's one thing to design the cosmos ii which can fit
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pretty much anything but it's the size of you know
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you know a plane um whereas this is you know i guess a
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little bit more more thoughtful not to you know rag on
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the cosmos too because it definitely has its place uh we see we've got hard
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packing foam usually i prefer to see the softer foams just because they tend to
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take a bit more of a beating before they yield however this one apparently
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arrived without any difficulty it helps that silverstone actually uses a higher
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quality outside carton box than most case manufacturers do
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here i'll show you guys you can see they use a uh a double wall here and then
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they this um this actually improves puncture
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resistance just the finish that they use on the outside as well so
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it's it's less of a concern for me with a silverstone box than it would be with
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someone else gto8 yeah this is really not that big
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compared to something like an lc17 or you know like one of their one of their
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staple products that doesn't have this enormous compatibility
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um sorry about that guys battery died you know the drill so let's start with
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the outside of the case because you know silverstone is certainly well known for
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elegant beautiful cases and this is definitely no extension
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extension it is an extension of that principle and it is no exception so you
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can see here we've got just a gorgeous brushed aluminum front now brushed
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aluminum is a bit of a double-edged sword for me because i'm always afraid to touch it because it tends to get
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gunked up if you get your fingerprints all over it but as long as you put it
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somewhere where it's going to be relatively safe it'll look beautiful for years to come we've got our power and
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reset switches as well as our as well as an led indicator on the front
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we've got two five and a quarter inch bays so you can put up to a couple
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different drives in here if you want two usb 3.0 ports as well as front
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headphones and microphone if you were going to use this as like a desktop
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tower on your case and it looks just wonderful i love the finish that they
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put on their cases on the side we've got two 120 millimeter
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cooling fan slots including as you can see right here
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there uh sorry push
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really push
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give me a sec there we go never mind i got it okay yes you push it
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and then you take it off so including an easily removable
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uh fan filter that has and this is something they explained to me at ces
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this year this is apparently the most
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optimal baffle to place in front of a fan
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in order to have as little impact as possible on airflow while reducing the
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audible noise of the fan so there you go you can see silverstone spent
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the guys i was talking to were like yeah we spent a really really long time on
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this trying absolutely everything so there you go that is the result of
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months of engineering that baffle which apparently will make your fans perform
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better and be less noisy so here you can
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see the 120 millimeter cooling fan slots i'm just gonna go ahead and put this
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back on now you can actually screw it into place if you want so you can see
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there's a couple screw holes there or you can just leave it
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slideable just like that let's move around to the other side
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where we find oh sorry it's not super heavy i was just kind of
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kind of awkward so where we have another 120 millimeter fan so this one you pull
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off including the same baffle uh doesn't include the fans by default but
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i mean most people who are going to be buying high super high end
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cases in my experience are usually finding their own fans that they prefer
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as well so there's not much benefit to including
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basic fans with uh with a case like this
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here we've got three 120 millimeter fans
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now this is also compatible with 100 1 120 380s or six 60 millimeter fans
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should you so desire so i'm going to go ahead and pull these off yeah these just
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snap off so you can see the wide variety of mounting holes that are there on the
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bottom of the case so you can see we have two fans installed out of the factory
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giving you overall positive air pressure inside the case this is one of the
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key concepts that silverstone has really been working on over the last couple years
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actually and that is positive airflow so positive or positive air pressure rather
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so positive air for air pressure keeps
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the keeps it doesn't keep dust from accumulating
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inside your case but it reduces the amount of dust that can get into your case because if you have negative air
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pressure that is to say more exhaust fans than intake fans what happens is
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dust will tend to get sucked in places where there aren't fans whereas if you
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have more intake than exhaust it'll tend to have just a you know a passive little
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bit of airflow out of all those little gaps in the corners of the case which
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can keep dust from being sucked into them as long as your intakes are filtered
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that is on the fans that you're using for intake otherwise it's not helpful at
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all okay so on the back we've got seven plus one configuration for pci slots you
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can use that for a fan controller or whatever else but it means we can't
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support xlatx motherboards in spite of the wide motherboard compatibility we've
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got our standard sort of bottom mounted power supply okay
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and then i o as well as two 80 millimeter fan slots now let's go ahead
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and open it up and i am very very curious to see the inside of this
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especially so that i can know what merits that special warning about uh
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making sure you read the manual before trying to build a system in this case because it must be
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it must be pretty complicated though i mean you know it's probably not
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complicated but it might be a little bit tricky like you know you'll go ahead and
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you'll install all your hard drives to find out that if you install the hard drives first you can't install your
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motherboard or something like that got a couple vibration dampeners here so
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those guys press down on the
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handles when you're holding up to 12 hard drives
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at a time you do need handles even when we did our little build in the array r2
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with the Windows home server six hard drives and one go is precarious you want
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to make sure that you're holding it very securely because if you drop them
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i mean even if they're not dead even if they still work you can never trust them
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with your data again anyway
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so those little pads hold these down in place so that they don't cause any
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vibration you can also see there's anti-vibration padding here as well just
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to keep the hard drive cage here from transferring vibrations to the top panel
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other than that the case is pretty much one solid piece so yeah if you want to
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fit anything wider than standard atx in here it looks like you're going to have
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to play some funny games with removing these fans
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in order to get the extra space for the motherboard it looks like this whole
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mounting system thing for it actually
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comes out so hold on a second let's uh give me a minute with the manual
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actually i'll just i'll be able to tell you guys more about this
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let me start by saying that this case is probably the one of the most confusing
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ones i've encountered but it also has the best manual i have ever encountered
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so in spite of it being a black and white manual and look how thick it is
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this manual is like head and shoulders better than any other case i've ever
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encountered so it tells you there's an installation guide and the installation
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guide isn't just like how to put in a pci express graphics card no no the
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installation guide is step by step one by one what order to install the
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components in to make sure that everything will fit gives you little tips and tricks about make sure that
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there's nothing interfering with this particular spot right here while you're
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putting in this thing so it shows you all the installation guidy stuff it
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explains how to use things like these
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whoops these which are used to mount a hard drive in this little tiny gap over
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here but more on that later um it also it gives you recommendations for
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a bunch of different components so they explain oh okay well if you're going to
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use a dual here how many case manufacturers bother to tell this tell
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you this if you're going to use a dual CPU motherboard use one
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with the CPU socket in the top right corner because that will give you better
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compatibility with this case that kind of tip is fantastic to have as an end
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user and most manufacturers don't really bother to tell you stuff like that they
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expect you to figure it out on your own but it's in here
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very very cool they also tell you you know if you want to put a high-end
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graphics card here you're going to have to not install hard drives here here and
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here and you know just component size limitations they have a whole big swac
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of stuff about this make sure you use this kind of right angle cable as opposed to this kind of right angle
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cable fan configurations what can fit
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according to what kind of a motherboard you're using
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say six by 60 mil fans is for the ssi configuration
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all right recommended coolers graphics cards what direction the airflow should
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go in in order to be optimized for your case this is this is just like great
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stuff okay so let's move on and let's actually look at the case itself so you
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can pull this out with the two handles and it'll be heavier when there are
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drives in it but i want to first explain where all the drives go so
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here you can put three three and a quarter three and a half inch drives
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these won't interfere with anything they're just across from the power
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supply so no matter what kind of graphics cards you have or whatever other hoo-ha that will be just fine you
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can then put another up to four here depending on the orientation you can
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turn them either this way or this way as long as you don't have a super long
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graphics card installed and if this is for like media storage then that's
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probably the kind of configuration you go with you can then and this is awesome
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put a an eighth three and a half inch drive like over here so you actually run
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the SATA connect cables through here so the drive sits like
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uh like this i believe
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uh nope like this sorry guys it's really tricky so it sits
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like this so you can just barely access them and run the cables to it and so
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that's eight three and a half inch drives you can put two two and a half
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inch drives oh yeah and it uses this adapter over there so that bolts to the
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side of the case which then screws into the drive meaning it's not sticking
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right up against the case with a risk of shorting out so we've got two two and a
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half inch drive bays here and you run
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the cables to those up here as well
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and then finally the two five and a quarter inch bays which you can also use
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to install more three and a half inch drives or more two and a half inch drives should you see fit so that is up
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to 12 total drives just with this
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innovative piece of metal so these guys are fully dampened
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these ones are partially dampened you can see there's dampening here but they
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had to cut this out so that there's space for graphics cards and it's fully
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dampened up here so you're still putting in up to four screws per drive which is fine
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these are not damp dampened they're optical drives so that's just fine and this fly over here is not dampened if
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you really need you know ten drives and you've already replaced both of your
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five and a quarter inch drives with hard drives then you can put it in there um
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and you'll be happy i hope with that result because
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that's already kind of ridiculous ha front court front panel connectors so
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here we find pretty much standard fare we've got our internal usb 3 and they do
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include an adapter in case your motherboard does not support usb usb3
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via an internal header just do that alternately you can source one of those
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other adapters which i actually just
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grabbed one i don't know what i did with it so whatever you can source adapters
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that allow you to turn one of these into a pass-through through to the to the
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back of the case as well and you can just run it through pci slot okay we've
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got our front uh power and reset switches as well as
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power led so that front led and then we've also got our hard drive led so two
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leds in the front we've got our front hd audio and then we've got pretty much
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just the connectors for our fans so we include
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three 120 millimeter fans although you can install just a whack load of other
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fans so i made a mistake and i said you could install a 120 millimeter fan here
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at the beginning of the video you cannot that is a filter for the bottom of the
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power supply so you can install up to five 120 millimeter fans if you take
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this guy out and then you can also do right use or you can do
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this is that part where you can do the multiple different configurations so if you want to do the 80s or the 60 mils
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depending on what kind of a motherboard you have in this is your standard atx
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width and your standard atx length so you do have to remove some of this stuff
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or make it more low profile in order to make room for it i think the inside is
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fairly self-explanatory i once you get past this which is not self-explanatory
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at all but now that i get it is actually still fairly easy to use so you install
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everything in it you install your components in here
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you do like kind of a test fit where you look at it really carefully as you as
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you make your way down and then you have successfully crammed
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or while silverstone has successfully helped you cram more hardware than i
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would have even thought possible in a small space as well possible so whether
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you need dual cpus and you know 64 128
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gigs of RAM in your media pc or not now you can thank you for watching this
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unboxing and first look on Linus tech tips and don't forget to subscribe