Silverstone RVZ02 & SG13.. Compact Gaming Case Mastery - CES 2015
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2015-05-07
·
1,804 words · ~9 min read
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Lionus Tech Tips coverage of CES 2015 is brought to you by Phantom Glass. Visit
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store.fantom.glass for the best darn screen protectors out there as well as
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HyperX. So, we're here in the Silverstone suite. These guys gave me a
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really hard time because I did not show up to their suite last year. They were
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like, "Lion, bro, you missed all the way
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cool stuff and uh you should really make sure that you come by in 2015." So, I I
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went, "Yeah, yeah, definitely definitely I will come." And I was not
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disappointed. So, as you guys probably know, if you watch my channel, I love
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small form factor machines. I actually recently checked out a Lean Lee case
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that I really wanted to, based on the initial picture I saw, really wanted to
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be kind of a a console killer type box. And then I sort of pointed out a bunch
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of stuff that I really didn't like about it. And so, Silvertorm was kind of like,
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yeah, just a reminder, you should probably come to our suite. This looks
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absolutely fantastic. Now, there were some complaints about the RVZ01 that it
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was a little bit too big, but in Silverstone's defense, the RVZ01
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supports a dual 120 mm liquid cooling
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radiator, and you can actually do a custom loop in the thing in addition to
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supporting 2 and 12 in SSDs and 3 and 12 in hard drives. But some people crave
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smaller and are willing to sacrifice that stuff. And for those, there's the
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RV Z2. So, in the front, you've got a slimline optical drive and really not a
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whole lot else. You got a couple front USB 3 as well as front panel audio
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beside behind a little sliding door. Then on both sides, this is kind of Wow.
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Uh this is the only one in the world, isn't it? I will try not to break it any
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further than I already have. So then on this side, you find a uh a plexi window
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right here that's got ventilation holes cut into it right above the CPU um the
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the CPU area of the motherboard as well as the SFX power supply. And then on the
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other side, oh, she made it. This guys, this
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is a very early prototype, so don't don't judge the uh the fit and finish of
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the case based on what I'm showing you here. On the other side, you've got the
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actually the same panel. They are reversible, so you can switch them
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around if you want. And this one has the ventilation holes over the video card.
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So, we'll start by taking this one off since it happens to already be off
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because I'm a genius. And we can see that this is you can actually install up
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to what is this like 13 in. 11.5 in. Okay. Well, I'm not I'm not
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real good with the Imperial system. So, you can put up to an 11.5 in graphic
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card, which is pretty much anything you'd want as long as it's dual slot.
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And they've actually left an additional bit of space in the top just in case you
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have heat pipes sticking out the top of your graphics card or you've got these right angle mounted PCI Express
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connectors as well. It's something I might personally prefer to see reduced
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in height and just kind of push people towards reference cards, but I
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understand why Silverstone did it this way because reference cards are becoming
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less and less common all the time. Also, on the back here, you see the CPU cutout
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for the motherboard, so you don't have to worry about remembering to install
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that first. And let's go ahead and have a look at what's on the inside. So, I'll
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just slide this off. Try not to break it any more than I already have. And the
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internal layout here is extremely compact. So you can see the slimline
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optical. You can see there's two toolless 2 and 1/2 in drive cages up
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here at the top. We're using a PCI Express. It looks like uh Yep. So that's
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a PCB base. So that's like a hardmounted PCI Express riser coming out of the PCIe
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16X slot on the ITX motherboard that's mounted in here. You can fit any
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standard ITX board. Although the Zotek one they've got in here is a little funny. It's got like sodium memory. And
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then the power supply. Now, it takes an SFX power supply, but this is a bit of a
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unique power supply mount in uh in this way. Now, Silverstone has a whole range
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of SFX power supplies with these little, you know, 80 mm slim fans, and sometimes
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they can be a little bit loud, especially once they start working harder. But they've actually developed
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for this additional space above the unit here, a new form factor of power supply
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called SFXL. So, this is their 500 watt
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SX 500LG. And now we get a 120 millimeter
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fan and a fully modular interface on a power supply that has the same rear
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footprint as an SFX power supply. It's just a little bit deeper. So, for some
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of their cases, RVZ1 is another example of one that will work with it. For some
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cases, you will actually be able to install these new only sort of a
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standard SFXL power supplies in order to
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uh in order to get potentially quieter cooling as well as uh well, I guess
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that's probably just about it. That's about the only advantage. All right, so
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now let's move on to the SG13. In this
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case, if there were a couple places on
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the RV ZO2 that I kind of went, yeah, you guys could have probably squeezed
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another inch here, another two inches there. this one. That is not that is not
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the case at all. The entire front of the case is mesh. You got two USB 3 ports as
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well as front panel audio. The power switches on the top. And then I can't
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show you guys too much from the outside, but I'll go ahead and get this open in a
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minute. On the back, you can see this one supports full-size ATX power
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supplies. You've also got the IO cutout for the motherboard as well as up to a
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dual slot graphics card right here. The sides are all pretty much mesh. So,
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there's your intake for your graphics card. On that side, there's more mesh on
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the top. So, that's going to, I don't know, be I guess passive exhaust would
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be my guess based on that. The front of the case supports a 120 or 140 mm fan.
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On this side, you've got a little bit more ventilation near the graphics card.
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And then, let's go ahead and open this bad boy up. They did not waste, as far
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as I can tell, pretty much a single millimeter on this case. Also, a very
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early sample, so don't judge it based on that. I can't get it apart. So, I'm
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going to show you guys like exactly what's going on here. So, you've got two
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2 and 1/2 in drive mounts on the top. So, you go ahead and put a screw through
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the top here and they sit on the underside here just above the graphics
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card and just to the side of the power supply. You've got another 3 and 1/2 in
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drive mount on the bottom. So, this has got the holes here. You go ahead and
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mount that on the bottom right next to the motherboard. So, there's it looks
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like there's almost no space. It's almost touching the motherboard right
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there. In the front, you can see that 120 mm 140 mm mount. And then you might
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be looking at this going, "Well, hold on a second. If the power supply goes all the way down to here, I'm not going to
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have any room for a decent CPU cooler." That is exactly why they wanted the the
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extra space for that 140 mil fan in the front. You can actually put an AIO
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liquid cooler in here. There's another little funny thing about the front as
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well. So, there's you can see the dust filter here. You can also see a cutout
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in the front to allow this case to accept up to a 10 and 1/2 in graphics
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card. So you could feasibly put a GTX Titan Black Edition into a case that has
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the same internal volume as the Cooler Master Elite 110. A case that's limited
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to I think it's a 7 and 1/2 in graphics card max. Not a tiny bit of wasted
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space. And uh but just in case you know you need a little bit of uh help with
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cable management given that there's almost no space in it, they've also updated their Strider S series. So last
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year they made them shorter than ever in spite of the fully modular interface.
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This year they're making them even shorter than that. Okay, so it's not the
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most exciting sounding thing in the world, but another centimeter here is
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another little bit of more cable management room you're going to have to fit your system into this case. So, I
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think that pretty much wraps it up for the highlights of the Silverstone suite here, guys. I do want to do a special
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call out for our sponsors, Phantom Glass. These guys make darn good screen
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extremely scratch resistant. Totally awesome stuff. Store.fantom.class. We'll have that
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linked in the video description. Also, a shout out to HyperX. We wouldn't be here
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without them. They've got a great YouTube channel with lots of great gaming content these days. You guys are
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going to want to check that out as well by clicking on the little button. Also,
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since you're down there, make sure you click subscribe if you haven't already so you don't miss any of our CES 2015
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content.