Silverstone GD05 Case review
I recently purchased a Silverstone GD05 case, this is a mATX case which is sold without a powersupply. It’s relatively pricey ( 80GBP ). Here are my notes on the case.
It’s pretty bulky for a desktop case by modern standards but there isn’t too much wasted space internally.
There are three large internal case fans, which given their size are surprisingly quiet. I found it a little odd that one of the case fans is directly behind the 5.25″ drive bay, pushing air into a flat sheet of metal. Another curious design decision is that the power supply fan inlet in under the case. All the fans are sucking air into the case the air gets blown out of the back and top of the case. One fan can be controlled by the motherboard, for the others an adapter is supplied:
However this means they run at full speed all the time. In my case the fan connected to the motherboard is running significantly slower. However I’m currently only using the on board video. With a decent modern GPU or 2 installed you might find the cooling gets pushed a little harder.
It was a bit of a struggle getting the ATX port faceplate in, and even when installed it bulges out in an unsatisfying manner:
Another curious thing is the PCI faceplate mounted directly above the PSU. I suppose this could be for installing external PCI or eSATA ports?
Overall it’s a reasonable case, there’s enough space for a powerful desktop without it being a full tower. The build quality is “ok” but I’d hoped for more for 80 quid. I hate the “silver effect” buttons of the front. I’d like to find a standard PC case with the build quality of a Mac at a reasonable price, but they don’t seem to exist…
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