SilverStone DS380 Review

Up Close: Exterior

| Source: Silverstone Price: £110-120 Author: Gary Wain

Up Close: Exterior

As with a great many things in life that look at first view to be rather plain and simple there's quite a lot more going on here than initially meets the eye. So sit up straight and pay attention. The whole enclosure measures just 211mm (W) x 285mm (H) x 360mm (D), bringing it in at a total capacity of just 21.6 liters. In real terms it looks and feels smaller than any of the Prodigy based cases, and so it should as it's smaller in pretty much all regards. The case design is definitely from the minimalist school and looks mature and bespoke on the desk beside you, as it would in just about any setting. The majority of the case and the chassis is Steel, but Silverstone have reserved Aluminium for the front door, which is otherwise plain aside from the power buttons and activity lights. As we'll see later Silverstone include various stickers to customise the front of case appearance, leaving it very much up to the end user to decide on the look they want.

Up on the roof there's a vent with an externally removable magnetic filter, although no fan or fan mounts are provided in this location

The left hand side of the case also has a magnetically attached mesh filter, this time protecting the 2x120mm fans behind it. Over on the opposite side of the case we find a simple hex key lock with two keys provided. A nice touch if you're planning this as a server or NAS box and don't want inquisitive or malicious fingers finding their way past the door to the power button or to the drives hidden behind.

"Finding their way to the power button" we hear you say, "but that's located on the exterior of the door front you muppet", "they don't need to open the door to mess with things". Ah, would that it were so simple. Those chaps at Silverstone have employed the age old ploy of enabling a lock off of the external power button by means of engaging a slider from the inside of the door. It's also actually possible to dim down the intensity of the power and reset LED intensity in such a way as it can't be externally meddled with.

Opening up the beautifully machined; hairline brushed, Aluminium door reveals more drive bays than you would have thought possible. Each of these drawers is able to accept either a 3.5" or 2.5" dive with either SATA or SAS hot swap capabilities. That means that if you opt for 4TB drives you have a potential 32TB of storage on hand. What ever way you look at it that's one heck of a lot of "video" downloads. We think SilverStone may just about have it covered there.

The view round the back gives the first impression that the interior of the case might not be the same black as the exterior, which in a utilitarian case such as this is to be expected. The small PSU cut out also informs us of this cases inability to accept the fully fledged ATX PSU, instead requiring the smaller SFX PSUs. These can be had for just a bit more than the standard ATX units, but given that the width was available and it would have only taken a smidge more height we would have liked to have seen ATX PSU support. The base of the case is fairly sterile aside form four basic feet and asset of screws which when released help to remove internal components.

1 - Introduction and Technical Specification 2 - Up Close: Exterior 3 - Up Close: Interior 4 - The Build 5 - Conclusion «Prev 1 2 3 4 5 Next»

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