SilverStone Aluminum/Steel Micro ATX HTPC Computer Case GD05B (Black)

Absolutely like this case. Top-notch quality and craftsmanship. Super silent, fantastic design for cable management.

My build for those who wonder what will fit:

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-800GMA-UD2H Micro-ATX
CPU: AMD Athlon II X3 3.0 Ghz
Scythe Huge Shuriken 120mm low profile heat sink & cooling fan ( Fit easily )
Memory: G-Skill Rip Jaws 2x2gb DDR3 1600Mhz ( Placed in outer two slots )( You could get two more in slots 1 & 2 if you place them in before mounting heat sink and cooling fan. ) ( Nothing any taller than Rip Jaws will fit slots 1 & 2 with the Shuriken)
Hard Drives: Crucial 64 gb SSD ( 6gb/s Sata III ) boot drive, Western Digital 500gb AVP hard drive ( 3gb/s )storage
Power Give: Seasonic X-Series 560W Modular ( Highly recommend )
Optical Drive: Lite-On Blu-ray drive
TV Tuner Card: Hauppage 2250 Dual TV Tuner Card
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit

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This case is exactly what I was looking for. It is very stylish, and is perfectly sized too. It fits in very well with my other components, being nearly exactly the same size as my Yamaha Receiver.

I have been looking for a HTPC case for about a year now, have looked at and read reviews on a plethora. I took a leap with this case, partially because of the reviews, but also because I was tired of looking. Man did I come out on top. It does not have any of the bells and whistles of a lot of the HTPC cases out there, but who really uses any of those features anyways? Volume knob on a case, lcd show? Most people just end up complaining about them. The case layout was fine for me. I was not building a super high end PC as I will be using it primarily for movies, so i do not have any oversized extravagant components. If you do, you may run into problems with space.

Airflow and noise were a fantastic concern of mine. This was one of the reasons I finished up going for this terrible boy. Most of the other “nice”, more expensive cases came with a link 80mm fans, and you know they are going to be way too loud tiresome to keep you system cool, and you’re eventually going to have to mod the case to add better quiter fans. The GD05 comes stock wth three silent 120mm fans that do an brilliant job of cooling and maximizing airflow. The HTPC is in a smallish enclosure with restricted airflow, and so far these fans have done an brilliant job.

There is not much info out there about the CD/DVD tray difference between the GD04 and the GD05. I finished up going with the GD05 because my brother has a case with the fold down door, and it has caused him nothing but problems. I sought after to stay away from that, and was fine with the look of the drive mounted and showing on the front of the case. I have a black drive, and it really looks excellent.

Some people may complain about the option of only having space for 2 3.5″ hard drives, but to be honest who is really going to install more than that in the case itself. I have 1 drive running the OS, and one as storage. If sought after more I would buy a NAS box. Keep the noise level down, and run the drives in RAID as back up.

If you have been looking at cases for a while, you can’t go incorrect with this on. I am extremely pleased with it and for me, can’t reckon of any cons.

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Silverstone did an brilliant job with this case. It has fantastic airflow, it’s roomy for its design, and it looks absolutely gorgeous albeit simplistic. The case comes complete with small rubber feet for your PSU, some ties for cable management and plenty of extra screws.

If you look inside the case, you’ll find that they not only provided places to tie down your cables, but they even provided preinstalled grommets for your 3.5 drives in peacefulness to dampen sound. Lot’s of bang for your buck to be had in this small beauty.

As with any design, there are a few flaws and this case’s flaws are in a few oversights in its design. First off, when you are looking at the front of the case with the top open, you’ll notice that the PSU attaches on the left hand side directly underneath where the hard drives attach which works well for attaching the SATA connectors to them. The issue is that that puts it quite a distance from the P4 PSU connector on the motherboard which is on the front right on most motherboards. The motherboards are designed like that because in a tower, the right side (looking from front to backplane) is oriented towards the top of the PC where the power give is. In peacefulness to get around this, you have to either have a 19.2′ (roughly) P4 cable from your power give or an additional room in peacefulness to route it around the board instead of having to stretch it across the board.

The second flaw I found was the fact that there are 2 LED’s (power and hard drive) and only one LED hole in peacefulness for the light to shine through. I guess that wouldn’t be so terrible except for the fact that they are the same affect (blue) and it’s hard to tell when your drive is being accessed.

Another thing to note about this case is that it is steel and plastic with a thin aluminum skin over the plastic. The thing is HEAVY if you are used to aluminum cases.

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