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SilverStone SST-TJ05


Date
: 08/27/05 – 04:56:46 AM

Author
:

Category
: Cases

Page 1 : Index

Manufacturer
:SilverStone Tek

Price
: $170 / $149 (no LCD)

Many of us have heard of SilverStone before. As a matter of fact, we've looked at a number of their cases and a number of their heatsinks. There's absolutely no doubt that SilverStone is becoming one of the most popular brands out there. In today's episode, we're going to feature the
SilverStone SST-TJ05
!

The SST-TJ05 is a classic looking case, but according to SilverStone, there are a number of features it has that its competitors don't. Without any further ado, let's get started.

Page 2 : Package

The SST-TJ05 arrived via FedEx in its retail packaging. The front of the box has a very simple layout: company name to the top left, a large picture of the case's front to the right and a list of some features to the left.

On one side of the box are two small pictures of the case: one of the side panel and the other is an angled view of the interior and the front.

This same side lists some of the features in six different languages. A larger list of the specifications is available at the bottom of the other side.

Opening up the top of the box, we can lift out the entire case. Like all SilverStone products we've reviewed, this case is certainly well protected. A two inch Styrofoam shell surrounds the case in the middle of the box, away from any hazards.

Also lying inside the box is a simple leaflet, better known as the manual. This guide provides sufficient information and pictures to ensure you properly install your precious components.

Before we go any further, we'll give you a quick run down of the specifications.

Page 3 : Specifications

If you're interested in the specifications, we've made the chart from SilverStone available below.

Some special features:

We can see that this is one heavy case with a net weight of 13.45 KG! It's also a fairly deep case at over 60cm! I can't wait to take a good look at the body.

Here's what SilverStone has to say about their case:

Page 4 : Exterior

To me, the exterior of the case is just as important as the interior. In many aspects, the exterior is the first thing people will see. A poor finish on the case is not very appealing. I can safely say that even though this case is made of 0.8mm SECC, it has the look and feel and an aluminum box. The only difference is the increase in weight.

Immediately visible on the front of the case is the curved front bezel. Many companies have followed this trend in case styles: CoolerMaster's WaveMaster and Thermaltake's Tsunami to name two. SilverStone has made their wave almost two inches deep. The little arrow at the middle of the left edge locates where the door hinge is. We'll get to more of this in a little bit.

Pressing on the door, it'll unhinge and open up.

A closer look at the plastic hinge:

The door can only be swung a little past the 135 degree mark. A full 270 degrees would have been a very nice touch for if you have this case on your desk, the door will surely impede your access to your optical drives.

As an upgrade, you can opt to get the LCD display panel. I think it adds a very nice touch to the sleek look of the case.

Directly below the LCD panel is the SilverStone snowflake, followed by the power and reset buttons, and power and hard drive LEDs.

Although rarely visited by many readers, SilverStone has incorporated a few features to the side panel directly behind the motherboard.

At the far end, we can see a handle to help you remove the side panel. But closer up to the front, we have a number of features: fan mesh, four USB ports, FireWire, speaker and MIC.

Running along the other side of the case, we find the lock.

This lock is used to secure the front bezel. By unlocking it with the key, the front bezel will swing open. More on this later.

Jumping to the top of the case, we see the two shades of metal.

A closer look at the top and we see that the front bezel piece is held together by four screws.

From the side, we see a very large window. About a third of this window is covered by a specially designed fan bracket. The window is protected by a sheet of plastic on both sides to ensure no scratches during shipment. This is the second layer of protection as the entire case was placed in a plastic bag before shipment.

Going over to the back, SilverStone has made this case available without a power supply. It would have been
really
nice if SilverStone packaged this case with there killer SLI PSU! That would have made this one hot deal.
Instead, you're left on your own to provide the power supply.

Also noticable on the back is a large 120mm fan. This is actually the second fan as another is included up front, but more on that later. Nothing else really stands out. The expansion slot cover isn't missing, it just popped off during shipment.

Flipping the case over so we can see the bottom, SilverStone has included four rotating feet.

With the fine exterior covered, we're ready to take a look inside and take this case apart.

Page 5 : Interior

We'll start things off by removing the side panel.

As you can see, there is cooling for the hard drive, cooling for your expansion cards, and ventilation for your CPU by both the 120mm rear exhaust and with whatever power supply you may have used.

A closer look at the hard drive cage, a total of
eight
internal drives can be installed!

A thumb screw and a little tab hold the drive cage in place. By removing the thumb screw and lifting the tab, we can slide out the case.

A lot of holes for maximum airflow.

Directly behind the drive cage is a spot for an 80mm fan. The air pulled into the case by the fan will pass through a filter to ensure a clean breeze.

Moving up, we'll take a quick stop at a little sticker that tells you how to install the drives.

Or should I say that's INSATLL. :)

A quick look at the top and we see the four external 5.25" drives bays, two external 3.5" drive bays and the lonely internal 3.5" drive bay.

The side fan panel is hinged and fairly easy to move around.

Just pull on where it says "pull" and swing!

In the middle of the bracket are extendable arms. I can only assume they are to be extended out to support the expansion card.

If you're interested in completely removing the side fan panel, all you need to do is unclip it from the pivot point.

After that, just pull it out.

Being able to remove the side fan panel is a plus in my book. Not every case requires so much additional cooling.

One of the things I noticed when I swung out the side is a little switch at the back of the case.

What you're looking at is a security switch! If your motherboard supports one, you can hook this up and have it scream when someone opens up your case!

With the side fan panel out of the way, we can proceed to removing all the little accessories.

The first thing we have is a little guide on the LCD display unit.

Next we have a box full of optical drive rails.

But to compete with that box, SilverStone has a larger
tool box
installed directly into the case!

There are a ton of things inside this box: hard drive and floppy drive rails, mounting screws, speaker and keys.

The box is held down by screws, and if you don't like it, all you need to do is undo the screws from the bottom of the case.

The last bunch of accessories are the cables. There are
a lot
of cables. It can be a bit overwhelming, but each cable is carefully labeled.

Taking a look at the backside, we see that SilverStone has opted to put a grill on their 120mm fan. In addition, all of the expansion slots can be locked into place with the tool-less device! More on this when we do our install.

For those curious about the front, there's really not much to state.

Just plain metal.

Once again drawing our attention to the front of the case, we'll open up the front bezel. If you want to use the 3.5" external drives, you'll need to venture up here to remove the stock covers. First, we'll give you a picture of the bezel opened.

In addition to the 3.5" drive covers, you can see all sorts of connectors going to the front of the case.

One thing I noticed when I opened up the bezel was the loose ground wire!

I pulled out my screw driver and fixed this issue in about 30 seconds. :)

This cable was from the batch going to the side I/O panel.

Behind the bezel isn't really too much.

The only time you would ever need to venture back here was to clean the fan filter.

Other than that, there's no real party here. Closing up the bezel and locking it in place is the same as opening it. The only issue I noticed was that the bezel had to be pulled away from the motherboard to clear the 5.25" drive covers. I didn't realize this until I noticed I had scratched the corner of the drive cover.

Now that we've covered the inside and outside of the case, it's time to end this long page and get ready to install some hardware!

Page 6 : Installation

A new case makes an old computer new. I won't say that my case is exactly old, but when I get to toss all my components into a beauty like the TJ05, it sure feels new. Just wait until you check out the final picture.

The first thing to do in my install was to remove the generic I/O panel and bring in the K8SLI one. After that, I proceeded with installing the motherboard studs. Since this case can be used with a variety of motherboard styles, SilverStone has left you the job of installing the studs specific to your motherboard.

After that, I laid my motherboard on top and secured it with the provided screws. SilverStone has made a large number of screws and cardboard washers available.

Once the motherboard is in, you can see how a smaller motherboard like the K8SLI looks like a dwarf in this case!

The next step is installing the expansion cards. I had some difficulties with the tool-less device. It would seem as simple as sliding in your card and closing the lever. For whatever reason it was, something prevented me from sliding in the AOpen 6600-DV128LP. As a matter of fact, I also had issues with the PowerColor X700 Bravo! I ended up removing three screws from the back, taking out the entire device. I then popped in my one card and reinstalled the device to hold it in place.

Perhaps with a little patience, I would have been able to get the card in without pulling out the screw driver.

With the motherboard in place, it's time to start installing the hard drive, floppy drive and optical drive. Once again, SilverStone boasts a tool-less install. We'll see how good it really is.

Starting with the hard drive, you need to clip on two drive rails.

The next step is just to slide in the drive until the rails lock it into place.

For the optical drive and the floppy drive, you need to swing open the front bezel, so don't lose that key. From this point on, the install procedure is not really tool-less. You'll need a Philips screwdriver to remove the drive covers.

For the floppy drive, two screws need to be removed from the front bezel to clear up a path for the floppy drive. Once that is done, the rest of the procedure is tool-less. You once again need to find the drive rails, the blue ones, and line them up to the drive. Proceed with sliding in the drive until you can't slide any more!

The last drive we'll install is an optical drive. Another set of rails is provided for you. Again, remove the drive cover, install the rail and slide in the drive until it locks into place. It really doesn't get any easier.

Once the drives are in place, it's time to lock the bezel in place. I noticed there wasn't enough clearance and the bezel would catch and scratch the optical drive and remaining drive covers!

The only way to close the cover was to pull on the bezel until it clears the drives.

The last piece of hardware to install is the power supply. I've opted for the Antec TruePower 2.0. You can't go wrong with an award winning unit.

It's time to get all the cables in order!

SilverStone has preinstalled a clip for you to hook all your power supply cables.

Since the case is so deep, there's a lot of cable stretching. There's also enough space to tuck the cables away and keep everything "somewhat organized". The one real mistake SilverStone made was not including enough printed material for the LCD install. The included leaflet tells you how to control the panel, but you need to visit their online guide to figure out some of the finer details such as where some of the pins go. Lucky for me, I could easily jump to my laptop to download the guide while setting up the the thermal panel.

With the temperature probes, you just place those where the label tells you to. I taped the CPU probe to the side of the heatsink away from 120mm exhaust. I then tucked the system temperature probe to the back corner of the case by the window. The hard drive probe was just placed on top of the hard drive.

Some of the more complicated cable connections were for the front bezels hard drive and power LED to the LCD panel.

For 3-pin connectors, like the CPU fan, you just plug them right into the provided connector.

For the 4-pin molex connecting fans, such as exhaust and intake fans, SilverStone has provided special splitters to account for that. You just plug in the fan connector to the special molex which connects to the LCD panel via 3-pin connector.

The rest of the cabling is pretty simple and won't require any explanation. However, if you do run into problems just join our forums where you can find help.

With everything connected, here's what my mess looks like:

We'll slide the window back in and we get our first look at the completed system.

One of the fine details I noticed on the case was the cut they used on the side panel. Instead of a plain sheet of Plexiglas, SilverStone opted to add a little flavour. The window is cut at an angle so there are no sharp edges. I also think it adds that nice little touch most home made windows don't have.

We'll jump to the next page to do our testing.

Page 7 : Performance

We'll start this section with off with the system specifications:

To stress the system, I first powered on the machine and let it run at full load by executing RC5-72 and Folding@Home for three hours. After the three hour period was up, I read the temperatures from Dr. Speed and the three probes off the LCD thermal probes. once the numbers were recorded, I shut down RC5-72 and Folding@Home and let the system idle for another three hours. After this period, the same set of numbers were recorded.
Two sets of these tests were done, the first time with both intake and exhaust fans connected to the thermal probe and the second time with the intake and exhaust fan connected to the fan-only molex line from the Antec TrueBlue.
Here are the results:

When it comes to noise, the SilverStone fans can be real quiet or can kick up a storm to push out a lot of air. When the fans were connected to the LCD panel via 3-pin connector, I found them to be pretty loud. They were far too loud if you wanted the case to be beside you on the desk. It would have been nice if the LCD panel could adjust the RPM. For my personal use, I found leaving the 120mm fan connected to the Antec fan only line left me with a decent amount of air flow at a reasonably low dBA level.

The LCD panel is pretty simple to use. The provided manual gives you all the instructions for changing any of the options. We cycled through the alarm temperatures, they increase in intervals of five. As soon as we reach the peak value and cycled back to the lowest temperature, the alarm kicked into action. As I mentioned earlier, there's no RPM reading, and as you will see in the photos below, the RPM rating is specified as either Low or High. The temperature of the probes actually control the voltage that is supplied to the fan. The higher the temperature reading the higher the voltage to the fan.

Here are three different pictures cycling over from the CPU temperature to the Sys and then the HDD:

If there's anything to say about this LCD panel, it's the fact that the text is a touch on the small side. I also think the date and time could be removed and replaced with something else. Most people could just look at their monitor for the date and time, and if that's too much work, most offices have a clock and calendar stashed somewhere. Either way, the LCD panel is a very nice touch and certainly makes this case look different from the rest of the curvy bezels.

Page 8 : Conclusion

In the end, SilverStone has managed to engineer another fine looking case. Sure it's partly made out of steel, but that's because the case's aluminum front is very end heavy. Without the 0.8mm SECC, this case, and everything you own inside, would just flip right over!

While the case isn't completely perfect, complicated expansion card lock and not enough clearance for the front bezel to close, these shortcomings are masked by the great finish, large window and the sleek look of this case. If SilverStone decides to re-engineer a case with similar features, I hope they're able to make this a flawless case. Whether you buy it with or without the LCD panel, one thing's for sure: you're going to have a great chassis that you can reuse for many years.

Advantages

Sleek and stylish
Deep case to allow for the largest motherboards
Plenty of potential for cooling

Disadvantages

Couldn't install any expansion cards without removing locks
Front bezel would close on the edge of the drive covers

Overclockers Online would like to thank SilverStone for providing this case for review.