SilverStone Fortress FT01 Very stylish all-aluminum case

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 02.09.2009 Manufacturer: SilverStone Product Group: System enclosures In English Suomeksi

Inside continues

The positive pressure with the dust filters may sound like the way to go, but there's a problem. While the front dust filter is easy to remove (albeit requires opening the side panel) the top filter is blocked by a zip tie anchor and the 5,25" cage. Certainly a flaw from SilverStone.

Another detail in the internals of the case that doesn't please me is the use of normal screws on the card slots. From a case in this price range I'd expect either thumb screws or some nicely working tool free mechanism for locking the cards in place.

Behind the motherboard tray there's not much to be seen. One of the features the case appears to lack is proper cable management. There are some small holes for S-ATA and front panel cables to pass through, but for the thicker 24-pin ATX and 8-pin power there just isn't enough room behind the motherboard tray. At least I'd like to see some hooks for zip ties here, as well as a hole on the motherboard tray for installing the CPU cooler back plates.

Installation

For a mid-tower case the FT01 is rather large, which also shows in the installation. Everything fits in place with ease, and there weren't any case-related issues during the installation. Really the only problem here was the lack of cable management, and the non-modular ST40NF power supply, which together caused a terrible mess at the bottom of the case.

The hard drive installation is the only part of installation that was out-of-ordinary in any way, so here's how it happens. The case comes with seven plastic sledges, also fitted with rubber grommets to prevent any vibrations. The hard drive is screwed in place with four long screws, and then the sledge is inserted into the cage. As said earlier, the case comes with one CP05 hot-swap rear plane, but additional CP05's can be bought if needed.

Now at this stage it's worth mentioning that we actually used two different motherboards and power supplies in the review, first there's the ABIT IP35 ATX-motherboard you can see in the pictures, and which was only used to see how well an ATX-board fits in the case. After the initial installation with the IP35 and SilverStone DA700 power supply, the setup was swapped for the temperature and noise tests.

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