SilverStone Grandia GD03 Stylish HTPC Case

Author: Jouni 'Jipa' Vasama Published: 07.09.2009 Manufacturer: SilverStone Product Group: System enclosures In English Suomeksi

Installation

• CPU: Intel C2Q Q9450 (2,66 GHz, 1,26 V, boxed cooler)
• Motherboard: Abit IP35
• Memory: Team Group 2*2 GB Dark Xtreem
• Graphics: Sapphire HD4870
• HDD: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB
• PSU: SilverStone ST40NF
• Case: Being tested...

The internal layout does not work well with long power supplies. With the hot-swap back plane installed, there's only 22 centimeters of space for the power supply. Without hard drives in the cage there's room for expansion cards of up to 26,5 cm, so you can also throw in a pretty powerful graphic card if you want to play on your HTPC.

Again the installation was pretty straight forward, and all the parts fit in their places with ease. Anyway with our non-modular power supply, routing the cables became a real nightmare. With only one HDD in the system, there's luckily plenty of room for a long graphics card, and still some room left to stuff the excess cables into. However if you with to install all the seven HDDs, it WILL get pretty damn cramped inside, and you will not be able to fit in a powerful gaming graphics card. Four HDDs and a gaming GPU is still a pretty nice achievement for a HTPC-case.

Talking of lots of HDDs, I have to point out some concerns about the ventilation. With no additional fans on the front, there's hardly any airflow through the hard drive cage. One flaw that I can see is the ventilation hole on the right side panel. Without a fan here, it just acts as an intake to the rear fans, short-circuiting the cooling in a sense. I'd like to see this hole blocked with something when there's no fan installed.

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