Introduction

Remember desktop cases? Up until 1995 or so, all cases were this shape. You put your monitor on top of it, and your keyboard in front of it. A couple of years later, tower cases were almost universal, so you either got a better desk, a monitor stand, or neck pain. 2 years further on, colours other than beige were becoming the norm. Now, it's very difficult to buy a case that's light & window free, and isn't silver or black. Now that a vanilla desktop is a rarity, you might want to consider such a case if you want to stand out from the crowd, or don't want to waste time undoing the "mods" provided by the manufacturer on your next project. From this perspective, has the Silverline Desktop got anything to offer?

Specs

• 43cm wide x 45cm deep x 14cm high
• 2 x 3.5" external bays
• 1x 3.5" internal bay
• 2 x 5.25" external bays
• 350W "Desktop" (mATX) PSU
• 2x 60mm case fan mounts - 1 x front and 1 x rear.
• Weight (PSU fitted): 6.5kg (14lb)

Packaging

The arrival of the case was like a short trip back in time: not long ago, every case came in a brown cardboard box like this. There's nothing wrong with that of course, but now that most cases are packed for retail display, the Silverline's box is something of an anachronism. It does the job though: the double thickness corrugated card and expanded polystyrene inserts ensured that the case arrived in perfect order, despite some external damage to the packaging.

From the Outside

Let's do a quick tour of the outside of the case:

The front bezel features cutouts for two 5.25" devices and two 3.5" devices, and a 1" case badge indent at the top left. Power and reset buttons, along with a green LED power indicator and a red HD activity LED are arranged vertically along the left edge of the bezel. The bezel is a push fit in the front of the case so is easily removed; it also features a removable "mustache" along the bottom, which is held on by two screws. This could be a useful feature when it comes to painting, as it would allow you to use a contrasting colour without masking. The quality and fit of the components is good, apart from the fit of the 3.5" bay blanking plates. There's nothing to locate them positively, so fitting them is a matter of trying to push them in evenly, and hopefully not too far. The plates have the annoying habit of disappearing into the case at the slightest provocation, necessitating removal of the front bezel to retrieve them.

The top and sides of the case are a single piece of folded steel, which is far from ideal if you regularly open a case. Fitting the cover involves simultaneously aligning tangs along five edges, which is a real pain until you get the technique right. The top of the cover is completely featureless, but both sides have token concessions to airflow. The left hand side features a series of vertical pressed slots which add up to a very tiny opening, and so can only really be looked at as decorative rather than functional. In the same way, the perforations on the right hand side will do very little for cooling.

The back panel looks like any other ATX case with the usual removable ps2/usb/parallel/serial port blanking plate, and seven PCI slots. The PCI blanking plates supplied are worth a mention: they are an extremely poor fit, and doing as little as looking askance at them has them pinging off into the case. Screwing the plates down should therefore be considered vital if you want to avoid spark-inducing moments. Due to the reduced height of the case, compromises have been made in the PSU and case fan provision departments: more on that later. Predictably, the underside of the case makes no concessions to appearance: it's all about function with the reinforcing pressings and indented standoff mounts.

To the Inside

Removing the top/side cover takes most of the strength out of the case; there is a reinforcing bar on the inside left side of the case, but it's not enough to stop the case from flexing on that side. The right hand side of the case is better, as the pressing that makes up the left hand side of the 5.25" drive mounts continues the full depth of the case. The front panel header leads (HDD LED, Power LED, speaker, power & reset buttons) are long enough to reach anywhere within the case.

Rattling around the case was a bag of bits, consisting of a pretty cheap looking ferrite ring, a 3" length of spiral wrap, a single cable tie and self-adhesive mount, plenty of motherboard standoffs, sundry screws, and a smaller bag of case screws. Unfortunately, there simply aren't enough of the fine pitch fasteners for drive fitting. The motherboard I used for the test build (a Gigabyte GA-7IXEH) is not a full size ATX board, but as you can see from the picture of it fitted, there is still plenty of room to fit a larger board. However, using two full length 5.25" drives with a recent full ATX board and three sticks of RAM there won't be room for both.

Drive Mounts

Fitting 5.25" devices is best done first, as the HDD cradle and FD cage cover the mounting holes of the 5.25" bays. The bays have the bare minimum of mounting holes, and although I had no problem with fitting a generic 16x DVDROM and a Benq 52x32x52 CDRW, this will no doubt be an issue when fitting less common devices, or if you want to stealth any drives. Drilling additional holes or filing slots would be required in those cases. Another gripe is that it's almost impossible to remove the internal blanking plates without first removing the front bezel.

The floppy drive cage is removable, but is of very poor quality. As well as being bent in the review sample, the catch is very flimsy, has sharp edges, is difficult to unlatch from the front panel. Even when fixed to the 5.25" cage via the four tabs and a screw fitting on the top right of the cage, it's far from secure. Mounting options are again very sparse: the cage doesn't feature the multitude of holes or slots that are the norm. While this won't be a problem with the average floppy drive, it could be a problem when fitting other 3.5" bay devices.

The hard drive mount consists of a removable steel pressing which is held on by four tabs which slot into the side of the 5.25" bays, and a single screw. As with the other drive mounts, the HDD cradle offers a very limited range of mounting options: I found there was only one way of fitting the drive. More holes, or slots would have been welcome here too. The HDD mounting is very secure, but being tucked out of the way makes for very poor cooling.