Just a very quick look at the GD09 case from Silverstone. The case at just under £50 is very good for this price range. I'm using it to put together a htpc from my older parts which are still useful. It will look a lot better next to / under the tv than the huge tower case the main system is being taken from. The case is higher than ML03b in order to accommodate the full size psu and full size expansion cards. The case is the same width as the ML03b which holds a Mini ATX and full size atx psu. This case is also about 1 inch longer which is mainly the faceplate.
So the parts going into the GD09 are:
Gigabyte X38-DS5 (full size ATX motherboard)
Q6600 (overclocked to 3.00 at stock volts 1.275)
8gb DDr2 (4-4-4-12 @2.1v)
Zalman 9500 cpu cooler
Tagan 480w PSU (had this since it was used on barton AthlonXP system.)
Radeon 3870 (old but will do just fine for what this box will be used for) (Catalyst 13.9 Legacy driver)
Compro T200 (freeview tv card)
Samsung 1tb F1 HD (Sata)
Samsung SH-S182 DVD Writer (IDE)
[url=http://postimg.org/image/ocw9ufxer/]
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There is plenty of room for multiple gfx cards and maybe some long cards. My powercolour 290 pcs+ just about fits. The psu comes with a tonne of cables attached and thankfully there is room in the case to hold em. The case comes cabled for USB3, but as my old system is only cable of USB2, I have had to order an adaptor to convert the USB3 pinout to usb2 for this motherboard.
There is a lot of room under the cdrom bay and even with a hd hanging under it, there is plenty of room for tall ram. You can get 2 3.5 hd's under the cd bay, 1 placed on its side up against the front of the case and one directly under the cd bay. There is also screw holes for a 2.5 drive on the left side in front of psu. The case comes with one Silverstone fan which is quiet (Rated at 900rpm and not audible over other fans). 2 nzxt blue with 7v limiter fill the remaining fan slots. I have not decided if I will add 2 80mm fans yet at the back. The fans are all intakes and the case comes with removable fan filters on the intakes which make em easy to clean.
The Zalman 9500 cool's really well. Humming away in prime95, the temps are not crossing 52 deg c. (@3000ghz stock volts 1.275). This heatsink was formally used to cool my Athlon64 3800 X2. Its certainly audible when going full speed, but it wont do this in general use and the system as a whole is reasonably quiet. Due to the big heatsink, I couldn't but the drive bay in with the drive screwed on so I have had to put the drive in after the bay is screwed in which means the dvd drive is only screwed to one side of it. I hope it doesn't vibrate to much.
A fair bit of blood and sweat went into this build as I managed to gain multiple cuts on my hands
The Motherboard backing plate was very difficult to get it to clip in and required a fair bit of pressure and a bit of bending. Once its in, its well and truly in. The lid has ventilation over the card slot area which is very welcome. the ML03b case does not have any ventilation and the gfx card fan has to work overtime in that case.
All in all, its a fairly spacious case and very well priced. Enough hd mounts for the average user, and in my case it will be streaming files across the network anyway. It's plenty big enough to work as a game pc as well. If I was buying all new parts, I would have course go for an itx size system or cube for htpc purpose, but this case allows be to reuse all my old parts (apart from the case it self) without spending very much. Oneday I will put a system together using Silverstone ML06b, maybe paired up with an amd apu based system.
So the parts going into the GD09 are:
Gigabyte X38-DS5 (full size ATX motherboard)
Q6600 (overclocked to 3.00 at stock volts 1.275)
8gb DDr2 (4-4-4-12 @2.1v)
Zalman 9500 cpu cooler
Tagan 480w PSU (had this since it was used on barton AthlonXP system.)
Radeon 3870 (old but will do just fine for what this box will be used for) (Catalyst 13.9 Legacy driver)
Compro T200 (freeview tv card)
Samsung 1tb F1 HD (Sata)
Samsung SH-S182 DVD Writer (IDE)
[url=http://postimg.org/image/ocw9ufxer/] [/url] There is plenty of room for multiple gfx cards and maybe some long cards. My powercolour 290 pcs+ just about fits. The psu comes with a tonne of cables attached and thankfully there is room in the case to hold em. The case comes cabled for USB3, but as my old system is only cable of USB2, I have had to order an adaptor to convert the USB3 pinout to usb2 for this motherboard.
There is a lot of room under the cdrom bay and even with a hd hanging under it, there is plenty of room for tall ram. You can get 2 3.5 hd's under the cd bay, 1 placed on its side up against the front of the case and one directly under the cd bay. There is also screw holes for a 2.5 drive on the left side in front of psu. The case comes with one Silverstone fan which is quiet (Rated at 900rpm and not audible over other fans). 2 nzxt blue with 7v limiter fill the remaining fan slots. I have not decided if I will add 2 80mm fans yet at the back. The fans are all intakes and the case comes with removable fan filters on the intakes which make em easy to clean.
The Zalman 9500 cool's really well. Humming away in prime95, the temps are not crossing 52 deg c. (@3000ghz stock volts 1.275). This heatsink was formally used to cool my Athlon64 3800 X2. Its certainly audible when going full speed, but it wont do this in general use and the system as a whole is reasonably quiet. Due to the big heatsink, I couldn't but the drive bay in with the drive screwed on so I have had to put the drive in after the bay is screwed in which means the dvd drive is only screwed to one side of it. I hope it doesn't vibrate to much.
A fair bit of blood and sweat went into this build as I managed to gain multiple cuts on my hands
The Motherboard backing plate was very difficult to get it to clip in and required a fair bit of pressure and a bit of bending. Once its in, its well and truly in. The lid has ventilation over the card slot area which is very welcome. the ML03b case does not have any ventilation and the gfx card fan has to work overtime in that case.All in all, its a fairly spacious case and very well priced. Enough hd mounts for the average user, and in my case it will be streaming files across the network anyway. It's plenty big enough to work as a game pc as well. If I was buying all new parts, I would have course go for an itx size system or cube for htpc purpose, but this case allows be to reuse all my old parts (apart from the case it self) without spending very much. Oneday I will put a system together using Silverstone ML06b, maybe paired up with an amd apu based system.
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