CoolerMaster Silencio 352 Review

 

Up Close:  Interior 

As you might imagine from a case this size there’s not exactly oodles of room in here.  That said, taking into account that it will only be accepting m-ATX and mini-ITX, things are well proportioned.  There’s a reasonable sized CPU cut out and two good sized vertical cable management holes.  In addition to this, a large aperture runs practically the full length of the base of the case, starting adjecant to the PSU and finishing at the front.  This should make bringing cables through a breeze but could potentially make things look a little messy or induce a builder to be lazy.  Petite though it may be, the 352 is still able to take GPUs up to 355mm in length and CPU tower coolers up to 155mm.  At he front there’s a bay for a single 5.25″ drive under slung with a 3/5″ bay.  This 3.5″ bay is removable as we’ll see later when we come to the build section. 

    

 

A single CoolerMaster XtraFlo 120mm fan sits on intake duty behind the meshed filter panel.  There’s space below for another if you wish, but being a slim case there’s no 140mm option here.  The 3.5″ drive rack is mounted slightly inboard of the fan area so as not to obscure airflow, and is able to house up to 3×3.5″ drives.  There is also a series of rounded key hole shaped slots in the interior of the side panel, these are in fact mounting holes for a pair of 2.5″ drives.

     

 

Mounted on 4 rubber topped dimples the PSU is afforded a clean supply of air courtesy of a decent sized meshed and filtered floor.  Further up the rear of the case we find four vented PCI covers (always a strange choice for a “silent” case) and a single 120mm XtraFlo fan on extract.

     

 

Turning the case around to look at the rear we’re greeted with a bit of a mixed bag.  Ok, we’ve got a very generous 14 cable tie points and what at first view appears to be a handy 23mm of space back here.

       

 

But alas all is not as it at first appears.  The above measurement was taken in the bottom right hand corner of the case where there is something of a handy rebate.  The rest of the rear area actually only has a very miserly 8mm, this figure of course will shrink when we take into account the sound absorbing padding on the inside of the door panel.  Added to this we will also have to account for the rolled steel bar which runs horizontally across the case, over which all cables must out of necessity pass.  We just hope the bulges in the ide panels will be enough to get the job done back here. 

     

 

We’d usually devote a whole page to the “in the Nip” section, but as removing the front panel and door section which comes away easily revealing the metal front chassis and front I/O panel we’ve keep it in this section

     

 

At the top there’s the apertures for the 5.25″ and 3.5″ bays, below which we find the front I/O panel and metal grill for the front fan mounting area.  And what’s this we spy?  slotted fan mounting holes!  This can mean only one thing, but surely not in a case this size?