SilverStone DS380 Review

The Build

Along with the usual bag-o-screws Silverstone bundle more than a few handy dandy accessories.  These include a selection of adhesive labels in order for you to annotate your drive drawers, A GPU support (actually not so sure how useful that one is), a blank to mask off a drive drawer if you opt to use a GPU and a rather nice adhesive case badge because thoughtfully Silverstone have left the case front bare so you, the end user, can chose whether to adorn it or not.  The instructions for the DS380 are pretty comprehensive, but again we feel the diagrams could do with being bigger, especially as there’s so much blank page around them.

     

 

As with the RVZ01, the DS380 requires that you use an SFX PSU, which is we have to say a bit of a shame.  Still this type of PSU isn’t the rarity it used to be, and we’re already seeing quite a few manufacturers bring out their own versions as the march towards SFF gains momentum.  We’ve put in an M-ITX motherboard, although the case is also able to take the less well known DTX boards.  We’ve also chosen to insert our basic ASUS EN 8800GT GPU to help demonstrate the limits and proportions of the case.  Remembering first and foremost that this is not a balls to the wall gaming case and although strictly speaking you could slot anything up to 11″ in length in here it’s unlikely you’re going to be strapping a monster GPU in here and generating huge amounts of heat, it is still important to note that the fan area of the GPU will be situated directly under the PSU so things aren’t exactly going to be frigid in that area.  Re-inserting the drive rack reduces access to the motherboard area, and if it were not for the hot swap capabilities of the assembly would make it very difficult indeed to attach all the required data connectors. as it is, you’re still going to have to ensure you connect everything at the motherboard end before screwing the rack in place.  It’s also the presence of this rack and the 4 bay SSD rack that limits the max height of CPU cooler to 57mm.

     

 

The HDD, SSD rack and the PSU location also limit the max thickness of the GPU to 4.38″ which as you can see below  with even our decidedly non chunky GPU things get fairly tight.  This would be a damning criticism if this were a pure gaming case, but it’s important to remember it’s not so our knickers remain untwisted.