Silverstone Grandia GD01S - MXR ATX/mATX HTPC Chassis
The Internals - Silverstone GD01S "Grandia"
Published: 23rd March 2007 | Source: Silverstone | Price: |
The case is large inside with room for a full size ATX motherboard and 6 hard drives. However it all ends up getting quite hard to install and tight in the case once everything is in. I'll look at installation later but lets take a closer look at the internals now.
As you can see the interior has a fair amount of room to stash your hard drives and 2 optical 5.5" bays. Although there is a fairly decent amount of height to install a cooler there isn't enough room for a big cooler like my Scythe Infinity. This meant that I was back on the stock intel cooler for this review.
The drive bays are on a small stand that also hide the wires to the "optional" fans that you can fit to the case. The drive bay fits 6 drives in it on their side, "class leading" in Silverstone's words. Also worth noting the the fact that the drive bays have rubber moulding inside them to reduce vibration.
The drive bay slides out the same as the HDD drive bay enclosure, pretty nifty.
The drive bay comes out with 4 screws. It's worth noting that you have to take out the crossbar before you remove the bay.
Here's the drive bay slid out of it's place. Pretty neat especially considering the size of the case. The removable drive bays mean that you can install all of the equipment out of the case and fit it once everything is in.
There's a nice lot of room in the case to install of all the equipment once you've emptied out the drive bays. You can notice the large bundle of wires in the middle of the case.
The iMon wires are actually quite large so I'll have to see if I can hide them when everything is installed.
The case comes equipped with nice looking feet commonly found on high end media kit which is another nice touch.
The build quality of the case is certainly good, but the steel feel to the case really let's it own overall. Having taken a close look at the Silverstone TJ09, a few Lian Li's and at the more extreme end the OriginAE cases the Silverstone Grandia feels a little cheap. Now I say only a little cheap as it's certainly not badly built, it just lacks that extra quality feel that some other chassis I have come into contact with have.
Let's move onto installation.
Most Recent Comments
Looks nice 
Altho it is massive!!
Nice review I like the images of the LCD on the front
Altho it is massive!!
Nice review
I like the images of the LCD on the front Aye it is huge, but I spose it helps with thermal dissapation
Very pretty case!
Nice review dude, really nice read!
Nice review dude, really nice read!
Great review. Looks to big and too expensive for me though.
Nice work! It's always fun trying to squeeze everything into an HTPC case and then tidy the wiring. The inside looks quite spacious with everything installed and no doubt those 80mm fans help to keep the temperature reasonable as well.
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