Cooler Master Silencio 452 Review

Stripped

As always when we get hold of a case we don’t just give it a cursory glance.  Nope, here at OC3D we like to strip things down and have a really good look at them.  You’d be surprised what you find sometimes.  With the 452 the task is fairly simple, owing to the only removable exterior component being the front panel.  Take care when doing this though as not only are the front I/O components hard wired to it , but there’s a short lead earth screwed to the case chassis in the top right hand corner.  Too vigorous a tug, without the knowledge of it’s attachment could lead to you having to re wire it.

     

 

Having already removed the upper drive bays the lower section can be taken out in one piece by means of several screws.  Doing so opens up the interior of the 452 quite considerably and has our thoughts turned to those of monster rads.

     

 

Although this case does have support for 240mm rads, it’s not here in the interior of the case, but between the front panel and the case door, as we’ll see when we come to the next section.  Bit of a shame really as with this much space on offer it would have been great to have been able to drop a 80mm thick rad in here with fans in push pull.  If you’re absolutely determined, we think it can be done with the minimal of modding, for the most part either grinding off or folding over the HDD support rails that protrude from the posterior edge of the front panel as these will prevent the rad from seating.

     

 

With the solitary front fan removed the 452 reveals that it’s also able to take anything up to a pair of 140s in the front.  The large odd shaped aperture towards the top of this panel had us wondering for a moment, until we twigged it was there to enable the pump/contact plate assembly of AIOs to be passed through into the interior of the case.