SilverStone Grandia Series GD07 HTPC Case Review

Hardware Installation (Cont’d)

Graphics Card

The SilverStone GD07 HTPC enclosure is designed to accept one or more high-end graphics adapters up to 13.6” in length. Note however that any graphics card that is more than ~9” long will extend into the central 3.5” HDD area of the removable drive cage and take up one or more 3.5” HDD locations.

With just one graphics card installed (GTX 9800, 10.6’’, 270mm long) there is still plenty of room for three 3.5” drives in the HDD cage.  The clearance between the back PCI-E power connectors and the top edge of the drive cage is a little tight as you can see in the photo above but still very workable.

Power Supply

The GD07 HTPC enclosure is designed to mount a standard ATX power supply.  For this build we used a SilverStone Strider Gold Evolution 1000W modular power supply.  The PSU slips into position and is secured to the back panel with four screws. 

There is plenty of room to install a large (meaning long ~180mm) power supply but as in most cases cable management can get tricky.  I highly recommend keeping the two 5.25” drive bays open in front of the PSU. This area is almost mandatory for routing cables and keeping things neat and otherwise out of the way, especially if you are using a full-size ATX mobo instead of a Micro-ATX.

Removable drive cage

The SilverStone GD07 removable drive cage is designed to mount up to four 5.25” devices, four 3.5” HDDs, and two 2.5” SSD/HDDs. For this build we installed an Asus Blu-ray ODD, a 2.5” SSD inside a SilverStone SDP08 3.5" to 2.5" Bay Converter, and two multi-terabyte 3.5” HDDs. Once all the drives are mounted in the drive cage you theoretically just drop it into position but in reality you have to do a little wiggling and angling to get it seated into position.  We followed our own advice and left the two 5.25” bays in front of the PSU open.

Fans and Case Cooling

The SilverStone Grandia Series GD07 HTPC enclosure comes with three 120mm fans pre-installed.  Two are located on the bottom and one on the side near the CPU area.  All three fans blow air “in”, which creates positive air pressure inside the case and helps keep dust out.  These are low-speed fans made by Honghua (HA1225L 12SA-Z) that are rated at 1,200 rpm, 12 VDC, 0.33A.

I also installed two SilverStone FN81 80mm fans on the rear panel blowing out.  These fans are also manufactured by Honghua (HA8025L 12SA-Z) and rated at 2,050 rpm, 23.6 CFM, 12 VDC, 0.11A.

The following table shows the sound pressure level readings for two different combinations of fans at three different speeds.  At full speed (12 VDC) the overall fan noise was noticeable but produced excellent airflow through the GD07 case. Slowing the fans down by under-volting them really quieted things down while still keeping some air moving.  At 5 VDC, even with all five fans running, the GD07 was virtually silent.  SPL were measured 3’ from the front of the enclosure with a background noise level of ~27 dBA.