Introduction
Cooler Master seem to be hitting the market hard with a range of great new products this year, we’ve seen the incredible Aluminium range peripherals get released, while their other gaming peripherals are still winning awards, they launched one of the best new cases of the year with the budget friendly N200, the impressive new HAF chassis models are doing well and their big hitters such as the Cosmos range are going strong, so what else could Cooler Master possibly need to do to improve their position in our minds? How about a new Silencio chassis, maybe that will do it.
I’ve always loved the older Silencio chassis models, they’ve always been well priced, well made and offered a fair few features such as sleek looks, good compatibility along with a little sound proofing and for a mid market chassis, that’s usually more than enough to temp a system builder. The new one looks set to continue that trend by being affordable (around £50), being compact with an mATX form factor, offering noise dampening panels, having two fans included, support for water cooling, large CPU coolers, dual USB 3.0 ports and a built in SD Card reader, which is put simply, impressive for this kind of budget.
All that aside, it doesn’t matter how good the feature list is if the product looks and feels terrible, so lets get right into it and take a much closer look at what Cooler Master have to offer with the Silencio 350.
The box is fairly standard, featuring a nice high contrast image of the front panel and a quick run down of the main specification.
Around the back we have a lot more details on the component compatibility that shows off the HDD support, modular drive bays and max graphics card length, so far so good.
In the box I found a top panel fan cover, handy for those who don’t plan on using a top mounted fan but want a clean look and a little extra sound proofing.
I also found a simple user guide, a handy pile of cable ties, all the required screws and fittings, as well as a few stand-offs and an internal speaker.
Peter,
I just purchased this case! I purchased a mini ITX board since at first I was going to built a machine with a much smaller case, but instead opted for this to have future expandability.
Although Cooler Master allows you to fit a micro ATX and mini ITX board in here, the cutout behind the board is not shifted over enough to be centered more over the cpu backplate holes. All Noctua SecuFirm backplates just catch the end of the cutout to make contact with the case and add pressure to the board with a holler in place.
I noticed the water cooler you are using presumably has a backplate as well. I am curious to know what it looks like behind in the cutout behind your cpu – doe the backplate hit the case? I’m not too sure what to do – I took my Noctua cooler off for now and just put the push-pin intel cooler for now since there is no bulky backplate to catch the lip of that cutout. Need some advice! I emailed Cooler Master to let them know this might be a design flaw – saying they support mini ITX but not have the cutout to match is not right. What’s your opinion?
Thanks!
There’s not a great deal of MicroATX awesome out there without going into the weird and wonderful style of cases, this may be just what I’m looking for, the front cooling support etc makes it a prime candidate to still have a decent gaming spec whilst keeping it quiet. Where’s my wallet….
I notice all the fans are blowing air out of the case but there’s no fan blowing air into it. Isn’t that problematic?
It’s good for cooling but not the best for dust. back and top as exhaust and front as (filtered) intake is probably the best combination.