Silverstone Kublai KL04 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

Building our system into the KL04 was nothing short of a nightmare to say the least. This is partly down to the case, and partly down to the power supply that was used, but we’re touch on that more in a short while. The whole system, even though quite sparse was very cramped inside the chassis, ranging from the cooler to the graphics and the orientation of the storage devices.

The aspect of the case that was impressive to me was the opposite side, where we can get a good look at the cable tidying opportunities. The panel at the bottom arks inwards allowing for a lot of the bigger cables to be tucked away, with a relatively clean aspect, allowing for good ventilation and a neat look.

Due to the size of the case, things are quite restricted when installing a closed loop system, like our Kuhler 920 from Antec. The fan and part of the radiator actually overlap CPU block which could be quite troublesome for ventilation or if you are planning on using an X79 based system with memory slots either side of the CPU socket.

Another area that we found quite troublesome was the optical and hard drive bay locations. We wanted to keep cable mess to a minimum and with that in mind, we had to move our drives around several times to get a good placement for use of one SATA power connector. This led to some problems as the prime location for the 3.5″ drive was right in front of our Radeon 7970, but on the bright side, it all still managed to fit.

Our 2.5″ SSD managed to fit snug and secure down the bottom in the removable drive cage, though to remove it means gaining access to the bottom of the case and removing a dust filter partly to get the required access to the screws.

When installing the power supply, you will be quite restricted for larger units if hoping to use one and to utilise the 2.5″ drive cage at the same time. There is a facility for removing the 2.5″ drive cage if you wish, and Silverstone bundle an adapter so that you can position your SSD or other smaller drives in a different location, but only one adapter comes included for this use. Cable management for the power supply is very handy with a good sized cut-out located near to the power supply location.

With the system has been powered up, the front of the case gives a subtle glow around the power and reset buttons but this is the only LED based feature on the whole of the chassis.