Silverstone Kublai KL04 Mid-Tower Chassis Review

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmgEYwgANr0[/youtube]

This is going to be a bit of a marmite case for the consumer, as some are going to love it and others are truly going to hate it. Sadly I’m more of the latter than the former and most of it comes down to the style. It looks very robust but on the same hand, can be considered quite bulky and very plain and that’s exactly how I was perceiving it. It all started with the optical drive bays that insists on the drives being forced back and not sitting flush with the drive bay covers.

The next aspect came down to the fan grill panel covers which seemed very stiff and didn’t allow seems as fluid as things should have been. It led to a clunky type feeling when removing and refitting the panel covers and this quality was replicated underneath with the extra dust filters. They slide under the chassis and allow for dust to be caught from the power supply, but they are extremely tight which leads to the plastic frame of the filter to be grated like a piece of cheese.

The inside of the case has a lot of room for expansion cards and allows for a huge array of hard drives and SSDs but lacks room to breathe around the CPU socket and power supply location. If using a larger power supply, you will be forced to remove the 2.5″ cage and either discard it completely, or to install it into the 9-bay 3.5″ drive cage, thus leaving you with less room for your 3.5″ devices, which begs the question as to why you’d buy this case if that is your primary goal, in having space for mass amounts of drives. A nice feature is the fact that the 3.5″ drive cage is removable and also includes foam padding to assist with vibration and to help protect the drives.

The other cause for concern when it comes to space is the CPU socket, which does seem very limited if installing a large air cooler or even watercooling such as the closed loop Antec Kuhler 920 that we used. The space around the rear of the board is very limited once installed and we can’t see a mass amount of room if wanting to go down the custom loop route either.

One thing that does seem to be consistent in this chassis is the overall build quality, and I believe that most of that is down to the design. It’s all very sturdy and seems well built, but I can’t help but wonder if things have been sacrificed, just to give a standard case some extra room for hard drives and the styling has taken a back seat of sorts.

The biggest upside to this case that I can see is the room available for cable management, which this case really does cater for. When installing our system, we were greeted with a mass amount of cut-outs for passing cables through, and a slightly hidden, indented panel on the right side of the case, located to the side of the power supply. We were able to manoeuvre  a lot of our cables to give good ventilation and a neat and tidy look too.

If you aren’t keen on the design, Silverstone have provided an alternative with the Temjin TJ04-E which allows for a nicer exterior, better cable management features and even an included hard drive cooler, which is all good in our books, but we do pray these aren’t just gimmicks and actually provide something to redeem from what has been taken away from the Kublai KL04.

So as you’ve probably gathered, this case hasn’t really won my heart and has broken some kind of image that I had of Silverstone as I do believe that they make some fantastic cases, but sadly this isn’t one of them. With that in mind, we do have to look at every factor and at £94.85, I honestly feel that this is one of the worst cases on the market. Now I know that Silverstone aren’t going to like this, and like many manufacturers will insist that we pull the review, but we have to remain unbiased and impartial to all the politics and that’s why we believe in saying how it is and we have to be honest and hopefully Silverstone will also respect our integrity and see the truth in what we’re saying about this case.

Be sure to check out our video above which gives a bit more detail into things and maybe that will give a clearer understanding on our feelings on this case.