SilverStone RM51 5U Rackmountable Server Case Review

How Much Does it Cost?

The is available from Amazon in the UK here or the US here. Unfortunately, at the time of writing it has just sold out in both stores, but it comes with an MSRP of USD $489.99. The price seems high, and it is, but taking from a comment on TPU, Silverstone themselves said “It is expensive mainly due to its much lower production volume compared to normal PC cases. You can’t tell from the photos, but it also uses thicker, higher quality metal than cheap rackmount cases.” and they’re not wrong, there’s a significant amount of metal in this case, it’s STRONG, and the engineering on it is to a much higher standard too, you get what you pay for. Those fans are £30 each as well, as just in fans, but again, they’re truly awesome fans.

Overview

Well, I don’t really have much to compare this to, so I won’t because really it stands on its own merits anyway. It’s a bloody big case, and for your typical PC gaming build, it makes little to no sense really. It is extremely versatile though, and any high-end motherboard, CPU cooler, graphics card or PSU I can think of will drop into this case with relative ease.

I love that it’s 5U rack-mountable, and the temptation to buy four of these, and put all my home computers and a custom NAS in them with a huge rack mount in the garage is tempting… but I’m not made of money, it’s just a cool idea. However, if you wanted to, you could, and that’s great. It also can be mounted vertically with a big set of feet and carry handles on it, making for a somewhat movable titan you can have in your workspace. However, it can be placed horizontally too, and I’m half tempted to get a big CRT monitor and plonk it right on top of the case for those retro vibes.

The overall support is impressive on this case, and I like that Silverstone kept it more focused on more common PC configurations, as it gives it surprisingly broad appeal. It’s well suited to building a server, rendering rig, or monster gaming PC. However, it’s not completely nuts on storage like many server cases, so if you wanted 24 hot swap SSD bays on the front, this isn’t the case for you. The trade-off is the pair of powerful, quiet, and impressive 180mm Air Penetrator fans and 360mm radiator support.

Should I Buy One?

Do you have a need for a truly monster-class PC? Dual socket motherboards, terabytes of RAM, triple graphics cards, dual PSUs, and loads of SSDs? Then today is your lucky day, as the RM51 is here! Sure, you can do all this for less than half the price in an E-ATX gaming case, but honestly, the build quality and engineering are worlds apart. This is as robust, practical and functional a case as you could ever need. Horizontally, vertically, or fitted into a rack, there’s not really anything this case can’t do.