SilverStone Technology Home Theater Computer Case with Aluminum Front Panel for E-ATX/ATX/Micro-ATX Motherboards GD08B

First I'll start by saying that I have as of this review built 6 HTPCs using this case in the last 4 months. I originally bought this to house my HTPC after I decided I no longer wanted a desktop tower sitting next to my entertainment center. With that as a limitation on my size choices I searched for weeks and kept coming across this case, but the price tag honestly scared me, since my last experience with a specifically designed case for an HTPC was less than stellar. But after comparing it to others, I kept coming back to it and eventually decided it would fit what I needed.**UPDATE: Since there seems to be an issue with people knowing the exact dimensions of this case they are: 440mm(W) x 175mm(H) x 425mm(D)or in inches: 17.3in(W) x 6.8in(H) x 16.7in(D)**UPDATE: Since My original Review I have now built 8 HTPCs with this case and none have had any issues.**UPDATE: Also something I forgot to mention, this case IS RACK MOUNTABLE... It has rack mounting points on the sides...So now on to the actual review:Pros:Space, lots and lots of space.Positive pressure design with filters.Very nice look, the case looks and acts well built.Aesthetics, it looks better than my receiver and other components, easily the best looking component in my home theater.Allows for full size components.Room for more hard drives than you could need.Removable Drive Cage with handles.Room for 10 Internal Hard Drives (Without adapters) (8) 3.5 Inch Bays (7 to the right of the 5.25 bays, 1 to the left) plus (2) 2.5 mounts above the 5.25 inch bays.Cons:(for what I want this is a con, but not for most people) 2 80mm fan mounts on the back above i/o panel, good for exhaust fans, but no standard liquid cooling solutions fit on an 80mm mounting point as of this review.The drive door triggers can be a pain to align to your dvd/blu-ray drive causing the door to not open when the button is pressed or to open/close constantly (but with some adjusting this is sorted out)Honestly this case looks more like a Home Theater component as opposed to a PC. I get people asking fairly often where my computer is, (since everything we watch runs through it) When I point it out they are truly surprised. I have built 5 more HTPCs using this case thanks to people seeing mine and loving the look. With these I have used nothing but full size components, which is great since airflow and dimension restrictions are not really a problem (there are some to be aware of but I'll cover those later)The positive airflow keeps the dust out, I clean my filters out about 1 time per month with a dog and 2 cats in the house, but I haven't had any real dust in the case, it gets picked up by the filters, in 4 months no dust issues.I'm extremely pleased with this case and I will continue to use it if people want me to build them a Home Theater PC...It is made of quality steel, even empty with the cover and drive cage out it does not bend or twist. (this is a big issue with many HTPC cases)Some things you do need to watch for are Video card height and length, the case only has 140mm of height above the motherboard, so be sure you aren't using an extra tall video card, also if you plan to fill up your hard drive case with drives pay attention to the length, clearance gets tight with hard drives mounted in the bays at about 9 inches... although with 8 places to mount 3.5 inch drives and 2 2.5 bays along with the 2 5.25 bays you have tons of ways to avoid interference with your video card.Pay attention if you are using a tall CPU cooler, the max height of the cooler is 140MM, also going with a extra wide one might make cable routing difficult for your disc drives.The removable drive cage is a lifesaver when it comes to mounting your drives, it is simple to pull out and put back thanks to the handles (this is important since 5 drives plus blu-ray and an SSD could be difficult to situate without the handles.Ok, now I've gushed about the case lets look at the short list of cons I had... First the 2 80MM fan mounts above the I/O panel are useful for fans, but I really wanted to do a liquid cooling solution, but none of the standard sealed models utilize 80MM mounts, so I compromised and just put some fans in, for most people this is a good thing to have 2 additional fan locations, but I really wanted to do liquid cooling...The 2 drive doors have triggers that sit against the open/close buttons on your drives. These can be a little tricky to align, I had this issue on my Asus Blu-ray but it was much simpler with a Sony one.So to wrap up, This could very well be the case you're looking for. If you want a case to fit in just about any home theater setting this works perfectly. It is worth the price and I would recommend it to almost anyone. The only thing it doesn't have that some might want is an LCD screen, but for me, it's a great fit.These cases are very versatile, I have built one with an M-Atx board and only a small SSD (to serve network media) many in between and even one with an E-Atx board with 32.5TB of storage (8 4GB Drives), 2 blu-rays etc...Components in my new Personal Build: 7/05/2013Case: Silverstone Tek GD-08SSD of OS/Programs: SAMSUNG 840 256GB 2.5 SATA IIIPower Supply: Corsair AX760i (Fully Modular)Motherboard: AsRock z87 Fatal1ty ProfessionalCPU: Intel 4th Generation Haswell Core i7 4770KMemory: Crucial Ballistix Very Low Profile DDR3, 4x8GB (32GB total)Optical Drive: LG Blu-Ray Reader/DVD WriterVideo Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 650-Ti SSC 1GBCPU Cooler: Arctic Freezer Pro Rev 2Storage Drives: 4 Western Digital Red 3TB Drives80mm Fans: 2 Fractal Silent Series120MM Fan: 1 Zalmann Ultra Quiet (This only came with Rubber mounts, luckily I had some extra fan screws)(See customer images for why this was important)Components in my Old personal Build:Silverstone Tek GD-08 CaseASUS P8Z77-V Pro Intel Z77 4DIMM ATX2400Corsair Enthusiast Series TX850 V2 850W 80+ BronzeSAMSUNG 840 250GB 2.5 SATA IIIIntel Core i7-3770K 3.50 GHz LGA1155Kingston XMP 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 CL9 (Kit of 4) XMPBlu-ray Optical Drive4 Western Digital Red 3 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA IIIARCTIC Freezer 7 Pro Rev. 2, CPU Cooler - Intel & AMD, Multi-Directional Mount, 92mm PWM FanEVGA GeForce GTX 650 1024MB GDDR5 DVI mHDMI Graphics CardEverything fit without an issue, and my CPU temp has never reached above 50 Degrees Celsius. I can't say enough about this case...

So I am going to let the cat out of the bag so to speak. I own FOUR of these cases and I have ELEVEEN computers in the house - ten of which are in Silverstone cases. Once you have built a computer and experienced the pleasure of working with these you will really not be satisified with much else. I have built dozens of computers for both mysidelf and for friends. Not sure exactly put I have at least 100+ builds.Regardless of the case, Silverstone products are designed to run your kit cool. It is all about air and I have never had a silverstone case where I was not able to provide more than enough air to keep things frig. Good news is that they can be very quite for real HTPC applications and still do a mighty fine job keeping temperatures down. I have four dedicated HTPCs in small form factor Silverstone cases and they also run very cool. I like my systems to run very close to the room temperature and every one I have built does at least that and some actually do better.I am using the GD08B case for SERVERS! The primary reasons are really very simple - 3.5 drives in a removable cage x 8! PLUS 2 x 2.5 (I use SSD for OS) PLUS 2 x 5.25 bays! Thats a lot of rotating metal and to keep all this nice and cool, 4 x 120mm fans desinged to create a positive air pressure AND trust me, it works. If for some reason you need very agressive cooling you can forgo quiet and get fans that move lots of air which is what I do. HEAT is the computers worst enemy - if you can keep them cool they will have a longer life.I put the maximum number of disk drives in these systems and I run Windows Server 2008 R2. I use Gigabyte and ASUS motherboards and these cases can take ATX motherboards with no problem. They are deep enough that you can use good quality CPU coolers with heat pipes though I gravitate to all copper coolers in the 2U or 3U configuration. There are two chassis exhaust fans on the back. Plenty of room to run cables and Silverstone makes some very nice power cables for the SATA 3.5 array that really clean up the interior. Once again the less clutter inside the better the air moves around and better cooling.This case is so easy to work with, it has plenty of room to allow easy configuration and it is built solid. This case costs more but when you unpack it the first time you will understand what you paid for. But the real joy here is those FANS - BIG ONES- and lots of them. All four of my cases run very cool - CPU temperatures for 100w silicon all run at <40C (not thermal margin real temperature) at 20% load. Motherboard temps are not much more than +2 to +5C over ambient temperature!I cannot say enough good things about the case - again I own 4 of them. They are worth every cent I paid and they look good, they run cool, they are quite, they have large storage capacity potential, USB3.0 front panel, and they are very easy to work on. And I put my money where my mouth is with a total of 10 Silverstone cases in the house.Don't just think HTPC when you are looking at these they make just about the best SERVER enclosures I have come across (assuming you do not need hot swap capabilities on local system). Everyone that I have delivered a Silverstone case too has been very happy.NOT THIS CASE but the smaller cases can be harder to build because the space does get cramped. I take my time when building and am anal about running internal cables and tieing them down. It all pays off with a good looking interior and a machine that lives long and prospers.