Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 Review

[section_title title=Conclusion]

Conclusion

Now that we have had a look around the Deep Silence 4, lets see what my thoughts and feelings on it are and whether it was able to balance up quiet computing with good thermal performance.

From the outset, it was obvious that this chassis was being aimed at the MATX form factor, with the Chassis standing at 380mm tall and 480mm deep. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t use an ITX motherboard with it as well if you wanted too. With regards the the aesthetics of the chassis itself, it has a very sleek and mature presence. There is nothing there that jumps out as being a little garish or over the top, its just a generally good looking, minimalist case that would be at home in most environments. For those of us that have our desktops in our bedrooms, with the added noise and vibration absorbing materials that have been used with the Deep Silence 4, you can be certain that there will be no noises keeping you up over the course of the night. I can vouch for this, I generally leave my PC off at night as it tends to hum and wake people up, in the Deep Silence 4 there was no hum at all.

With regards to the internals of the chassis, as expected with the MATX form factor, the rear is adorned with four PCI slots, with there being no limits on the length of the graphics card that you may want to use thanks to the implementation of the modular hard drive cages. These cages pack six bays in total which are then divided into a cage containing three hard drives and another with two, leaving the sixth cage being fixed to the base of the chassis. If you are looking to use a medium to high end graphics card then the chances are that you are going to need to remove the upper most hard drive cage due to the graphics card space being limited to 265mm with it installed. Removing these bays also grants access to the front 120mm intake fan, thus allowing you to place a 120mm AIO cooler there if you wanted too. When you take into consideration the graphics card space in the chassis, I would say that a more feasible option for placing an AIO cooler is going to be the rear exhaust 120mm fan or in the fan mount in the roof. I was a little disappointed to see that there was no support for a 240mm solution in the roof. I could see a few enthusiasts making a nice little watercooled build in this case if there was a 240mm radiator solution in the roof. As it is with the three 120mm fan mounts, it is just going to make for a relatively messy loop setup. The CPU cut out on the motherboard tray is of a good size and there are three cable management grommets too. As said earlier in the review, I do feel that they are a little on the small side but at least they are there and still do the job.

With regards to the build quality, there is not an awful lot that I can fault the chassis for. The panels and doors all fit together nicely, there is next to no rattle or jiggle from the panels at all. The paint on the exterior is well done, with there being no imperfections or blemishes that I could notice. The small touches such as the tool-less fan mount, even though it was taken from the brilliant Deep Silence 1, are just excellent and team that with the easy to remove dust filter and you are onto a winner. The only issue that I could find was the small size of the cable management grommets and the rubber used, which felt a little stiff and would push the grommets out of position when trying to get cables through. However, that is something that can easily be rectified on Nanoxia’s part.

The Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 really is not a bad little case at all. The only thing that really lets it down at the moment is the quality of chassis currently available from the competition. If you look back through some of our older reviews, you will see that we have reviewed a good few MATX chassis, from the BitFenix Prodigy and Colossus M variants to one of my personal favorites, the Aerocool Dead Silence Cube.  The cases are not only considerably smaller than the Deep Silence 4 but also offer a lot more cooling solutions as well. As a direct competitor, the main one that springs to mind is the Fractal Design Arc Midi R2, which is a magnificent chassis in its own right. Though not made for silent computing and being ever so slightly taller, it can house a 240mm AIO cooler in a stock configuration, and this to me makes a big difference, especially when it is cheaper than the Deep Silence 4. I feel that if Nanoxia were able to made the Deep Silence 4 about £10 cheaper and included 240mm radiator support in the roof, then they would be onto a winner, but with all the competition that they are facing in this category, there are just slightly cheaper and better options out there that are going to draw the eye away from this. If you are after a silent and compact system, then by all means the Deep Silence 4 will do the job and do it well. The acoustic performance test results speak for themselves.

Due to its good thermal performance and currently topping our acoustic charts as the quietest case tested, I am going to award the Deep Silence 4 with our Performance Award.

Thanks to Nanoxia for the sample, we hope to see more from them soon.