[section_title title=The Interior & Build]
The Interior & Build
When you first pop the side panel of the Silverstone case, you will notice the huge amount of room you have to work in. The all black interior is a nice touch; it is however a shame that Silverstone have not sleeved all the internal cables in black, as this would have finished the look off perfectly. There are numerous routing holes for cables and although there are no rubber grommets, the cut outs are in all the right places making cable management a breeze.
The PSU is bottom mounted and a dust filter is included in the base if you should need your PSU taking air from the underside of the case. This filter is easily removed for cleaning and slides out from the rear.
The motherboard standoffs are not fitted but a handy accessory bags contains all the screws you need, plus extras if you should lose some.
The 3.5”/2.5” bays have easy access caddies and fitting HDD’s is as easy as popping one in the sled, then popping the sled back into the mount. The 5.25” bays are also tool less, and the excellent mounting clips would make installing your optical drive easy.
If fitting 2.5” drives here, they need to be screwed in to the caddy’s using the provided screws.
Taking the rear side panel off shows us the possible cable routing and motherboard cooler access.
Silverstone have done a great job here, with the front panel cables already routed you get an idea of just how much room you have to play with. Saying that, there is only about 15mm of clearance for cables but the numerous routing holes should make this an easy case to build in!
The Motherboard cut-out is huge and I can see no issues with replacing/fitting coolers after the motherboard has been fitted.
There are 2x 2.5” SSD trays attached to the rear and these have been placed so you can still do an awesome cable management job without worrying about the extra cables.
Test Setup
CPU – Intel Core i7 4790k @ 4.00GHZ
Cooler – Cryorig C1
Motherboard – Asus ROG Maximus VII
Power Supply – EVGA Super Nova 1000 P2
Building in the Kublai was a breeze due the ample space and well-designed layout. The internal cables were all perfect lengths and the plethora of routing options meant I completed the build in 30 minutes or so.
You will notice the lack of a GPU in the build; this is completely my fault as the ordered parts had not arrived in time for the review.
I’ll admit, the cable management isn’t my best but you can clearly the options available!
From the rear you will see how much room there is to play with and the side panels fitted back in with no problems at all even given the relatively small 15mm of clearance.
