Review on 💻 Silverstone FT04S-W: Premium Aluminum Full Tower Case for Extended-ATX Computers in Silver by John Invert

Love this store or hate it. I love the size and how clean it looks but hated putting it together. However, I had no illusions and thought I had everything planned, but still the hull was torn apart at several assembly points. This case requires a lot more planning than a regular build and was the most frustrating case I've ever worked on. However, I would still recommend it if you are looking for a unique case with a small footprint. I'm hoping this is a case where you don't need to troubleshoot the components as things like SATA are quite difficult to get at. Headers or almost anything on the motherboard when zipped closed. I went with the best hard drive and graphics card I could afford, hoping I won't have to upgrade (or open a backup) for a while. Anyway, I still have to clear out the rat's nest of power cords, but I'm waiting for the tooling and insulation now. confronted. But here's a rundown of the problems I've had and how to avoid them: 1. Obtain right-angle SATA cables for the drive side (the other end is straight). With regular straight-through SATA cables, there is not enough room for the graphics card - the SATA cables press against the graphics card. I've also found that some of my right angle SATA cables are sticking out too far so they're not all the same. I recommend using the lowest right angle profile cables you can get. The cables I used were only right angle on one side and straight on the other.2. Modular power supplies may not be the best option in this case. I was using a Corsair 600W SFX module and had to remove the clip on one connector to get everything to fit as it interfered with the optical drive bracket. On the other hand, I didn't need a second SATA power cable, nor did I use a Molex power cable. A semi-modular power supply would work best, but I haven't seen one in the SFX that suits my needs. I plan to trim the ATX power cable and wrap the PSU cables to hopefully reduce the number of rats in the case. I originally planned to use a removable SSD tray mounted on the motherboard plate, but I encountered 2 issues with it. First, because it's very close to the motherboard, it blocks the bottom 2 SATA ports (on my motherboard) and also needs its own power supply from the PSU. If they moved it a little further south it might help, although it would probably still be very narrow. By using an SSD holder under the optical drive I was able to avoid these problems. I just removed the SSD holder on the motherboard plate to make room. With this configuration, you can use one SSD and one HDD, as well as one optical.4. When installing my graphics card (Radeon RX 480) I found it necessary to assemble and pre-route the cables for the HDD, SSD and ODD and then remove the trays they are attached to, sliding them out of the way and the cables connected to gain sufficient access to install a graphics card. I also removed the bottom fan to allow more access when installing the graphics card, which allowed me to make sure the cables didn't interfere with the fan on the graphics card. After the graphics card was installed and its power cable routed, I (with some effort) reinstalled the drive trays. Care must be taken not to eject the graphics card by blocking the HDD and SATA SSD and power cables and their connectors (which is why the lowest profile rectangular SATA cables you can find are needed). 5. Due to the tight gaps in this case, it would be better if they used a low-profile USB 3.0 port for this case. Be that as it may, the USB 3.0 cable from the case's ports is the usual bulky connector found in most cases. Depending on your motherboard and cooler, this may cause glitches when using the USB 3.0 port (which is why I had to use the USB 2.0 port). A low-profile USB 3.0 port adapter can be purchased for around $10, although most items ship from China (2-3 weeks). My system uses the following main components (currently): This case Motherboard = GIGABYTE G1 Gaming GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 Motherboard (Intel LGA 1151) RAM = Kingston Fury (low profile heat spreader) Cooler = Silverstone AR-06 Video = Radeon RX 480 (XFX with backplate) Storage = (1) SSD + (1) HDD