Installation

Opening up the was was easy, especially with the help of the silver stands. There are three screws in the back of the computer that hold the cover in place, and the cover pulls off by the stand after the screws are out.



Inside, we were greeted by... wires! For such as small case, there are so many wires, but for good reason. There is also a small caged-off piece of hardware inside the case, and this is where the power goes to from the external power supply. Here, the voltage is knocked down to varying ratings for the different kinds of cables the system will need.



We also noticed that the hard drive is mounted directly against the bottom of the case, but there are rubber sound dampeners that drive sits on top of. It's a little different, but none-the-less effective means of sitting it in the case amongst all the other components. As mentioned in the features, the case can accommodate a 3.5" or 2.5" drive.

We opted to install the motherboard first, as it appears other components may create a hassle to install the motherboard after. Before proceeding, allow us to warn you that the 120W powersupply that comes with this case is not meant to run a desktop chip, not even a 65W Sempron processor. We selected a low-powered Intel Mini-ITX board utilizing a Merom-core Celeron processor.



The standoffs for a Mini-ITX-sized motherboard are already built into the case, so we were able to plop the motherboard in and screw it down. The case has a full compliment of connections, including USB, Audio, and Firewire. There are two sets of USB connectors, the first being for the external ports, and the other set being for the iMON VFD and IR devices. Thankfully, the case's audio connectors give you the option of AC'97 or Intel HD Audio. Also to note is that all of these connectors are in block form, so you're not stuck putting down single pins and worrying about the order.



After plugging in the essential motherboard cables, we moved on to the slim optical drive. We're using a Samsung slot-load drive for the coolness factor. Installation was interested, to say the least. The screws included for the drive are borderline microscopic. Pair this with installing the drive horizontally and you're in for a fun time. The majority of the installation is now complete. All that's really left is the hard drive and cleaning up the wiring.



As we said earlier, the hard drive mounts against the bottom of the case and sits on top of a rubber grommet. You have a few options as far as what direction you want to mount it, and we chose to mount it with the connectors in the back of the case so he had a little more room to route the cables and clean up the inside of the case a bit.



The last step is to install any PCI Cards we intend to use. Honestly, the Mini-ITX motherboard includes everything I intend to use on the machine, so for the sake of demonstration I installed a Creative Audigy PCI card. Silverstone provides two adapters, once for PCI, and one for PCI-Express. Depending on what kind of card you're installing, you can switch the adapters around. The adapter screws into the bar in the middle of the case, and you can slide the PCI card into the holder on the back of the case. Good to go!



With installation complete, let's turn the machine on and give it a whirl!