Here's a mini-review on two of the SilverStone cases.
Firstly, I have to take back what I said about the GD-06 being a great design. Although it's impressive what they've managed to pack into such a short depth case, I found it an absolute nightmare to work on.
Just as a reminder, they've included two caddy-less hotswap bays. To fit all the drive mounts, the internals on that side in particular are in 3D. Every available surface has been used, even
internal surfaces of the subassemblies. It's insanely complex to disassemble/reassemble - I had to resort to the user manual and still wound up unable to match up all the screws (there are
at least 3 different sizes).
To be fair, I was using 3 drives, and the massive Seasonic power supply cabling was a huge PITA to manage with so many subassemblies taking up all sorts of spaces. But this is with no graphics card.
To mount the third drive (an SSD), it was necessary to remove the entire left hand side drive assembly that includes the hotswap bays. But then I found I could not get both SATA and power cables plugged into the drive.
As an aside, 2.5" drives tend to be mounted on their bottom so you need straight SATA cables, which need more space. Right-angle SATA cables are the wrong way round. Over-sized power cables are a particular PITA.
So I ended up disassembling the drive assembly into two parts and using a mounting point inside the top of the metalwork. With three sets of drive cables poking out in different places, the challenge then was getting everything back together without breaking something.
It took hours and hours and annihilated one of my primary criteria for this build, which was that it should be easy for a technician to work on in the future.
BTW, that whole left hand side assembly is too heavy for the thin piece of metal that holds it all together. I shipped the drives separately because I had a real fear that it would buckle in transit.
This is a positive pressure case, so the 3 120mm fans are pushing way too much air for my liking - the intake filters will be clogged in no time. But I didn't have three fan speed controllers on hand to restore sanity.
To rub salt into the wound, the motherboard I used did not have a 20-pin USB 3.0 header, so I used the supplied USB 2.0 to USB 3.0 adapter, but one of the ports does not work. I assume SilverStone's adapter was faulty.
From a user perspective, the finished product is great. The hotswap bays work very well. If you do use one, I'd strongly recommend a modular power supply - except the case is already pricey and that will make the whole exercise even more expensive.