Cooler Master has had a long and illustrious history in the PC industry. They happen to be well regarded among enthusiasts for a range of products primarily encompassing PC Cases, PSUs & Cooling systems. Today, we will be taking a look at the Sileo 500 (RC-500) case from Cooler Master. As must be evident from the name, the Sileo is aimed at the enthusiast who wants a silent rig, albeit at a budget.
The Sileo was launched by Cooler Master towards the end of the 4th quarter of 2008 and was very recently introduced in the Indian market as well. The Sileo has been a relatively quiet launch by CM. Even today, one might notice a dearth of information regarding this cabinet on the internet.
[BREAK=Product Specifications & Features]
I quote verbatim from the manual here.
The Sileo comes securely packaged in a cardboard box with the standard two pieces of thermocole on top and bottom to hold it in place.
There was also a large pouch of silica globules to keep moisture away.
[BREAK= The Cabinet]
The first thing that stuck me about the Sileo was how elegant it looks. The brushed aluminum look has been pulled off really well and works wonders for the cabinet.
Despite being a Steel cabinet, the Sileo is quiet sturdy and has been well made. There are very few, if any, sharp edges, to cut fingers on during installation/fiddling.
On opening up the Sileo, one notices the sound dampening padding that has been provided. It is a softish polyurethane foam kind of material shaped into an egg-crate type of surface
Looks can be deceptive. Despite being just a mid-tower, the Sileo is a very roomy cabinet with ample room for maneuvering within.
The cabinet features the standard five 5.25†device bays, two standard 3.5†device bays and finally a 3.5†device enclosure turned at 90° to enable easy installation and removal.
A point to note here would be that the lower regularly aligned 3.5†device bay is pretty much useless thanks to the way the front panel devices are positioned.
[BREAK=Opening it Up]
The Sileo has thumbscrews only on for the left hand panel. CM has indulged in a little too much of cost cutting in my opinion. A pair of thumbscrews aren’t really too expensive and CM could have as well used them for the right hand panel also.
Removing the fascia requires a little too much effort according to me. There are 3 pairs of aligned hard plastic push pins which need to be pushed outwards to release it. A simpler to use locking mechanism would have been appreciated.
The power & HDD activity indicator LEDs are featured on a very nice looking strip. On turning the front panel over, we notice that the thin LED strip is in fact composed of 3 independent sections, the first two of which are made to stay in contact with the actual Power & Reset buttons.
The front panel features the by now standard dual USB + mic + headphone connectors. Additionally, it also features an e-sata port. This is a welcome addition considering the fast increasing proliferation of e-sata docks and enclosures.
On the right hand side one sees that there is sufficient space to hide away any unsightly cables that might be coming from the front panel. Unfortunately, there aren’t too many other nooks and crannies into which one might shove away cables.
The HDD cage at the bottom of the cabinet is kept in place with the help of a pair of screws, meaning it can be removed incase if one does not require the additional HDDs and wishes to improve airflow from the front intake.
Installation of various devices is completely tool free with the aid of the rails which are provided for HDDs and the locking mechanism for the Optical Drives. Also, these rails are supposed to isolate vibrations from the HDDs (more on that later).
I had my apprehensions regarding the Optical Drive locking mechanism from past experiences. Despite looking a tad flimsy, ODDs are held down very securely and the mechanism itself is easy to use.
The mechanism for securing various PCI/PCIe devices is again toolsfree and is again a breeze to use.
Given recent trends in PC cabinets, it is surprising to note that CM went in with a top mounting design for the Sileo. This should however work in favour of those with PSUs featuring short cable lengths.
The mount itself has strips of a dampening material to reduce any vibrations. [BREAK=Bundle + Fans]
The bundled accessories include all the screws that a person might ever require plus additional spares of the same to boot. There is also a magnetic ring which CM claims should be used for bundling up the front panel power connector cables. Supposedly, the ring reduces interference in the cables and permits clean signal transmission.
The HDD installation mechanism is very simple with the above rails. One just need to be snap them onto hdds and slide them into the HDD bay for a secure fit. A mention needs to be made here of the hard plastic case feet & rails. With a cage stuffed with 3 HDDs, I could feel vibrations from the HDDs being transferred into my table via the hard plastic case feet. The usage of softer rubber feet would have been much more ideal.
The Sileo has two case fans that come bundled with the case. One is placed as an intake in front of the HDD cage while the other acts as the exhaust. CM touts these fans as being among the better features of the Sileo and I have to agree with them.
Rated at a measly 800rpm, they still manage to push a goodly amount of air. One has to keep in mind that the Sileo is not supposed to a case featuring ground shattering air-flow performance. It sets out to be a silent case and achieves that while ensuring that your components do not end up becoming toast.
The fans are held in place by hard plastic pushpins. While sufficient for the bundled fans, I am not too sure about how well the pushpins will be able to isolate vibrations if a user were to go in for a after market fan that spins at higher speeds.
The hardware that went into the Sileo as part of this review was my regular kit.
Namely:
- CPU – Intel Pentium E2160
- CPU Cooler – Tuniq Tower 120
- Motherboard – Nvidia Nforce 650i Ultra
- RAM – Gskill PiBlack 4GB kit
- PSU – Corsair VX450
- Video Card – Nvidia 9600GT
- HDDs – 3 Nos
- ODD – 1 Nos
Contrary to my previous mention of the fact that the Sileo is a roomy case, it does have a couple of concerns. The issue here is the sound dampening material. While CM did a good job with applying it to 4 of the internal surfaces, where they messed up was applying it all over the four internal surfaces. It requires a little effort on ones part to push the PSU into position. Similarly, one would have to put in quiet some effort to remove the HDD cage without damaging the dampening material.
Having said that, once you are past these hurdles, the Sileo’s roominess is evident the second one lowers a motherboard onto the case.
Installing even very long video cards should not be an issue (Unless one were to consider monstrous dual card setups).
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Though it does not provide too many spaces to push cables into, the roominess of the cabinet as such gives enough room to obtain a relatively neat and clean installation even when the cabinet is filled to the brim.
[BREAK=Some Numbers]
Presented below are a couple of charts of temperatures recorded using the CoreTemp utility. The stock numbers are with all settings obviously at stock. The OC’d settings involved bumping up the voltage to 1.35v and taking the CPU to 2.7G while the GPU was taken to 700/1000 MHz (Core/Memory).
Though a little toasty for comfort, things don’t really get out of hand. [BREAK=Final Thoughts]
Price comparisons with the US are inevitable. The Sileo can be purchased for between 70$-75. Various online retailers in India have it listed for around Rs 4500/-. This makes it a slightly pricey proposition. Prices for in-store pick up in the US are significantly lesser at around $50-55. A pricing strategy that is a little more in touch with market realities and the idea of affordability in the Indian scenario would surely result in better sales here.
The CM Sileo sets out to be a low priced silent cabinet. It has its little niggles, such as the intrusive positioning of dampening material and the hard plastic case feet/pushpins. Despite all these issues, the Sileo achieves its objective and them some. The basic design of the case as such seems to be a rehash of the time tested Centurion lineup from CM. The Sileo however has enough number of minor modifications/additions to make it stand out as being significantly different from the rest in the same range.
On the face of it, if it were to receive a slight correction in pricing, the Sileo makes for a very good recommendation to anyone in search of an affordable, silent mid-tower case.
Please digg the review here : Digg - Cooler Master Sileo 500 (RC-500) Review
To close things out, I would like to thank Mr. Siddharth & TheTechShopGuy from Techshop.in and CoolerMaster India for the review sample.
