Page 3 - Physical Look - Inside
If you're crazy enough to bring a desktop computer of this size to a LAN party and you happen to have forgotten your mouse pad, the sound insulation on the side panels make a great substitute. Also, here's my number, so call me maybe (just kidding!). Sliding the panels off the case, you would soon realize that the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 is very similar in design compared to the Fractal Design cases reviewed by Jonathan. The side panels include hefty sound insulation material. Consistent with the exterior, the interior is also coated with a layer of black paint. As you can see from the photo above, the layout is quite standard with the motherboard tray in its fixed position and the power supply bay at the bottom. The hard drive rack on the right extends from below three 5.25" drive bay area all the way to the bottom and is able to accommodate a total of eight HDDs or SSDs of your choice. All of the cables to the external USBs and audio were nicely painted black, which kept the consistency with the rest of the case. However, Nanoxia did not provide an adapter for the internal USB 3.0 connection. For those people who do not have a USB 3.0 connection on their motherboard, this would be an issue.
The Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 is able to house mITX, mATX, ATX, and XL-ATX motherboards. A total of seven openings are available for running cables behind the motherboard tray to keep everything neat and tidy. Riser mounting holes are provided throughout this area, but it would be nice to see that Nanoxia label these holes for the convenience of the user. A 120mm rear exhaust fan is situated near the CPU socket area for maximum cooling performance. All stock fans come with 3-pin motherboard headers, but it would have been convenient if Nanoxia provided adapters to accommodate those that don't have enough heads on their motherboards. As seen from the photo above, there is also a large square opening for easy aftermarket heatsink installation without having the need to remove the motherboard first. However, it doesn't seem large enough to accommodate modern motherboards with shifted CPU sockets. It would have been good if Nanoxia either shifted the opening further to the right or make the opening bigger.
Because the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 features a bottom mounted power supply bay, it is raised approximately a centimeter off the ground to accommodate units with bottom mounted fans. This is done simply by sticking in two rubber grooves. As mentioned previously, there is an externally removable dust filter to prevent nasty stuff from getting into your computer. The expansion slots come with thumbscrews for the convenience of the user instead of having to pull out their tool set.
Shifting our attention a bit, you will notice that the Deep Silence 1 features a top to bottom rack to support 5.25" and 2.5"/3.5" drives. The top is able to support up to three 5.25" drives, where the rack can support eight 2.5"/3.5" drives, as mentioned previously. The 5.25" bay features tool-free clips on both sides to mount the drives securely. These are quite easy to play with; simply slide to one side and let the springs do the work, then give it a push and slide it back to lock the drives in place. The hard drive rack is separated into three sections. Two of the three sections can be removed easily by lifting a clip accessible from the back side. The last and bottom-most section is also removable, but you'll need to pull out your Philips-head screwdriver to removes a total of six screws in order for that to happen. The two removable HDD/SSD racks could also be easily mounted between the semi-permanent HDD/SSD rack and the power supply bay as Nanoxia provides a mechanism at the bottom of the case for you to slide these racks into place.
Although most people may care less about the back side, I find it extremely important that this side provides enough space for an easy clean cabling job. The Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 provides the user with sufficient space at the back. As you can see from the photo above, although my cabling job may not be the neatest, it still has sufficient enough space to support the thicker cables without having you to sit on top of your panel in order to close it. However, you can also see that aftermarket heatsinks with backplates may be a bit difficult to install as the opening is not quite big enough to support shifted sockets.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. Physical Look - Outside
3. Physical Look - Inside
4. Installation and Conclusion
