Small is beautiful, ever since the first personal computer companies have strived to make the grey box smaller and prettier; the obvious goal: integration. The wide success of smaller cases can not be ignored; companies like Shuttle make it core their business, building custom motherboards and power supplies to go with their compact enclosures.

If you are looking for more flexibility when it comes down to what hardware is installed inside you?ll have to look for mini-ITX cases, Silverstone has a wide selection of enclosures in their product line-up geared towards HTPC use as well as large towers and desktop designs. The TJ08 tested here today is made for mini-ITX motherboards but is quite large compared to a Shuttle case, while the obvious disadvantage is size, it does have some very recommendable positives.





Full Specifications

Most noteworthy features:

takes normal sized ATX Power supply

120mm front in-take and 120mm rear out-take!

Up to four hard drives and 2 optical drives

Removable motherboard tray

The fact that you can use an ?off-the-shelve? power supply is very good news, as you won?t be limited to xxx Watt from a custom design PSU found in most mini PCs. With four hard drives and two optical drives you can get pretty wild on the storage side of things; and last but not least, two 120mm fans will ensure optimal airflow keeping the components cool inside.

The TJ08's front is made from light weight aluminum and has a brushed finishing. The rest rest of the case is made from steel, yet the overall weight doesn't show this right away, the different panels are held together by a large collection of screws, you can almost completely disassemble the case as only a handful of rivets are used here.





Removing the front panel requires quite a bit of screwing, but it does give you access to the dust filter which is installed in front of the in-take 120mm fan. Easier access to this dust filter would have been great.





The motherboard tray can be removed easily, after you have unscrewed the side panels, by sliding the tray to the front a bit, then you can swivel the tray outwards and remove it from the case.




Let?s install a system in this compact enclosure ->

Despite its small size, there is still quite a bit of room left inside to maneuver and install the different components, there are no tool less features on the TJ08, so be sure to have a screwdriver ready.

JMke?s MiniPC Test Setup
CPU	AMD Athlon 64 3000+
Mainboard	MSI ATI RS482
Memory	2 * 512Mb OCZ DDR PC4400
Other	Powercolor X800GTO 80Gb Maxtor 7200RPM HDD NEC CDWriter Chieftec 340W PSU

The MSI motherboard fits nicely on the removable motherboard tray, after you screwed in the stand offs:



There is room for 4 hard drives, 3 inside the bracket, one 1 upside down at the bottom like this:



While you can clearly see the 120mm in-take fan in the photo above, it?s cooling impact is minimal on the HDD, and those placed inside the bracket receive practically no fresh air; it would have benefited the HDD cooling a lot if somehow they could have made the 120mm sit in front of it.



With the power supply, hard drive and motherboard installed you can already see a bottleneck around the hard drive cage area, motherboard connectors placed under there are harder to reach, and the hard drive will also obstruct larger CPU coolers.



With the rest of the components installed (Optical drive and VGA card) it?s simply a matter of hooking everything up, the front Firewire/USB2.0 and Audio connectors are clearly labeled and with your motherboard manual nearby are easy to install. Behind the hard drive cage there is enough room left to do some minimal cable management to improve airflow, the VGA card sits in the path of the front in-take without obstructions.



Performance testing and conclusion next ->

Visual Comparison

Crazycamel IT Shop send us an Antec Aria for comparison, a small cube form case with minimal space inside, the same test setup was installed in there (without the optional PCI slot blower). Visually the two cases are quite different, the Aria is noticeable wider, the TJ08 is much taller.




Performance Tests

The system was stressed with K7 CPU Burn and 3DMark03 running in loops, maximum temperatures were recorded, the room temperature was measured at 29?C, yes it?s summer here. Ambient noise was ~37dBA, the sound meter was placed 15cm from the front of the case.



The fan on the AMD heatsink is temperature controlled, in the Aria it runs close to 5000rpm, being the main cause of the high noise output; CPU and Chipset temperatures are very acceptable considering the high room temperature. In the TJ08 the overall case temperature is almost 10?C lower, the two 120mm fans are quite effective, the AMD cooler fan is only spinning at 2900rpm, yet the overall noise reading is not much lower, the culprits are the case fans and the Chieftec PSU, while the 120mm fans are not extremely loud, they are not silent either, and since they only have a 4-pin power connector, hooking them up to most 3-pin fan controllers requires some modifications, not really plug and play.

Conclusive Thoughts

At the time of writing the TJ08 can be found for ~?/$90, what you get in return for your money is a no frills all thrills compact light-weight case, the finishing is excellent with no sharp edges to be found. Installation takes some time but once set up most of components inside are kept cool, although the HDD area is a neglected a bit. The TJ08 looks great with its brushed aluminum front which lights up blue when powered on.



Areas of improvement are still to be found, the hard rubber feet don?t help much to absorb vibrations, the dust filter in the front is hard to reach and the case could benefit from some tool less features.

PRO
Excellent finishing
Good airflow characteristics
Removable motherboard tray

CON
120mm not silent at full speed (and only have 4-pin power connector)
No Tool Less features

Overall the TJ08 does impress both in the looks and usability, Silverstone continues their trend of creating high class PC enclosures.

Questions/Comments: forum thread