Introduction

Arctic Cooling’s Silentium case series is build for low noise computing, as it name implies. We tested the first Silentium T2 (none ECO 80) almost three years ago.

You can’t tell the difference between the new version and the 3 year old one by just looking at the outside as nothing has changed in that area. The real changes are within; the T2 ECO 80 features a more powerful PSU (550W), quieter fans and new HDD mounting system. Does it have what it takes to cool down a high end system quietly? Time to find out.

The T2 is shipped in a sturdy cardboard box, which got slightly damaged during transport, but the T2 case was intact.



Specifications

This rather compact case is marketed as a full ATX enclosure, here’s what it has to offer:



The PSU included has the following specs:



Let’s take a closer look ->

Size comparison

The Silentium T2 is a rather compact case, mini-tower would be an apt term to describe this enclosure.

When we compare it to the other cases we reviewed in the past, you’ll see that its width is on par because of the large base on the T2; however in height it’s considerably smaller:



The depth of a case can give you an indication of what you’ll be able to fit inside, large graphics cards prefer a lengthy enclosure:



The Silentium T2 is slightly shorter than the Antec 900 which barely fitted a 8800 GTX; it will be a close call.

Look Outside

The T2 features a dark grey finishing with steel side panels and chassis construction, to make it look less uniform Arctic Cooling added some black plastic details in the front panel and at the bottom of the case.




The top part of the front panel opens up to the right, behind it you can find the 5.25”/3.5” bays. The lower part has the power/reset button as well as the front I/O.



You get 2xUSB, audio in/out, and a place holder for un-used firewire… wonder why they didn’t add it as well.



Behind the plastic front door you can see 2x5.25” and 2x3.5” drive bays



A view from the rear reveals already a bit of the unordinary orientation of the case internals;



There doesn’t seem to be any room for the PSU at the back. The bottom of the case is enclosed inside a plastic duct with ventilation holes.



There are no soft rubber feet under the case; but AC took other measures to reduce vibration noise, let's open the T2 and find out ->

Look inside & Cooling

On side panel of the T2 is removable, and comes off easily enough by use of two thumbscrews which will hang on to the side panel so you can’t lose them!



When we first removed the side panel we saw this:



The cooling fan of the power supply was loose inside the case; Arctic Cooling must have known that this could happen, because they included a set of new soft mounting rubber plugs in an envelope. Simply taping the fan to the chassis would resolve this issue and prevent the fan from coming loose during transport.

So take #2:



We can see the rather weird location of the PSU at the front of the case; the PSU cables are kept short to reduce cable clutter. The unique HDD mounting system sits above the PSU unit.



At the back there are 2x80mm fans which act as an exhaust for hot air. So what does the PSU fan do?



This 120mm fan with its current orientation acts as an out-take also; all three fans are decoupled using Arctic Cooling’s own soft rubber mount system.



In the photo above on the left you can see the pass-through cable for the PSU; next to it you see the tool-less mounting system for add-on cards. The area at the back covering the CPU location is completely open; allowing fresh air inside in the case. But the fans at the top are out-take… so fresh air is immediately expelled… that’s no good.

To help the air from reaching the correct areas AC included the following goodies with the Silentium T2:

Two different air ducts, one for Tower CPU cooler, the other for reference Intel/AMD coolers

Clear and descriptive installation manual

Power cable

Plastic/Metal rail system for the drive bays

Mounting gear for the HDD, with aluminum heatsink.

Let’s see out how it’s all installed ->

Installation

Since the Silentium T2 internal airflow path is reversed, first thing you need to do if you have a tower CPU Cooler installed on your motherboard is to flip it around; on some coolers the fan can simple be changed to the other side. On other coolers like the Coolermaster Hyper TX2 we have to uninstall/reinstall the heatsink.



Next up is preparing the hard drive(s) to be installed inside the system, first you apply the small layer of thermal pad which has been precut to fit 3.5” HDDs:



Next you screw the aluminum heatsink on the side of the HDD; if you use only one HDD you install a soft place holder in the empty space.



If you’re using two hard drives you only need to place the vibration absorbing pad at the top;



Then you can squeeze everything into the open space in the T2 and secure it using the Velcro tape.



The motherboard installation is easy enough, although do it before you install any optical drives as full ATX motherboards will fill up the case nicely. If you use a Micro-ATX board you have room to spare, of course.

Next up are the optical drives and any 5.25”/3.5” devices you want installed (LCD/Fancontroller/etc). There are installed by removing the plastic front panel:



And then using the included drive rails to click them into place:



Half-length devices as the Sunbeamtech Fan controller installed nicely with the included drive rails. And while the control knobs stick out a bit, the front door can still be completely closed without issue.

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Initially we tried to install our reference system which consists of an Intel 975X motherboard, E6600 CPU (and Hyper TX2 cooler) in combination with a Geforce 8800 GTX and two WD Raptors. However the 8800 GTX proved to be too long for to fit:



So we swapped it out with a Geforce 7900 GT which fitted nicely. We installed the fan duct for tower CPU Coolers:



Hooked everything up, made sure we connected the right cables on the motherboard as well as the backside and hit the power button.

Not much happened. We traced back our installation process, making sure we didn’t skip any crucial step. The Intel “Bad Axe” 975X wants an 8-pin EATX power connector. The pre-installed AC PSU only has 4-pin one available (P4 S478 era). While some motherboards with 8-pin connector will work with the 4-pin installed, the Intel 975X does not. Newer high end/enthusiast boards also require the same 8-pin EATX connector; this is quite an oversight on the part of Arctic Cooling, not providing this connector from the PSU.

So we removed everything from the case and installed another system ->

Test Setup and Test Methodology

We used the following components from the Dollarshops Budget PC and transferred them from the In-Win Allure to the Silentium T2:

AMD AM2 Setup
CPU	AMD Athlon 3800+ AM2 CPU
Cooling	Evercool Buffalo CPU Cooler @ 5v
Mainboard	Jetway M26GTM
Memory	2Gb DDR2 PC2-6400 Memory
Other	VGA NVIDIA 8600 GT 256Mb (With Arctic Cooling Silencer S1) LiteOn HH Lightscribe 20X DVD Writer 1x Maxtor 80GB Sata HDD

Room temperature was 20°C during testing.

Realtime HDR and Orthos were used to stress the AM2 single core system; Speedfan to check the temperature of CPU, HDD. Rivatuner’s temp monitor checked the VGA GPU at regular intervals. Maximum values were recorded.


Reversed Airflow Path

We installed the AM2 system and although this motherboard also has 8-pin EATX connector it worked with only a 4-pin installed, lucky for us! Swapping out the PSU is not really recommended or even possible as it is such an integral part of the Silentium T2 case.



Hot air is expelled from the case at the top and the fan on the PSU acts as exhaust at the front of the case. Fresh air comes inside from the backside.

We compared CPU temperatures with/without the fan duct installed:



The difference is hardly worth mentioning, 1-2°C in best case scenario.

Onto our performance tests and conclusive thoughts ->

Performance Results

The system used inside the Silentium T2 is far from high end, a single core AMD Athlon 64 CPU and one passively cooled Geforce 8600 GT should not give many problems for any case. Unfortunately the Silentium T2 is not big enough to fit higher end systems, especially long VGA cards are an issue; the power supply doesn’t work with high end motherboards, but that issue could be resolved more easily.

The low-end system we used has only been stressed once in the past, inside a Micro-ATX case, the In-Win Allure. So we’ll compare performance numbers of the T2 with those.

The three case fans inside the Silentium T2 are temperature controlled; we stressed the system for an extended period of time but couldn’t pick up any increase in noise. Here are the results:



Noise wise the Silentium T2 definitely delivers, one of the quietest cases we have tested yet; be sure to match it with passively cooled/low noise components to make the best of it.

Temperature wise the VGA and CPU are cooled extremely well inside this case, the CPU cooler especially is receiving fresh air and that helps a lot, besting the Allure by an impressive 14°C! The Silencer S1 installed on the 8600 GT does an excellent job keeping the GPU Cooled. The Silentium T2 case design doesn’t manage to improve cooling performance here, ~2°C hotter compared to the Allure.

The one area where the Silentium T2 drags behind is HDD cooling. While noise wise the HDD seek noise is nicely muffled away, cooling suffers a lot. In a 20°C room the HDD temperature rose easily up to 57°C, in the summer this will pass the 60°C mark and become a problem. While the original T2 encased a single HDD into its own aluminum cooling box, the T2 ECO 80 takes a different approach which proves not very successful.

Conclusive Thoughts

Arctic Cooling started out with low noise VGA coolers, followed by CPU coolers and now also PSU and enclosures. The Silentium T series of cases provides low noise computing out of the box that is for certain.

At an estimated retail price of €110/$173 it’s an affordable tower case. While Arctic Cooling advertises it as a full ATX case, we have our doubts, its diminutive size make it impossible to fit high end VGA cards inside, the power supply lacks an essential 8-pin connector to power the latest enthusiast motherboards. This leaves us with using Micro-ATX motherboards and low/mid-range VGA cards. If your goal is to build a low noise affordable mid-range system the Silentium T2 will could make for an interesting choice.

Cooling wise the three default fans (2x80mm and 1x120mm of the PSU) do their job of cooling almost all components without problem. CPU and VGA area are well ventilated, although the lack of a dust filter will mean you’ll have some dust buildup after a few months. The only cooling drawback is related to the hard drives, the included aluminum heatsink does not sufficiently cool down the hard drives which are squeezed inside a noise-cancelling contraption; temperature rise quickly above 55°C which is not healthy for your data disk.

Overall we were impressed by Arctic Cooling innovative approach to the ‘ol ATX case formula, however some areas need improvement before we can heartily recommend it all of our readers. If you have mid-range system and don’t mind modifying the HDD cooling system a bit then the asking price of €110 for a tower case with PSU is hardly exaggerated.




We thank Betsy from Arctic Cooling for allowing us to test the Silentium T2 ECO 80, until next time!