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Arctic Cooling’s Silentium T1 Eco 80 is designed to be both quiet and eco-friendly. To this end, the Silentium is also the only case here that comes with an integrated power supply; Arctic Cooling’s Fusion 550 Silentium Edition is built into the case, just behind the front panel. The Silentium case is compact and reasonably attractive. A cover on the front panel can be swung open to expose four external drive bays – two 3.5mm and two 5.25mm. The front panel also bears the reset and power buttons, while two USB ports and a pair of 3.5mm stereo ports are positioned along the bottom left-hand side. At this price, we would have welcomed the addition of an eSATA port. Inside, you’ll find an array of sound-dampening components, heat dissipaters and cooling hoods, as well as a set of drive rails. The main sound-dampening feature is a hard disk bay made of dense foam. Unfortunately, although it eliminates vibration, it also protrudes back into the case far enough to make fitting a large graphics card extremely awkward. There’s no vibration damping on the other bays. The entire case feels cramped and is too shallow to take the largest CPU coolers.
Admittedly, although our Silentium system wasn’t as quiet as we’d expected, it didn’t make that much noise, largely because it only has two 80mm system fans. It’s also cramped, awkward to build and, once you look inside, feels roughly built and poorly finished. If you really want a quiet case, both Antec’s Solo and Fractal Design’s Define R2 have plenty of anti-vibration mountings without the cramped and inconvenient design.
