Cooler Master Silencio 452 Review

Build and Cooling Options

Cooler Master include a fairly extensive set of instructions which owing to their fold out format can also double as a table cloth or picnic blanket.  On the face of  it, this might seem like a flippant remark, but there’s a serious point being made.  If you’re new to building, and let’s be honest we’ve all been there, then you’re going to need to refer to the instructions.  If this is the case then by far the simplest format is the booklet.  Having to fold out a massive sheet, provided of course you can find the space on your desk to do so is more than a bit of a bind and kind of akin to having to open up the whole OS map just to see where you are each time.  On the plus size, the accessories bag is pretty well stuffed with a selection of all necessary screws, a good helping of cable ties, the un-fitted tool-less fittings (try saying that after a few vimtos) and a set of brackets to allow radiator mounting.

    

 

At 170mm in length the Cooler Master V100 PSU is only just encroaching on the oversized PSU cable management hole.  it’s unlikely you’re going to be putting anything bigger than this in here, but if you choose to it’s nice to know you’ve still got a bit of room to spare.  With the Motherboard in we can see how Cooler Master have had to be rather prescriptive with the internal space allowance to keep the external footprint as low as possible.  There’s next to no room at the top of the case between the Motherboard and the case roof, and only the slightest gap at the bottom between the PSU and the mobo.  As there’s no management hole for the 8 pin CPU power cable you’ll either have to go the long way round internally, cross the motherboard (don’t even think it), or for the best result feed the cable through the CPU cut out before screwing the motherboard down.  The rest of the cables find their own way quite naturally, but be aware that things are more than a bit tight at the rear so you’re going to have to be very careful with your cable management if you want that side panel to go on without bulging.

     

 

On paper the 452 can house coolers up to 158mm in height, as we usually do we’ve shown the case with our Havik 120 to give a sense of comparative scale.

     

 

With more and more people turning away from air cooling and towards water cooling and in particular AIOs it’s pretty much essential these days that a case be able to accept as a minimum a 240mm rad based system.  Thankfully the 452 can do just this, and not just AIOs either, shown below is an XSPC RS240 rad which fits in just fine and with plenty of room for barbs to be attached.

       

 

There’s a total of 56mm of space available here, with the potential for another 4mm as most 120mm fans will fit within the boundary of the inner door bezel (the part we’ve rested the tape measure on).  This allowance is more than enough for most AIOs on the market and certainly any rad up to 30mm in thickness.