Cooler Master Silencio 650 Review

The Build

Before we crack on with the build lets first take a little look at the instructions and accessories.  If you're the sort that reverts to reading instructions (i.e. not a real man) then having a nice clear set to go by is always a plus.  The instructions with the Silencio come in the form of a booklet, and although the images are small they are plentiful and informative, taking you through each step of the assembly and options.  Accessories wise you get the usual bags of screws and stand offs, along with 12 cable ties, a buzzer, intrusion lock bracket and a large amount of HDD mount brackets.  OK, not a great deal of accessories, but it's all you really need.

Although the inside of the Silencio is not cavernous, it's by no means restrictive even for those with joints of ham for hands.  Things are pretty tight up at the top of the case, and with just 35mm of space between the roof and the motherboard edge, you're not going to be putting a rad up there any time soon, but then that's not really the point of this case.

We were a little concerned with regards to the spacing of the cable management holes as they appeared to straddle the point on a motherboard at which most 24pin ATX sockets are located.  Although we did have to flex our cable down quite a bit to make it from the aperture to the socket it wasn't exactly a disaster.  None the less, three holes down the vertical edge as opposed to two would have been a much better lay out.

Things do get a little tight down at the bottom of the case.  With the single bottom edge management hole located quite far back in the case you don't have to to have a massive PSU before you're starting to cover some of it up.  Here we've used the 180mm long Cooler Master Silent Pro Hybrid 850, which as you can see covers up about a 1/5th of the hole.  Ok, that's not a lot, but there's going to be a lot of cabling passing through it.  Not just your cables leaving the PSU, but also your data cables coming back through from the front I?O.  So when it's your only hole it needs to be as big as it can be. as you've got a lot to stuff into it.  (We'll stop there as we're in danger of slipping into the land of "double entendre"). 

Although a slim case at 207mm the Silencio 650 is still able to accomodate coolers up to 168mm in height.  For demonstration we've used the Havik 120, which at 160mm fit's with a few mm spare at the top.  We have to remember that this isn't a balls out gaming case, and as such it's not designed to take massive tower coolers.

With the upper HDD cage left in the Silencio is still able to accept GPUs up to 269mm (10.5") in length.  Should you want to slot in a monster then removing the upper HDD rack extends the depth available to 434mm (17.1").  if you can get by with 3 HDDs then the removal of the upper rack is probably the better option as it will also improve through case air flow.