CoolerMaster Silencio 352 Review

 

Cooling options

If you’ve read the rest of the review up to this point then you’ve most likely picked up on a few hints that this case has something of a major ace up it’s sleeve.  We’ve mentioned the slotted screw holes on the front panel which allude to the abilty to accept 240mm rads with varying inter screw pitches.  We’ve also mentioned the sets of holes in the base of the case, the reason for these might not have been to obvious, however we are now in a position to tell you that they enable the 3.5″ drive rack to be moved posteriorly in the case, opening up the gap in front of it from 35mm to 60mm.  This of course means that not only is it possible to get a great many of the popular 240mm rad based AIOs in there, including  CoolerMasters own Eisberg and Seidon series and of course the likes of the H100i from Corsair, but also if you’re using 25mm thick fans, any rad up to 35mm thick. 

    

 

You are going to have to take the internal 3.5″ bay out, which is no great shame and is a piece of cake as it’s only held in with a few screws, but with that done there’s actually quite a lot of space to play with.  If you’re not using an AIO then you’ve still got the 5.25″ bay which can be used to house one of the many single bay combined res/pumps on the market.  If you can do without the 3.5″ bays altogether then there’s enough room in here for a push pull set up with a 60mm rad no problem, although you will get close to covering up the cable management holes.  With the 3.5″ rack in place as we say, anything up to 35mm will be fine, so the likes of the XSPC RS240 seen below along with the Swiftech MCR220XP and the Hardware labs Black Ice GT Stealth will fit just fine.

     

 

You can though forget any thoughts you might be having of a rad in the roof, with just 20mm of room up there, there’s barely room for the 120mm fan that the vent has holes for.  It’s also going to be tight in the rear as the 120mm fan only just slots in there will be little is no room left for the over hang of the end tanks on even the most demure of 120mm AIOs.  Best to stick with the front rad solution we thinks.

     

 

If water’s not your thing you’ll be pleased to know that the 352 will still accept a tower cooler up to 155mm in height.  And yes we know the NZXT Havik 120 shown below is 160mm in height, but we’ve shown it as we always do to aid perception of the internal space available.  We did actually manage to get the case side on with it in place, but we wouldn’t recommend this as it was most definitely making contact with the case sides.