Silverstone PS 08 Case Review

Conclusion

If you're in the market for a sub £40 case the odds are you're not going to be wondering whether you can get high end gear and water cooling into it.  It's more probable you're having to watch the pennies (and who isn't these days) or maybe you're looking for something for the home office.  At just £36 the Silverstone PS 08 won't make a big dent in your wallet and measuring just 160x355x400mm it won't make a bit dent in your available desk space either.  However good use of internal space means you can fit up to 4x3x5" drives, a single 2.5" drive and even cram in a GPU up to 355mm in length.  The rear extract fan position (no fan included) can accept 80mm or 92mm fans so that pretty much rules out AIO coolers, but all is not lost in the CPU cooling department as you can still wedge in a tower cooler up to 140mm in height.  Throw in 2x5.25" bays the usual audio headers and even USB3 and the bang for your buck starts to sound quite loud.

When we first got the PS 08 out of the packaging our first thoughts were "Oh look, it's like a PC case, only much smaller"  Along with it's diminutive size the next thing you notice is how light the case is.  We're guessing the embossed creases in the side panels aren't just there for styling reasons, rather, to help improve the structural rigidity of the case.  Still, at £36 we weren't really expecting thick steel or solid metal front fascias were we.

Quality on the whole good, but let down in a in few areas, not least of which are the poorly formed rivets which had to be chopped and filed off before we could get the PSU in place.  Silverstone on the whole are renowned for their high standards of build quality so we can only assume this was a rare missed beat for them.

Ventilation isn't great, with a single 120mm fan up front running the show, but there are at least options to add an 80mm or 92mm fan in the rear.  The vents in the side panel although appreciated do not support fan mounting.

With the above points accepted we think the PS 08 represents excellent value for money to house a low/mid end system or as a second PC for the home office, with the pure white colour scheme adding that hint of class and adding to the exclusivity over the otherwise black boxes usually seen at this price point. 

     

Thanks to Silverstone for the SG08 on review today, you can discuss your thoughts in the OC3D Forums.