Silverstone Serves up a Skyscraper.

At last year’s CeBit exhibition in Australia, Silverstone finally gave the world a glimpse of its “hugely” anticipated full tower ATX case, the TJ11. 

Over the last half decade, Silverstone has implemented several revolutionary and practically beneficial design features within its high end computer chassis. 

In 2005, their TJ07 boasted an innovative “unibody” exterior and has since proven to be enormously popular amongst water-cooling enthusiasts due to a separate chamber beneath the motherboard tray that is large enough to accommodate a quad 120mm fan radiator with minimal modification.

A year later, their TJ09 brilliantly addressed the developing issue of heat generated by high end video cards by introducing a central fan assembly, which allowed cool air to be drawn in through a strategically placed duct in the middle of the case and supplied directly to the video cards as well as other major components likely to require efficient cooling.

At the beginning of 2009, Silverstone surprised us once again with the Rv01 “Raven” chassis, which included a radical departure from tradition by way of a re-oriented motherboard tray.  All peripheral cards were installed vertically top to bottom so that the front ends pointed down while the back plates, along with the case’s exhaust fan faced upwards, being positioned on the roof of the case instead of the rear.  The principal behind the design was to ensure that any hot air produced by power hungry components was expelled from the case as quickly as possible by following its natural scientific path upwards as opposed to entering the chassis and rising inside it prior to being exhausted. 

Despite being perfectly logical, the feature was not as effective as many anticipated, principally because the PSU had to be installed below the main chamber which placed it almost directly in between the lower fan and the ventilation on the case’s underside, thus severely limiting the fan’s potential to draw in cool air.  It took the company less than six months to rectify the flaw and summer that same year saw the release of the Rv02, which relocated the power supply, eliminated the lower chamber entirely and provided additional cooling at the bottom of the chassis, which now had immediate access to the fresh air it required.

With their latest incarnation, the TJ11, Silverstone has attempted to gracefully merge all three of these innovations by maintaining the external appearance of the tj07, the central cooling solution found in the tj09 and the vertical mounting system debuted by the Rv01, a truly mouthwatering prospect, just one small matter remains, the price…£475….hmm, did I say small?!

Bit Tech have been avidly charting the progress of this Goliath since November last year and a full review can now be found on their site.