Silverstone Fortress FT03 Mini Case Review

1. Introduction2. Silverstone FT03 Mini: Packaging and Bundle3. Silverstone FT03 Mini: Exterior4. Silverstone FT03 Mini: Interior and Installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

Accessing the interior of the FT03 Mini is very simple indeed.  Three of the four panels which make up the outer shell of the case simply pull off to reveal the steel frame inside the case.  The fourth side remains permanently attached to the case.

Before installing anything into the case we have to remove the drive cages which are screwed to one side of the chassis.  The case features three hard drive bays in total, two 2.5″ and a single 3.5″.  The 3.5″ bay can be removed separately from the case, as can one of the 2.5″ drives which is located below the motherboard but the other 2.5″ drive bay is attached to the slimline optical drive bay.

Firstly we installed our ASRock A75M-ITX motherboard into the system.  The four stand-offs are preinstalled into the case which saves some hassle as the motherboard can be simply screwed down in each corner.  The CPU cooler needs to be attached before screwing down the motherboard, though, as there is no cut out in the motherboard tray for doing so.

The case only supports CPU coolers up to 78 mm in height so we were forced to use remove one of the fans from our Noctua NH-L12 and use it in low profile mode.

Next we installed our Be Quiet! BN134 350W SFX power supply into the system using four screws.  The PSU mounting holes are also located under the top cover of the system so the power supply sits right next to the motherboard when installed. It's a little disappointing that the case doesn't support a full size ATX PSU as it limits our choice of components.

For example, it would be very difficult to build a high performance compact gaming system in this chassis without running into power issues.  Silverstone sell their own Strider SST-ST45SF SFX PSU which is compatible with the case which offers 450W of power.  It's available to buy from Scan.

Installation of expansion devices is relatively simple.  A small bracket above the two expansion slots must be removed before we can disconnect the vented covers and insert our graphics card.  Silverstone's inclusion of two expansion slots, rather than one, means you can install double height graphics cards into the system.

We installed an SSD into the the removable 2.5″ tray which is located just below the motherboard. Then we screwed the tray back into the case using the two thumbscrews provided.

Finally we installed a slimline slot load optical drive into the case.  Installing an optical drive is quite fiddly as the screws are very small and the holes aren't directly accessible.

Cable routing in the case can be an issue due to the close proximity of all the internal components.  We weren't able to find a modular SFX power supply for our test system which complicates this slightly but we managed to bundle up most of the cables above the graphics card where airflow isn't as essential.

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