Silverstone GD06 HTPC chassis review

Final words and conclusion

The Silverstone GD06 chassis is gorgeous to look at, well if it matches your taste of course. Next to that the concept has been thought through really well. Simplicity and aesthetics are the two words that come to mind when I think about this HTPC chassis.

While we do place the focus the HTPC the reality is that it would make a rather beautiful desktop PC as well. Your choice of course. You have plenty of space to work in and you can definitely load up the chassis with a lot of components including normal height videocards. It will hold one optical drive and can house multiple HDDs (though its a bit of a tight fit alright).

Aesthetics wise, the front side has a nice black brushed aluminum finish this preserves a little on overall costs and thus your dough. The rest of the chassis is made out of black painted steel. The front panel of the SilverStone Grandia GD06 has that huge aluminum door, featuring a lock to prevent unauthorized people from removing your hard drives. It might be a little over the top to have a lock on it but hey... at least your content is somewhat secure.

Yeah, this easily is one of the more interesting mATX HTPC chassis currently available on the market as it is priced quite competitively.

An good HTPC chassis however is still a scarce item to find -- demand is just not very high compared to regular PC chassis, making these products often more expensive. The the GD06 as such is priced at 249 EUR, which certainly is a lot of money for a chassis. Oh wait, no I was joking... you can purchase it for roughly 100 EUR ,that sounds a whole lot better... eh?

As stated we like the simplicity and its versatility. The GD06 can house two HDDs in its swappable bays and a few more inside, the smallest ATX power supply will fit (be careful and measure though) and with the current selection of mATX motherboards available can make a serious HTPC or even regular PC. Both Intel and AMD currently offer neat and near silly motherboards in terms of features and performance. You can make this as low budget or high-end as you need. Cooling wise you are covered as well as the three 120mm fans do a splendid yet silent job.

Rubber feet, sleek black design, good interior, good connectivity, anti-vibration ODD/HDD protection and the fans are quite inaudible as well, you can only hear them remotely. Alternatively control RPM over the motherboard or a small fan controller. But we doubt its needed.

Please do be aware of the fact that the GD06 supports power supplies up to 5.9” (150 mm) deep, however we measured and you can could fit a 6.3” (160 mm) unit – which is the most common power supply size nowadays. Also make sure you get a low-profile CPU cooler. There are plenty available, heck even reference Intel and AMD cooler should fit fine. But the modern heatpipe based coolers will run into issue quickly due to the relatively small size of the chassis.

If you are in the market for a HTPC chassis and dig this design and style, well look no further. At 100 EUR the GD06 offers a whole lotta bang for buck. It is not the most easy chassis to work with though. Arguably we are all a little spoiled with tool free PC chassis these days. But using your hands and a screwdriver for a change, aaah it's even bloke like stuff, be a man... pick up that screw driver, come on you can do it :)

For sheer design, style features and price we can recommended the Silverstone GD06 very much, we had a very hard time to find any real flaws with it.

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