Silverstone GD07 HTPC chassis review - Introduction

With HDTV getting raging popular here in Europe everybody these day's has a nice 1080P big screen television. As such the set-top box market exploded, and what to think about all the AC Ryan, ASUS PlayOn, Mediator devices available. People want their HDTV connected to a device that can playback movies, music and photos, it's that simple.

While products like the ones AC Ryan and such offers are absolutely great, in terms of network connectivity or HDD copy functionality they are often weak. Next to that there is a certain crowd that likes to build HTPCs (Home Theater PCs). Armed with the processing power of the PC combined with excellent playback quality and the right software you can simply build a power house of an HTPC. Problem is that often the market has nice HTPC chassis available, but they are all cramped up and not easy to work in, as they are small.

SilverStone is well known for its innovative designs, and recently released the Grandia GD07, an updated version which offers everything you ever wanted in for a HTPC, it's so spacious that you could even use it as a very cool desktop PC. I mean Extended ATX (EATX) sized motherboards fit (!), heck you can even throw in very long graphics cards in there as we'll show you.

So Silverstone's latest HTPC case is dressed to impress, but also comes with serious drive capacity and cooling performance, all being a silent chassis as well. Oh and they added USB 3.0 support as well.

At first look is impressive, clean simple design. Once you open it up then you'll know it's a serious chassis with its four external 5.25" drive bays. The list will go ion though as storage is definitely a primary feature of the GD07. Anyway, let's startup the review shall we ?