SilverStone Fortress FT01 Mid-Tower Case Review

Installation cont.


Although an overall spacious case, there are a few areas that can get cramped and are thus hard to work in. We found that with both hard drive cages in place, it can get a bit tight behind the graphics card in particular. In our test system, getting the PCI-E power connector plugged into the Radeon HD3850 was a bit difficult so we would suggest removing the top-most hard drive cage if you are using three or fewer hard drives. This will buy you quite a bit of extra real-estate. However, SilverStone states that extra long cards like the HD4870X2 will fit with both drive cages in place.


If there is one feature we’d like to thank SilverStone for, it is the 5.25 inch locking mechanisms. We’ve never installed an optical drive so effortlessly since there are no rails or screws are required. All we had to do was to pop out the bay cover and slide the drive in until it clicked. We then pushed down the locking button and were finished. What a fantastic feature. It is just so easy and straightforward, we can’t believe no one thought of this before.


Once we had everything installed, there is a bit of a rat’s nest of cables found behind the drive bays and hard drive cages. With non-modular PSUs, the cables have to hide somewhere, unfortunately. Overall, the cable routing options in the FT01 are very good and make working with a bottom mounted PSU a piece of cake.


The final install looked nice and clean. It was a bit tight in some areas, but we were impressed with how easy it was to work with the FT01.