Interior Impressions


The interior of the Silverstone KL02 is not particularly remarkable though there are a few areas in there that help this case stand out in a market saturated with competitors. The first thing that garners my praise is the lack of a horizontal cross-brace which will make installing and uninstalling a power supply blessedly easy even if you have a large cooler installed.

On the upper part of rear panel, there is a simple yet effective tie-down for the power supply cables as well as a cut-out for routing cables along the inner panel. These small touches are very rarely seen on mid-tower ATX cases.


The next stop in our whirlwind tour of the interior of the KL02 is the back of the front I/O panel. Here we have begun to clean up the wiring mess by uninstalling the Firewire cable (see the blank white connector to the left) which is quite easy except for the fact that this cable is grounded to the case using a very small screw. Unfortunately, both the USB connectors and the front audio jacks are attached to the same connector on the PCB so removing one means removing the other.

Next we have a view of the CP05 adaptor which is supposed to make any hard drive hot-swappable. Unfortunately, only one of these adaptors is provided and it protrudes enough to be a problem when installing components. It is highly recommended that you move it down of the bottom rung of the hard drive cage before even thinking about installing your motherboard or an overly-long graphics card.


Just like we saw on the exterior photos, the expansion bay covers are perforated for optimal airflow which is a nice change away from the ordinary. Some people may be concerned that these openings will let in dust but this is not the case due to the airflow characteristics inside the case using these openings to “exhaust” warm air.

Above these expansion slots is the pre-installed rear 120mm exhaust fan. There are two connectors leading from it: a Molex connector for power and a 3-pin fan connector for your motherboard. Surprisingly, the motherboard fan connector does not allow any power to be carried to the fan; rather, this lone wire is only for monitoring the fan speed. It would have been a much better decision for Silverstone to have allowed us to use this connector to power the fan from an open motherboard fan header.


When flipping around the side panel, we are immediately greeted by a pair of fan mounting brackets which are only available on the Kublai without the optional side window (SST-KL02B). Upon first glance, it looks like you have the options to install four fans but Silverstone has only included screw holes for two fans. While you might want to add two more fans for a total of four, it is made impossible due to there not being enough space between the side panel and the drive bays. Silverstone really has to be applauded for the design of this side panel considering the ghastly mess some other manufacturers make of side panel fans on ATX cases.

Once the other side panel is removed (it is thankfully not riveted in place), a ton of cable routing options suddenly present themselves. There are holes on both the top and the bottom of the motherboard tray which can be used to pass cables from the power supply to the various components at the bottom of the case. This can be used to great effect if you take a few minutes to place your cables properly. These kinds of cable routing options are seen all too rarely on even the more expensive E-ATX compatible cases and Silverstone has done well by adding them on their smaller Kublai case.