SilverStone Grandia GD09 Review

Performance Analysis

With our new test rig only having been put to the test with the GD09 so far, we've got little to compare against but with an absolute temperature of 74°C and delta T of 52°C with our low profile cooler, there's clearly no problem here with heat or heat build up thanks to the porous nature of the GD09. The single 120mm fan was also very quiet and we certainly don't question the 900rpm and 18dBA ratings that SilverStone has given it.


For most tasks, you could probably get away with a much smaller CPU cooler too, although as we've already mentioned, many slighter coolers also have a TDP rating too low to be used with our A10-7700K test APU anyway, and we'd imagine that AMD's APUs are a pretty popular choice for HTPCs these days. We'll be adding to these results soon once we've retested a number of cases and reviewed new ones so while we can't say cooling is epic, we can certainly say it keeps a high-end APU cool with a modest cooler.

Conclusion

The GD09 offers reasonable cooling out of the box but with plenty of key fan slots vacant, there's clearly room for expansion and easily enough potential for building something much more potent than our APU-based test system. There's not much to play with in terms of extra features, but then HPTC cases are fairly niche and considering it costs barely £10 more than Cooler Master's significantly smaller Elite 130, the GD09 is very good value too.

Its size might not be to everyone's tastes and small form factor fans will likely cringe at the thought of using an ATX motherboard in an HPTC. Mini-ITX will certainly mean a much more compact system, but you won't be saving much money on the case and will probably be far less likely to have a spare mini-ITX motherboard kicking around too. The drive mounting could be more convenient but holes in panels are cheaper to include than elaborate drive mounts. It's not going to win any beauty contests but then that's not what the GD09 is about. As a value-conscious HTPC case with oodles of potential and very few hardware restrictions, it's a fantastic choice.