**A Well-Constructed, Minimalistically Cooled Enclosure: The Silverstone K05**

In our review of the Silverstone K05 case, we were excited to see how this $70 enclosure would stack up against its competitors. With its clean design and focus on build quality over aesthetic features, the K05 is a great option for those looking for a well-constructed case without breaking the bank.

One of the standout features of the K05 is its easily removable front dust filter. This feature allows for quick cleaning of the front intake and also provides access to an easily accessible dust filter for the bottom and other relevant places. This level of accessibility is rare in cases at this price point, making the K05 a great option for those who want to ensure their system stays clean and well-ventilated.

The top panel of the case is another impressive feature. It can fit 240mm and 280mm radiators, providing ample space for cooling. Radiators can be mounted above the chassis and within the large top panel, allowing for cleaner builds and isolated cooling. This level of customization and flexibility is a major plus in our book.

However, the part that really stood out to us was the ease with which the top panel could be removed. Silverstone has clearly put a lot of thought into designing this case with disassembly in mind. The clips used to hold the top panel in place are easily removable, making it simple to access and work on the system's internal components.

A stack of hard drive cages sits at the top of the case, providing a convenient way to manage storage space. Removing these cages also allows for installation of a bottom intake fan, improving GPU cooling performance. This level of attention to detail is impressive, especially considering the case's price point.

Cabling in the K05 is another area where it shines. Unlike some cases that are prone to hiding cables behind PSU shrouds or other features, the K05 has opted for a more traditional approach. The lack of a PSU shroud allows for more traditional hard drive support and reduced cost overall. While this means that some aesthetic features are missing, we believe that this trade-off is worth it.

However, one area where the K05 falls short is in its cable management system. A cutout above the PSU would have been ideal for access to the FPC, USB, and audio front panel headers, but instead, Silverstone has opted for a forced pass-through with larger cables. This positions the front panel connectors farther away from their destination on the motherboard, making them harder to route. Additionally, the use of traditionally colored front panel cables rather than blackout cables makes them visibly ugly.

The build materials used in the K05 are sturdy and good, and the modular hard drive cages allow for some level of cooling versus storage customization. The optical drive cages exist if you really wanted them, but this feature is nice to have but not essential. The panel construction is one of the best features of the case, especially the top panel, which is deep enough to fit basically all radiators except for maybe some of those antec cooler ones with the pump mounted to the radiator.

The rails solution on the top panel also allows for easy installation and removal, eliminating the need for snapping plastic clips. This is a major win in our book, as disassembly can be difficult in cases without this level of design consideration.

In terms of cooling performance, the K05 is decent but not exciting. Removing the hard drive cages does improve GPU performance, making it one of the best cases on the bench and the best case on the bench in some scenarios. If you only need a few hard drives, removing the top cage could also substantially improve your thermals.

Overall, we're happy to see that Silverstone has put values build quality over aesthetic features like better cable management or more visible window on the side panel. The K05 may not be the most exciting case, but it's a great option for those looking for a well-constructed enclosure without breaking the bank.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enSilverstone is the odd man out in the case Market the cas's power and cooling manufacturer has somewhat of a boutique shop feel with some of their cases like the old sg8 and of course the Raven rv02 and we've liked some of their cases well enough in the past but they've had some Fierce competition in us and Global markets and of course Corsair and Cooler Master among the top two competitors with NZXT kind of dominating parts of the US market right now including Parts where this case is competing and this is what we're looking at today in the past we've really liked silver St Raven rv02 which was the first rotated motherboard case that we tested later testing the 600c by Corsair and that also had an inverted motherboard layout and now we're looking at something more standard so this is a midtower ATX case that retails for about $70 for the windowed version but there's a quiet version available also and this is called the Silverstone Kublai k05 BW so it's got the most friendly name possible as always check the article link to the description below for the full tear down on case internals build quality thermals and methodology but we're going to go through most of that here at at least a top level the k05 is targeted at mid-range PC builds with an entry to mid-level budget for the case cooling has long been a strong strong point for Silverstone cases we've reviewed anyway and the company's kept a function over form attitude toward Cooling and thermal design although the KL 05 still boasts expansive support for various cooling solutions the case itself ships relatively Bare Bones it has a single 120 mm front intake fan and and that's with the windowed version of the case Silverstone also takes the approach that any Tower cooler will sufficiently exhaust its heat through the rear ventilation without a pre-installed 120 mm rear exhaust fan similarly anyone buying a radiator can use the ample Headroom to install their cooling solution and won't need pre-installed fans since any consumer grade CLC includes its own fans so the single 120mm front intake solution does kind of Mak sense as long as you're putting in either a good Tower cooler or a radiator for your CPU cooling that makes the K 05 an interesting enclosure since it's so simplified in cooling design it lowers cost it's about $70 on new EG but we ran it through the thermal bench as we always do and even tested a few alternative cooling solutions within the case in one such test we installed a bottom intake fan in another we removed the hard drive cages which are modular to see if airf flow would perceptibly improve to the GPU and then we also did that with a bottom intake fan installed our test methodology is entirely defined within the article Linked In the description below let's run through the thermals before digging into the build quality ease of installation and cable management CPU thermals for the Silverstone k05 BW landed at 41.7 C delta T load one in the stock configuration making it cooler than the fantex P400 the Rosewell Gung near and marginally cooler than the s340 but not quite as low as the 600c which is still at the top of the bench here's where it gets a little more interesting removing the hard drive cages drops The Thermals to 40.8 Celsius so just under 1 Celsius difference and that'd make it a worthwhile Endeavor if you legitimately had no use for the the cages if you're running an SSD only adding a rear exhaust fan something that seems obvious in a stock configuration Choice actually does little to impact cooling compared to the marginal added investment and drops thermals to 40.3 cels or 4.43 celsi from 41.7 cels which isn't much of a gain for the extra fan cost so it makes sense that Silverstone tested and opted out of that setup for the stock configuration moving that fan to the bottom intake Port sees a reduction to 40.4 Celsius effectively the same as rear exhaust but that's all for the CPU Cooler and doing things with GPU thermals actually impacts it a bit more the KL 05 stock configuration runs the GPU pretty warm at 59.5 CS behind every other case on the bench but adding a rear exhaust fan doesn't really do much to help either so again it makes sense that Silverstone did opt out of that rear exhaust fan which so many cases do tend to include a bottom intake fan as we've traditionally found to be the case changes everything for the GPU and suddenly GPU temperatures drop to 52 cels from 59.5 5 Celsius major difference and that marks the KL 05 as the best performer on the bench for GPU thermals if it weren't for the hard drive cage we'd suggest this as the stock configuration but adding a 120 mm bottom fan does require removal of the cages and limits the PSU space so the actual usability of this solution is pretty limited and you'd basically be running an SSD only the next best trade-off and it is a good one is to remove obstructing cages to improveed thermals to 53.98 CSI again a large gain over the 59 Celsius temperature of the stock configuration so if you can actx even one of the hard drive cages you'd be in a pretty good spot for GPU thermals temperatures overall aren't particularly exciting but they're not offensive GPU thermals can certainly improve with some minor changes by the user and if we were to suggest one change it would be that anyone running an SSD only configuration immediately remove unused hard drive cages because it will actually improve GPU breathability in noticeable ways for Silverstone cooling performance is a little bit of let down compared to the previous products that we've looked at from them including the Raven series cases the efficiency of silverstone's single fan cooling solution is impressive if dragging a bit behind some of the immediate competition thermals aren't everything and with how similar cases are in this particular part of the market these days it's really important for build quality ease of installation and cable management features to be at their top class for every product because between things like the NZXT s340 the Corsair 400c both of those cases flank this case in price and then of course there's other competitors like the Rosell gungir which we weren't big fans of but did just come out is priced the same as this case so it's a fierce market and having those build quality and ease of installation sort of features at the top of the specs list are very important to building a product that's worth considering since there's just so much saturation in the 7-ish case Market the exterior of the case is relatively inoffensive and plain but it's got discret stylization on the front panel Silverstone uses thick plastics for the front and top panels than the usual steel for side panels the paint is consistently colored across all materials which is kind of a rare thing in these $70 cases and it's also got an easily removable front dust filter that allows for quick cleaning of the front intake and also an easily accessible dust filter for the bottom and other relevant places the top panel is one of the pieces that I'm most interested in with this case so it can fit 240 and 280 mm radiators in that top mounting position and radiators can be readily mounted above the chassis and within that large top panel allowing for cleaner builds and isolated cooling now the part that I have have to reiterate here is that the top panel is very easily removed and that's one of my favorite aspects of this case case disassembly is hard to get right and being able to take parts off without snapping plastic Clips is a win for Silverstone something that other companies Corsair included recently in NZXT in the past can't always pull off correctly internally a stack of hard drive cages sits at top the bottom intake Port removing the cages would also allow for installation of a bottom intake fan for of course better GPU cooling as we showed just a moment ago cabling is different to hide in the case and this is the first case without a shroud that we've reviewed in quite a while so we're not really used to showing the exposed cables from the PSU but that's not a bad thing not every case needs a PSU shroud and frankly a lot of them execute the shrouds really poorly look at the Rosewell gunger for that the lack of a PSU shroud in the K5 allows for more traditional hard drive support optical drive support and reduced cost overall keeping the case more evenly priced in the $70 bracket but Silverstone could have done a much better job with the Cale management there needs to be a cutout for example above the PSU for access to the FPC USB and audio front panel headers instead what we have is a forced pass through with the larger cables which positions the front panel connectors farther away from their destination on the motherboard and that coupled with silverstone's use of traditionally colored front panel cables the colored cables rather than the blackout cables means that front panel connectors are plainly visible and pretty ugly the passrs for the 24 pin header are aligned well though and reason wide and the EPS pass through is also wide enough to accommodate most motherboard EPS 12vt positions everything else is fairly standard the build materials are sturdy and good the modular hard drive cages allow for some level of cooling versus storage customization and the optical drive cages exist if you really wanted them the panel construction is really one of the best features of the case especially this top panel where it's deep enough to fit basically all radiators except for maybe some of those antec cooler ones with the pump mounted to the radiator and it's also got the rails solution so you can just screw it in unscrew it and then shift as needed so there's no snapping of plastic alligator clips as we see on a lot of other cases so that's a big thing I like here it's a few more screws to access but it's just more sturdy and if you're lifting it up by the top panel it's not going to fly off on you so these are things that other case manufacturers should really look into and then in terms of cooling cooling performance is okay it's not exciting but if you remove those hard drive cages the GPU performance improves so substantially even just from removing the top cages that it's actually one of the best cases on the bench and the best case on the bench in some scenarios so if you only need a few hard drives maybe three hard drives because it's three per cage you could just get rid of that Top Drive cage and then use only the bottom one and that would really substantially improve your thermals in the $70 price range the K 05 offers a well constructed minimalistically cooled enclosure to do battle with a sea of smaller cases with PSU shrouds and those are kind of getting boring in some ways the 05 has more traditional drive support large radiator support a well-built paneling system and values build quality over some of the aesthetic items like better K management or better window on the side panel now it's just up to Silver Stone to start finding better names than the likes of k05 BW k05 BQ rvz02 and things like that but otherwise we like this case reasonably we would strongly suggest looking at things like the NZXT s 340 the fantex P400 and the coair 400c for cases within the $30 range of this one uh but otherwise it's really not a bad case if you like the look of it as always if you like this type of coverage check out the patreon link the postol video to help us out directly links in the description below for the full article review tear down all that stuff subscribe if you like it and we'll see you all next timeSilverstone is the odd man out in the case Market the cas's power and cooling manufacturer has somewhat of a boutique shop feel with some of their cases like the old sg8 and of course the Raven rv02 and we've liked some of their cases well enough in the past but they've had some Fierce competition in us and Global markets and of course Corsair and Cooler Master among the top two competitors with NZXT kind of dominating parts of the US market right now including Parts where this case is competing and this is what we're looking at today in the past we've really liked silver St Raven rv02 which was the first rotated motherboard case that we tested later testing the 600c by Corsair and that also had an inverted motherboard layout and now we're looking at something more standard so this is a midtower ATX case that retails for about $70 for the windowed version but there's a quiet version available also and this is called the Silverstone Kublai k05 BW so it's got the most friendly name possible as always check the article link to the description below for the full tear down on case internals build quality thermals and methodology but we're going to go through most of that here at at least a top level the k05 is targeted at mid-range PC builds with an entry to mid-level budget for the case cooling has long been a strong strong point for Silverstone cases we've reviewed anyway and the company's kept a function over form attitude toward Cooling and thermal design although the KL 05 still boasts expansive support for various cooling solutions the case itself ships relatively Bare Bones it has a single 120 mm front intake fan and and that's with the windowed version of the case Silverstone also takes the approach that any Tower cooler will sufficiently exhaust its heat through the rear ventilation without a pre-installed 120 mm rear exhaust fan similarly anyone buying a radiator can use the ample Headroom to install their cooling solution and won't need pre-installed fans since any consumer grade CLC includes its own fans so the single 120mm front intake solution does kind of Mak sense as long as you're putting in either a good Tower cooler or a radiator for your CPU cooling that makes the K 05 an interesting enclosure since it's so simplified in cooling design it lowers cost it's about $70 on new EG but we ran it through the thermal bench as we always do and even tested a few alternative cooling solutions within the case in one such test we installed a bottom intake fan in another we removed the hard drive cages which are modular to see if airf flow would perceptibly improve to the GPU and then we also did that with a bottom intake fan installed our test methodology is entirely defined within the article Linked In the description below let's run through the thermals before digging into the build quality ease of installation and cable management CPU thermals for the Silverstone k05 BW landed at 41.7 C delta T load one in the stock configuration making it cooler than the fantex P400 the Rosewell Gung near and marginally cooler than the s340 but not quite as low as the 600c which is still at the top of the bench here's where it gets a little more interesting removing the hard drive cages drops The Thermals to 40.8 Celsius so just under 1 Celsius difference and that'd make it a worthwhile Endeavor if you legitimately had no use for the the cages if you're running an SSD only adding a rear exhaust fan something that seems obvious in a stock configuration Choice actually does little to impact cooling compared to the marginal added investment and drops thermals to 40.3 cels or 4.43 celsi from 41.7 cels which isn't much of a gain for the extra fan cost so it makes sense that Silverstone tested and opted out of that setup for the stock configuration moving that fan to the bottom intake Port sees a reduction to 40.4 Celsius effectively the same as rear exhaust but that's all for the CPU Cooler and doing things with GPU thermals actually impacts it a bit more the KL 05 stock configuration runs the GPU pretty warm at 59.5 CS behind every other case on the bench but adding a rear exhaust fan doesn't really do much to help either so again it makes sense that Silverstone did opt out of that rear exhaust fan which so many cases do tend to include a bottom intake fan as we've traditionally found to be the case changes everything for the GPU and suddenly GPU temperatures drop to 52 cels from 59.5 5 Celsius major difference and that marks the KL 05 as the best performer on the bench for GPU thermals if it weren't for the hard drive cage we'd suggest this as the stock configuration but adding a 120 mm bottom fan does require removal of the cages and limits the PSU space so the actual usability of this solution is pretty limited and you'd basically be running an SSD only the next best trade-off and it is a good one is to remove obstructing cages to improveed thermals to 53.98 CSI again a large gain over the 59 Celsius temperature of the stock configuration so if you can actx even one of the hard drive cages you'd be in a pretty good spot for GPU thermals temperatures overall aren't particularly exciting but they're not offensive GPU thermals can certainly improve with some minor changes by the user and if we were to suggest one change it would be that anyone running an SSD only configuration immediately remove unused hard drive cages because it will actually improve GPU breathability in noticeable ways for Silverstone cooling performance is a little bit of let down compared to the previous products that we've looked at from them including the Raven series cases the efficiency of silverstone's single fan cooling solution is impressive if dragging a bit behind some of the immediate competition thermals aren't everything and with how similar cases are in this particular part of the market these days it's really important for build quality ease of installation and cable management features to be at their top class for every product because between things like the NZXT s340 the Corsair 400c both of those cases flank this case in price and then of course there's other competitors like the Rosell gungir which we weren't big fans of but did just come out is priced the same as this case so it's a fierce market and having those build quality and ease of installation sort of features at the top of the specs list are very important to building a product that's worth considering since there's just so much saturation in the 7-ish case Market the exterior of the case is relatively inoffensive and plain but it's got discret stylization on the front panel Silverstone uses thick plastics for the front and top panels than the usual steel for side panels the paint is consistently colored across all materials which is kind of a rare thing in these $70 cases and it's also got an easily removable front dust filter that allows for quick cleaning of the front intake and also an easily accessible dust filter for the bottom and other relevant places the top panel is one of the pieces that I'm most interested in with this case so it can fit 240 and 280 mm radiators in that top mounting position and radiators can be readily mounted above the chassis and within that large top panel allowing for cleaner builds and isolated cooling now the part that I have have to reiterate here is that the top panel is very easily removed and that's one of my favorite aspects of this case case disassembly is hard to get right and being able to take parts off without snapping plastic Clips is a win for Silverstone something that other companies Corsair included recently in NZXT in the past can't always pull off correctly internally a stack of hard drive cages sits at top the bottom intake Port removing the cages would also allow for installation of a bottom intake fan for of course better GPU cooling as we showed just a moment ago cabling is different to hide in the case and this is the first case without a shroud that we've reviewed in quite a while so we're not really used to showing the exposed cables from the PSU but that's not a bad thing not every case needs a PSU shroud and frankly a lot of them execute the shrouds really poorly look at the Rosewell gunger for that the lack of a PSU shroud in the K5 allows for more traditional hard drive support optical drive support and reduced cost overall keeping the case more evenly priced in the $70 bracket but Silverstone could have done a much better job with the Cale management there needs to be a cutout for example above the PSU for access to the FPC USB and audio front panel headers instead what we have is a forced pass through with the larger cables which positions the front panel connectors farther away from their destination on the motherboard and that coupled with silverstone's use of traditionally colored front panel cables the colored cables rather than the blackout cables means that front panel connectors are plainly visible and pretty ugly the passrs for the 24 pin header are aligned well though and reason wide and the EPS pass through is also wide enough to accommodate most motherboard EPS 12vt positions everything else is fairly standard the build materials are sturdy and good the modular hard drive cages allow for some level of cooling versus storage customization and the optical drive cages exist if you really wanted them the panel construction is really one of the best features of the case especially this top panel where it's deep enough to fit basically all radiators except for maybe some of those antec cooler ones with the pump mounted to the radiator and it's also got the rails solution so you can just screw it in unscrew it and then shift as needed so there's no snapping of plastic alligator clips as we see on a lot of other cases so that's a big thing I like here it's a few more screws to access but it's just more sturdy and if you're lifting it up by the top panel it's not going to fly off on you so these are things that other case manufacturers should really look into and then in terms of cooling cooling performance is okay it's not exciting but if you remove those hard drive cages the GPU performance improves so substantially even just from removing the top cages that it's actually one of the best cases on the bench and the best case on the bench in some scenarios so if you only need a few hard drives maybe three hard drives because it's three per cage you could just get rid of that Top Drive cage and then use only the bottom one and that would really substantially improve your thermals in the $70 price range the K 05 offers a well constructed minimalistically cooled enclosure to do battle with a sea of smaller cases with PSU shrouds and those are kind of getting boring in some ways the 05 has more traditional drive support large radiator support a well-built paneling system and values build quality over some of the aesthetic items like better K management or better window on the side panel now it's just up to Silver Stone to start finding better names than the likes of k05 BW k05 BQ rvz02 and things like that but otherwise we like this case reasonably we would strongly suggest looking at things like the NZXT s 340 the fantex P400 and the coair 400c for cases within the $30 range of this one uh but otherwise it's really not a bad case if you like the look of it as always if you like this type of coverage check out the patreon link the postol video to help us out directly links in the description below for the full article review tear down all that stuff subscribe if you like it and we'll see you all next time\n"