SilverStone Fortress FT05 90 Degree ATX Full Tower Review @ [H]

Do love the case though, the filters is a bit plus for me that i can just remove them without having to take things apart. Just felt like i was working in a mini/micro atx case working cables instead of a mid-atx which wasn't surprising just felt like it didn't have to be so because you'd want to avoid laying cables in the path of those nice 180mm fans.

I couldn't manage to put the ATX and GPU cables behind the motherboard tray, but they're clamped to the front and because the fans are 180mm the cables don't interfere much at all.

IMHO the FT05 has two major design mistakes: firstly the PSU should be on the other side of the motherboard, as with the FT02, and secondly there should be about 1cm extra room behind the motherboard tray so cables can be easily routed.

The reason for moving the PSU is improved cabling for the ATX power and the 8-pin CPU power cables, particularly the latter. Right now the CPU power cable stretches right across the back of the motherboard, and is impossible to change without removing the motherboard.

Edit: I've just thought of another good reason for moving the PSU back: the USB and other connectors on the motherboard are generally on that side of the motherboard, so you'd save more cables stretching across the back of the motherboard.
 
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Is it worth installing a 120 exhaust fan on the top of the FT05?
I actually put a 140mm CPU Rad in the top of mine with Push/Pull. Any exhaust on the top is GREAT in that case.
 
Thanks for the reply Kyle! Would an exhaust fan help with GPU temps? My 2080 Ti gets up to 80C during gaming in my FT05.
 
Thanks for the reply Kyle! Would an exhaust fan help with GPU temps? My 2080 Ti gets up to 80C during gaming in my FT05.
I would suggest yes, as those cards do radiate a good bit of heat. I just got rid of my Silverstone Fortress case, but when I gamed, I made sure to switch the bottom fans to high in order to keep it cool as possible.
 
I replaced the Silverstone 180 fans because they were making grinding noise with two Noctua 140 PWM fans and have them linked to GPU temp with Argus Monitor, it works really well so far! I wish Silverstone made 180 PWM fans though.
 
Thanks for the reply Kyle! Would an exhaust fan help with GPU temps? My 2080 Ti gets up to 80C during gaming in my FT05.

The fortress series are more designed for blower style cards, dual or triple fan cards the heat tends to circulate in the case more. In the manual of my ft02 there was a little diagram showing that blower cards were the preferred ones for the vertical cases.

My pos 7990 routinely hit 95c plus..though it did that even in other cases as the cooler was totally inadequate for the non binned chips they started using on it after a while.

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The fortress series are more designed for blower style cards, dual or triple fan cards the heat tends to circulate in the case more. In the manual of my ft02 there was a little diagram showing that blower cards were the preferred ones for the vertical cases.
Uhh, that goes for just about every ATX case built in the world, it is hardly specific to Fortress cases.
 
Its meant to be more specific to the ft02/ft05 bcause of the vertical setup. Triple or dual fan cards tended to get hotter in the ft02 than regular style cases, presumably that's what the diagram above in the manual was all about. I can't recall any other cases coming with a manual stating that certain gpu coolers were preferred.
So your suggestion is that cases other than the Fortress cases magically exhaust heat better? Please explain.

The entire idea around the design of the Fortress cases was simple to use exhaust the heat from the case where it will migrate to naturally.
 
Kyle is correct, these Fortress and Raven cases are champs at cooling pretty much any type of video card due to the vertical design and airflow.
 
All i can do is go by my experience with the case, i had 3 dual chip cards in the time i had the case, a gtx-295x2 (single pcb version) a 6990 and a 7990. They all ran much hotter in my ft02 case than they did when i had them in my previous case. In the case of the ft02 the only exhaust that case had was a 120mm exhaust located directly behind the cpu area.

The entire left side of the case had no exhaust at all, it did however have 2 of the 3 large fans at the bottom of the case blowing air up into the card. So i can only assume that in the case of the 2 cards with a centre fan that some of the hot air was being exhausted downwards and was then being pushed upwards by the intake and being recirculated back into the card. Which is presumably why they only recommended regular blower style cards for that case.

In the case of my 7990, it wasn't unusual for me to see that card hit over 100c in that case, even after reapplying thermal compound to the cores.

It could have more to do with heat pipe orientation than the case. I know at least some of the Arctic coolers tell you they don't work very well in the vertical orientation.
 
I know the manual says max CPU cooler height is 162MM but would a Noctua 165MM tower work? Anyone fit a larger than 162MM tower in this case?
 
I know the manual says max CPU cooler height is 162MM but would a Noctua 165MM tower work? Anyone fit a larger than 162MM tower in this case?

If you have solid side panel, then you should be OK. But if you have the window version, that 165mm cooler will end up touching/pressing against the side window.
 
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