Zit Seng's Blog

A Singaporean's technology and lifestyle blog

Investing In A Good PC Casing

I’ve blogged about this before. But every time I open up my PC casing, I’m mighty pleased with what I decided to buy a couple of years back. It wasn’t the cheapest PC casing around, but it was something that was designed to be easy to maintain. From the use of thumb screws, clip rails for holding hard disks, and easily removable parts, the premium cost was definitely worth the convenience and maintainability for many months and years to come.

This is the Cooler Master Silencio 550 chassis/casing. One of the things I just did this time around, and it’s the first time I’ve done so since buying this casing, is to clean the air filter. I was expecting a dirty, messy, job. But it turned out that the filter was surprisingly easy to clean. Almost too easy, if you ask me.

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The clip rails for the hard disks are also terribly convenient too. I used to just leave hard disks lying in their bays without securing them with screws, or at most, use just one or two screws. The clip rails are so convenient. No need for screws at all, the drives are so easy to remove and installed, and once installed, they are locked in quite securely.

I don’t go open my PC casing often at all. I’m past the “age” of loving to tinker with motherboards and hard disks. Every time I open the casing, it’s because I really need to. Like to fix or troubleshoot something that is broken. Opening up the casing is hardly something that I fancy doing anymore. So, it’s such a relief that the casing is relatively cooperative and doesn’t hinder what I need to do.

I’ve already mentioned some of these points, because I’ve talked about them in my old posts. But I’ll just highlight some of the other nice things I liked about the Silencio 550

First, it has sound dampening padding on the side walls and front panel. The casing is not meant to be soundproof. The sound dampening padding, however, does help to cut down on excessive noise emanating from the chassis.

The other nice thing, for me at least, is that the casing is relatively featureless and nondescript. It has a completely plain, albeit glossy, front panel. It’s something simple yet elegant. It would not look out of place, for example, in your TV console.

The surprising thing, because someone asked me and I looked it up, is that this casing is apparently still being sold. It’s priced relatively modest too (about S$119). I shan’t name the seller, but you could easily look it up. You can definitely find many other PC casings for much less price than this one, but I think this Cooler Master Silencio 550 is quite good value for money.

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