It has been over three years since I have personally taken a look at a new case, and this first one back is one that is outside of our typical wheelhouse. The SilverStone CS382 is a case designed to house your home-built NAS, and it has the features to prove it. With support for up to 11 drives, including eight hot-swap bays, Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX support, and plenty of room for keeping components cool, this case looks to be positioned nicely to house your next home server or NAS build. Not only will I be reviewing the CS382, but a future article is coming where I discuss how the CS382 will be used in my home network to replace three older desktop-based servers into a single, updated hardware solution for my home lab.
Special thanks to SilverStone for providing the CS382 review sample!
Specifications
Packaging and Accessories
The CS382 arrived in a pretty nondescript box, with a standard brown cardboard outer shell, with black ink showing just the SilverStone name and an indication that this case is part of the Case Storage Series. No mention of the actual case model is to be found. This plain packaging actually makes sense, as this isn’t your standard gaming-type case that will need to pull potential buyers to it in a retail environment. No, this case is purpose-built, and will possibly find itself in quite a few business environments.
As far as accessories go, the CS382 comes with your standard drive and motherboard screws, but since the hard drive bays are tool-less, there isn’t a lot of extra hardware required for this case. It is very straight forward. SilverStone doesn’t include a printed installation manual, so you will need to take a look at the PDF on their website, which will come in handy during component installation, as there are a few steps that differ from most other cases with the CS382.
SilverStone doesn’t include a printed installation manual, so you will need to take a look at the PDF on their website, which will come in handy during component installation, as there are a few steps that differ from most other cases with the CS382.