Final Thoughts
When someone ask me to suggest a home theater PC case I always say SilverStone. SilverStone cases are always quality and they are one of the only PC case manufacturers that has a very large selection of HTPC cases. The Grandia Series GD08 is a great addition to these cases.
This case has the typical top down style of most HTPC cases, so it actually looks like some piece of audio equipment in your home theater setup. The front of the case has a brushed aluminum finish which really sets it off and makes it look professional. The two optical drive bays have bay covers so even when you install drives the front of your case will keep that clean look. Both the power and reset button are very minimalistic as well.
To my surprise this case can not only support mATX motherboards, but ATX and even extended ATX motherboards! Besides just being able to support almost all motherboard sizes this case also has quite a lot of room for hard drives. Of course that is very important for a home theater PC because you are going to be putting all of your media on it. This case supports eight 3.5-inch hard drives, two 2.5-inch hard drives and of course two optical drives. This case also has two USB 3.0 ports on the front for easy files transfers. As far as cooling goes you do have 3 included fans and room for 4 more. The fans on both sides and the bottom of the case have removable fan filters for easy cleaning. If you are using this as a HTPC system it is most likely going to be on all the time so dust is going to collect. Having the fan filters makes upkeep of this case pretty simple.
Installation of components is very easy. The entire front part (drive cages) can be removed so you have some room to work with when installing and running cables. This also allows you to install all of your hard drives and optical drives outside of the case and when you are ready you just put the entire cage back in the case. While installation was fairly easy I did run into a few issues. We were using the Noctua NH-L12 low profile CPU cooler and it made it very hard to connect power and SATA cables to our optical drive. If you are going to be using optical drives definitely make sure you are using a very small CPU cooler. Things will get a little cramped once everything is installed, so just keep that in mind.
When it comes down to it this is another great HTPC case from SilverStone. It has support for a ton of hard drives and supports large motherboards. Keep in mind that if you are using a smaller motherboard and CPU cooler you may not have run into the issues I had. Overall ThinkComputers gives the SilverStone Grandia Series GD08 HTPC Case an 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Support for a total of 10 hard drives
– Sleek look
– Easy installation
– Support for mATX, ATX and E-ATX motherboards
– 3 included cooling fans with fan filters
Cons:
– Very hard to connect optical drives with large CPU coolers installed
