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SilverStone Temjin TJ10: Is a case just a case? If you're not satisfied of just stuffing your gear into just any enclosure, this thing of beauty is exactly what you may need.
Date: December 17, 2007
Manufacturer:
Written By: Hubert Wong
Price:

Moving on to the interior, the TJ10 leaves plenty of room in which to work.

The motherboard tray is removable, handy if you have a large board but even if it weren't we'd imagine very few would have problems. The tray itself is long enough that the massive video cards on the market today will still be out of the way of the hard drive cage. The PCI expansion slots are not tool free, but they do feature vented slits for additional airflow.

The first picture to the left gives a good look at the interior of the external drive bays. Screws are required here to secure optical drives or other 5.25" devices. The second picture is the PSU area. There's a ventilation panel on the bottom of the case to let air be drawn into the case if your PSU has a fan on the bottom. However, the TJ10 allows you to also install the PSU upside down so to speak should you want this fan to pull air out of the case. The TJ10 has multiple screw holes here to accommodate for this without any modifications required from the user.

The TJ10 features an air duct for video card cooling. The "hole" we referred to previously is pictured above to the left. The air is pulled in through the opening and through the mesh. This is done by a 120mm fan which will in turn blow it through the case and over the video card. The vents in the PCI expansion plates will allow the air to move out of the case.

The Temjin TJ10 can be decked out with up to six hard drives. There are two removable drive cages, each of which can hold three 3.5" hard drives The drive bays can be pulled out by compressing the two release bars on either side of the cage.

There are rubber strips on both the top and bottom of the cage. These will line up with the sides of the hard drive and serves to dampen drive vibration. Once the drives are installed, you simply slide the drive bay back into place.

Installation and Final Words

Setting up hardware inside the Temjin TJ10 was intuitive and straightforward. Recently, either due to odd design decisions, or I am simply getting more and more incompetent, I've had to bust out the user manual in order to complete a computer setup. Everything went into place and we didn't experience any problems but one.

I probably should have taken a wider angle, but pictured above is me trying to slide the motherboard tray back into place after setting everything up, including the Thermaltake V1 cooler. No ifs, ands or buts... we could not slide the tray back in without taking the heatsink off. This isn't a show stopper though, as the case is large enough to work without having to remove the motherboard tray. That said, the Thermaltake V1 does fit if you install it post motherboard tray reinstallation.

The stock cooling configuration is in line with other high-end cases we've worked with such as the Cooler Master Stacker 830. The Stacker has potential for more fans due to the 4-fan attachment, but your ears will pay for that. System temperature hovered in the mid 30°C range and needless to say we were satisfied with the performance.

The SilverStone Temjin TJ10 is relatively quiet, which is partially due to the fans SilverStone included. We expected more noise given the ventilation mesh and grills around the case, but the rubber dampeners for the hard drives and the fairly thick aluminum panels helped out in this regard.

On that note, we must say that the build quality is excellent. We were very impressed with the strength of the case and SilverStone did not skimp on the aluminum to build the Temjin TJ10. The black case is anodized as well, so it will not nick like cases which are painted.

Other than the heatsink issue, we think the Temjin TJ10 is easily the most impressive computer chassis we've reviewed in the last 18 months, let alone VL's lifetime. Every aspect screams quality and if you're looking for a case to impress people, this is it. It doesn't come cheap though, ringing in at over but this is not a generic case with an underpowered generic PSU. While many cases will do the same job, it won't look as good doing so as the SilverStone Temjin TJ10.

Hit us up in the Forums if you have any questions.

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