Building in the Silverstone Fortress FT05

As discussed earlier, the FT05 has the same interior design as the RV05. This is a good thing, but also a bad one as well. When I reviewed the RV05 I rated the interior design highly, but also noted it had some issues. As this is the same design, the FT05 has the same problems. Furthermore, the design of the FT05 introduces additional problems when constructing a system. To start off though, I will note one improvement in the design. On the RV05 the external I/O ports were covered with a simply rubber cover, but here Silverstone has opted for a flip up plastic cover instead. Also, the dual fan controllers have been moved to here so that you no longer have to remove the top panel to get to them like you did on the RV05. I opted to keep the stock 180mm fans and connect them to these control switches. At high speed the fans moved quite a bit of air, but were quite loud.  At low power they were inaudible, but only created a slight breath of air.

Without the side panels and top cover you can see the standard assortment of expansion slots, the motherboard I/O hole, and the 120mm exhaust mount. The dual arches at the top have holes in them so you can reach the screws underneath, and also function as very sturdy carry handles. Just like on the RV05 though, to remove / install hardware in the expansion slot you have to first remove the slot cover then it’s a little awkward to reach the screws themselves. This design makes little sense to me, and simply over complicates installing GPUs and other expansion cards.

The bottom of the FT05, just like the RV05, can mount dual 180mm fans, dual 140mm fans, or even triple 120mm fans. In my RV05 I was able to install a 240mm radiator in push / pull configuration. I’m not sure if you could go push / pull with the space provided in the FT05, but you could definitely get a radiator installed. The included 180mm fans push plenty of air but are quite loud at medium and high settings. In fact, you may as well not have sound dampening padding at all…it doesn’t do anything except get in the way.

As with the RV05 the FT05 has a pair of SSD brackets on the backplate. But also just like the RV05, the brackets didn’t fit my Crucial SSD properly, which lead me to simply slide it in and have the brackets hold it in place without screws.

Cable management isn’t bad for a case this size. In fact, when taking interior space into account the FT05 has got great cable management…with two caveats. One, you only get two cable tie down points, which drastrically limits your options for arranging cables. Two, the sound dampening padding on the side panel further reduces cable space. In particular, I found I could not fit my power cable behind the panel without some effort. The RV05’s side panels were curved on the inside, so this wasn’t a problem with that case. Also on the backplate is the mounting for the slim slot loading optical drive. Due to the padding, cable clearance is limited to 19mm minimum as opposed to 25mm in the RV05.

Finally, you can see the full build inside the FT05. This is a full ATX motherboard mounted 90° along with a 750TI graphics card. The PSU is a HX750 from Corsair. Underneath the PSU is where the removable 3.5″ HDD drive cages go, but this PSU was a little large to fit with the cages in place. I highly recommend, if not insist, you get a modular PSU when building in the FT05, there simply isn’t room for extra cables. As far as expansion compatability, you get a nice GPU clearance of up to 312.42mm long and 166.88mm wide, 162mm of CPU cooler clearance,and room to fit a full ATX PSU (w/ HDD cages 175mm, w/o cages 305mm of space).

Building in the FT05 was an overall painless experience. Some problems, such as the noise padding, the wrong sized SSD brackets, and the trickiness of installing components such as the PSU and wiring the cables can pose some difficulty, but given the size of the interior you have to admit Silverstone has still done a good job designing and organizing the interior of the FT05.