SilverStone Precision Series PS11B-W ATX Case Review

By Jason Maxfield

Manufacturer: SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.
Product Name: Precision Series ATX Case
Model Number: SST-PS11B-W
UPC: 844761011789
Price As Tested: $49.99 (Amazon | Newegg)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by SilverStone

SilverStone brings us the Precision Series PS11B-W ATX case for the budget minded or entry level enthusiast. The Precision Series includes two variants, the PS11B-W and the PS11B-Q. This review will focus on the SilverStone PS11B-W, which is the performance version of the series.

The SilverStone PS11B-W is a versatile entry level enthusiast case, featuring bottom-mount PSU, USB 3.0, variable size fan mounts and locations, a variety of hard drive mount options, and space enough for the most gigantic of graphics cards on the market. In this article for Benchmark Reviews, I’ll be putting the SilverStone PS11B-W to the test. Can the SST-PS11B-W deliver on all it’s promises? Let’s find out.

Features & Specifications

Model No.	SST-PS11B-W
Material	Mesh front panel, steel body (SST-PS11B-W)
Motherboard	ATX , Micro-ATX
Multimedia	—
Drive Bay	External	5.25” x 2
		—
	Internal	3.5″ x 3 , 2.5” x 2
Cooling System	Front	2 x 120mm/140mm fan slot (1 x 120mm intake fan included)
	Rear	1 x 120mm fan slot
	Side	—
	Top	2 x 120mm fan slot (SST-PS11B-W)
	Bottom	1 x 120mm fan slot
	Internal	—
Expansion Slot	7
Front I/O Port	USB 3.0 x 2 Audio x 1 MIC x 1
Power Supply	1 x optional standard PS2 (ATX)
Operating system support	—
Expansion Card	Compatible with expansion cards up to 16.2” , width restriction – 6.1”
Limitation of CPU cooler	161mm
Limitation of PSU	225mm
Net Weight	4.825KG
Dimension	215.3mm (W) x 426.5mm (H) x 481.5mm (D), 44L
Extra	—
Support VESA Mount	—

Product specifications taken from SilverStone’s website.

SilverStone PS11B-W Overview

The SilverStone PS11B-W comes packaged in your standard cardboard box. After unpacking the PS11B-W, you’ll notice it comes with a small two page manual in various languages, and some mounting screws and a few cable ties. It does come with a nice case badge with 3M backing so you can place the badge wherever you like, or not at all, if so inclined. It is very sparse on the extras, but this is a budget case.

Here we can see the front of the SIlverStone PS11B-W and the manual, hardware, included 120mm intake fan, and front grille cover.

We have a shot of the side window of the SilverStone PS11B-W with protective film on either side to protect it from damage. The window is pretty generous in size allowing a good view of your installed PC components. The bevel on the side window also gives you a bit more than half an inch of extra clearance for those tower-style CPU coolers.

The top of the SilverStone PS11B-W has room for two 120mm fans. The placement of the fan mounts are moved to the side of the case to allow room for VRM heatsinks that may be on your motherboard.

The bottom of the SilverStone PS11B-W has a removable plastic dust filter and a mount location for a 120mm fan. The plastic feet offer decent clearance for airflow to your PSU or an optional 120mm fan.

At the back of the SilverStone PS11B-W we have 7 expansion slots, 2 pass-through grommets, motherboard plate, bottom mount PSU, and a 80mm or 120mm fan exhaust mount.

SilverStone PS11B-W Detailed Features

Now we’ll take a closer look at some of the detailed features offered on the SilverStone PS11B-W.

With the side panel door taken off of the SilverStone PS11B-W we can see all the various mounting positions for hard drives, optical drives, SSDs, and case fans.

At the bottom of the SilverStone PS11B-W you have some foam padding where the PSU mounts. The mounting plate is good for mounting the PSU upright, or upside down, depending on how you want to orient your PSU. The bottom also has a plastic mesh filter that spans the bottom where the PSU fan and optional bottom mount 120mm fan are located.

The motherboard tray has a decent size cut-out for optional backplates for aftermarket CPU heatsinks, and is compatable with ATX, and M-ATX motherboards. The tray has M-ATX and ATX stamped into the middle of the tray, but are hard to see in the above image.

On the front end of the SilverStone PS11B-W we have a three slot 3.5″ HDD mounting cage, with one 2.5″ SSD tray on top of it. Above that we have mounts for two 5.25″ optical drives and one 2.5″ SSD tray on the bottom side of the optical drive bays.

All of the drive mounts are tool-free and do not require any slide bars to be attached or plastic sleds. They simply slide into the slot and click in place with a plastic pin, that can be moved by pulling on the plastic tabs to keep the pin from being snapped off during installation. The same thing applies to the optical drive cages, with the exception of the tab being spring loaded and only having to be pushed slightly forward to release the drive.

The SSD trays can be removed by unscrewing the one thumb-screw and then mounting a drive in using the supplied screws that come with the SilverStone PS11B-W. Reattaching the drive trays are easy. You just slide two tabs on the back into their slots on the HDD or optical bays and screw it back on with the thumb-screw.

The SilverStone PS11B-W has two intake fan mount options for 140mm or 120mm fans, and has an included 120mm intake fan. Inside the removable front panel is a plastic mesh filter that can be removed for easy cleaning.

The front panel connectors include two USB 3.0, power switch, power LED, hard drive activity LED, reset switch, and headphone and mic jacks.

Here is a look at the cable management side of the SilverStone PS11B-W. There is plenty of pass-throughs and tie-down points to do an adequate job of managing the mess of cables that will be necessary for any PC build. The included front mount wires are power, power LED, HDD LED, reset, two USB 3.0 ports, and headphone and mic jacks.

There is no pass-through near the top of the motherboard tray to route the CPU power cable behind the motherboard tray, even though there is some tie-down points along the right edge of the tray.

The side panel has a bevel in it that offers a bit more than 1/2 inch of extra clearance to help keep those wires from pushing against the panel once your PC is built.

At the front of the SilverStone PS11B-W you have a removable mesh panel that has a plastic mesh filter on the inside to help keep the dust out of your system. The panel is easily removed by gently pulling the bottom of it away from the case. The mesh grille is open enough where airflow does not seem impeded and muffles the sound of the fans slightly.

At the very top you have your power switch, which is just simply part of the plastic face cut on 3 side to allow it to bend enough to depress the switch behind the plastic to turn the PC on.

You also have two USB 3.0 with the headphone and mic jacks located between them, and your power and HDD activity LEDs located to the left, with the reset button recessed into the plastic panel. The reset button is so small it requires a pen or pencil tip to depress it. I kind of like this feature since it makes it nearly impossible to accidentally reset your PC. On the flip-side of this, if your PC ever locks up and you need to use the reset switch, you’ll need to have something on hand to use the button.

SilverStone PS11B-W System Build

Building the SIlverStone PS11B-W was mostly a breeze. I had a couple issues with the doors not wanting to go on smoothly and the spacing at the top of the case that I will go into more depth below.

System Specs:

CPU: AMD Phenom ii X2 555 @ 3.5Ghz

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper D92

MB: MSI 870-G45

GPU: Asus HD 4870 1GB

RAM: Crucial Ballistix 4GB (2×2) @1600 8CL

PSU: OCZ ModXstream Pro 700W

HDD: WD Black 750GB SATA II & WD Scorpio Blue 2.5″ 320GB SATA II

DVD: GSA-H30L SATA

OS: Windows 7-64 Ultimate Edition

Monitor: Acer X223W 1680×1050 @ 60Hz

The first thing I want to point out after finishing the build is the location of the motherboard. The board mounts almost plumb to the top of the case. I found this very odd considering there is two optional fan mount locations at the top of this unit. I’m pretty sure this is why they have the top mount locations move as far toward the window side of the case as possible to allow clearance of any VRM heatsinks that might be at the top of your motherboard. This wasn’t a problem for me, as the MSI 870-G45 does not have any VRM heatsinks.

However, with the Cooler Master Hyper D92 installed there is very little clearance on the top of the case, and I doubt I could mount a fan just above the CPU cooler. There is space for the other 120mm top fan location though.

I did not fiddle with the orientation of the cooler, as mounting it horizontally might of given enough clearance to fit a fan in above it. This is something everyone is going to have to check into on a case by case basis because I can not possibly get into all the variations of what will fit into this case and what will not.

Also, I have to mention when building this case, I left the cooler installed on the motherboard. This made getting to the two top-most motherboard mounting screws a bit of a pain. It took some careful aiming of screws with a magnetic tip screw driver to get them seated in place. I would recommend installing the CPU cooler after installing the board for this reason specifically.

Keep in mind the clearance for CPU coolers is 161mm. The Hyper D92 fit in there nicely with room to spare. I would be weary of using CPU coolers with 120mm fans. As an example, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO has a height of 159mm, which would technically fit according to the clearance numbers given by SilverStone, but again, do your own research well before hand!

This is the cable management side of things after installing the system. As you can see it’s quite the mess, and I still managed to get the side panel back on without much fuss.

There might be a possible issue with the CPU back-plate for some users. The CPU back-plate is partially obscured by the top rail of the case and could make things a pain when needing to tighten down an aftermarket back-plate. I didn’t have an issue with it, since I installed the board with the CPU heatsink on already. I just wanted to point this out as being a potential problem when building with the SIlverStone PS11B-W case.

Here we have a look at all of the components installed into the SIlverStone PS11B-W case.

There are a few other things I’d like to point out. The CPU power cable had to be routed along the back end of the motherboard since there wasn’t a pass-through at the top of the motherboard tray to route it behind it. This wasn’t much of an issue, it’s just more of an aesthetic gripe more than anything else.

Another item to point out is the front audio jack has an issue with it’s length. If you can see that black cable running past the top end of the graphics card near the back of it, then underneath to it’s destination, you’ll see that it’s a bit taut. SilverStone should think about adding another couple of inches to this cable since a lot of the front panel audio connectors are located near the back of motherboards.

The other point deals with mounting fans in the front of the case. As you can see there is a metal grille cage in the front part of the hard drive bays and with the 120mm pre-installed fan already set in place, I had to remove that and the whole front bezel to mount two 140mm fans in the front of the SilverStone PS11B-W.

Removing the front bezel was a little nerve wracking as it is just held in place by plastic snap-on style posts. Also, when removing the bezel all the wires from the front are mounted to them and you have to be careful you do not yank them when removing the bezel. You can feed some slack on the wires to help with this. I was careful and didn’t damage anything, but I have to wonder if SIlverStone could not of made access to the front of the case easier.

The room for the GPU is nice. The Asus HD 4870 is 9.5 inches long and has plenty of room to spare thanks to the open space above the hard drive cage being left open. I also like this layout because the top front fan has no obstruction in airflow to the graphics card and also supplies cooling air to both of the 2.5″ drive trays.

I have to mention that some of the wires on my PSU were a bit too long since everything is quite close to the power supply some of the excess wiring ended up spilling into the bottom part of the case. This is more of an issue with my power cable management skills, and may or may not be an issue with your own build depending on the length of cables on your PSU.

Everything else not previously mentioned installed easily enough. I didn’t have any problems installing the PSU, hard drives, or optical drives.

 

Here is a look at the front of the SilverStone PS11B-W with the case badge and PC components installed. The SilverStone case badge is simply a plastic logo with some 3M backing tape on it. I chose to mount it in the middle of the mesh grille and seems to be sticking there quite nicely.

As I mentioned at the start of this page, I had some issues with the fit of the doors. They did not want to go on smoothly most of the time. I just had to fiddle with them until things lined up properly. It’s not anything to be overly concerned with, but it’s just worth pointing out.

SilverStone PS11B-W Final Thoughts

SIlverStone has built a solid budget enthusiast case. The PS11B-W is a nice case that has enough features for most enthusiasts and is simple enough to use for novice PC builders.

I would like to suggest a couple things to SilverStone in regards to some of the design flaws after building with PS11B-W case. The audio jack cable is a bit too short in my opinion. I would rather have a couple more inches of cable to better route them than not. Even if I had to deal with excess wire, because if it’s too short to make it to it’s connector on the motherboard, then it’s just a useless wire that has to be stuffed away somewhere in the case. This may not be an issue to some people, specially if they do not plan on using a headset with mini-jacks, as it really isn’t for me since I use a USB headset. For the sake of the build, I have to pursue all functionality as fully as possible even if I do not intend on using part of it.

Most of the build quality on the PS11B-W is spot on. The only nagging issue with build quality was the side mount panels. They just don’t want to close smoothly most of the time. This is a small irritant, but a point I have to bring up.

The only other suggestion I have is that the top of the unit can get crammed really fast with the motherboard being mounted all the way at the top. I’m not so sure the top mount fans are going to be useful for some depending on the model of motherboard and CPU heatsinks used. SilverStone might want to consider a revision that gives an extra inch or two of space at the top to improve motherboard and CPU heatsink clearance.

SilverStone PS11B-W Conclusion

The SilverStone PS11B-W is a budget enthusiast case with most of the features you want or need, and all of the extra features left to the higher end cases, all packaged into a stylish looking case.

The SilverStone PS11B-W is well built, with a few minor grumblings about the side panel doors not fitting as smoothly, and the front audio jack being a bit too short for my liking. Everything else in the PS11B-W fit perfectly.

The SilverStone PS11B-W is easy enough for new builders to use and has a good value to boot! The PS11B-W is priced for $49.99 (Amazon | Newegg) at the time of writing. You can’t go wrong with the PS11B-W if you are in the market for something inexpensive that will fit all of your gear and have enough cooling options to keep it all running cool.

Pros:

+ Tool-free design
+ Good cable management
+ Nice mounting trays
+ Plenty of fan mount options

Cons:

– Side panel doors don’t close smoothly
– Front audio cable a bit short
– Top clearance might be an issue for some boards

Ratings:

• Performance: 9.0
• Appearance: 8.5
• Construction: 8.75
• Functionality: 9.5
• Value: 9.25

Final Score: 9.0 out of 10.

Excellence Achievement: Benchmark Reviews Golden Tachometer Award.

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