facebook rss twitter

Review: Cooler Master Silencio 652S

by Parm Mann on 22 May 2015, 15:15

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qacrkr

Add to My Vault: x

Specification and Test Methodology

Cooler Master Silencio 652S Specification

Model Number SIL-652-KKN2
Available Colour Midnight Black
Materials Polymer, Steel
Dimensions (W x H x D) 220mm x 507mm x 509mm
Net Weight 10.4kg
M/B Type microATX, ATX
5.25in Drive Bays 3 (exposed)
3.5in Drive Bays 9 (hidden; 7 in the HDD/SSD combo cage, 1 at the bottom, 1 in the ODD cage by adapter)
2.5in Drive Bays 10 (hidden; 7 in the HDD/SSD combo cages, 1 under the ODD cage, 1 behind the M/B tray,1 at the bottom)
I/O Panel USB 3.0 x 2, USB 2.0 x 2, Audio x 1 (supports AC97 / HD Audio), Mic x 1, SD card reader (Class 10) x 1
Expansion Slots 7+1
Cooling System Top: 180/200mm fan x 1, or 120/140mm fan x 2 (optional)
Front: 120mm Silencio FP 120 fan x 2 (installed; 11±1 dBA, 1200±200 RPM)
Rear: 120mm Silencio FP 120 fan x 1 (installed; 11±1 dBA, 1200±200 RPM)
Side: 180/200mm fan x 1 (optional)
Bottom: 120/180mm fan x 1 (optional)
HDD cage: 120mm fan x 1 (optional)
Power Supply Type Standard ATX PS2
Maximum Compatibility VGA card length: 423 mm
CPU cooler height: 168mm

HEXUS Chassis Test Bench

Hardware Components HEXUS Review Product Page
Processor Intel Core i5-3570K (quad-core, overclocked up to 4.40GHz) April 2012 Intel.com
CPU Cooler be quiet! Dark Rock 3 - Bequiet.com
Motherboard Asus Sabertooth Z77 - Asus.com
Memory 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws-X (2x4GB) DDR3 @ 1,600MHz - Gskill.com
Graphics Card 2x EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC in SLI (2x 4GB) April 2015 EVGA.com
Power Supply be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 (750W) July 2012 Bequiet.com
Storage Device 120GB SanDisk Extreme SSD March 2012 Sandisk.co.uk
Monitor Philips Brilliance 4K Ultra HD LED (288P6LJEB/00) - Philips.co.uk
Operating system Windows 8.1 (64-bit) October 2012 Microsoft.com

Test Methodology

To get a truer feel of how today's latest chassis perform, we've revamped our test platform to better illustrate the noise levels and heat build up of a modern-day build. Most chassis become hot and noisy when attempting to cool our previous platform, which consisted of dual Radeon HD 7950 graphics cards, so we've refreshed our GPUs, CPU cooler and PSU to offer a more accurate depiction of the current hardware landscape.

Our Z77 test platform now consists of an ASUS Sabertooth motherboard, an Intel Core i5-3570K processor overclocked to 4.4GHz, a be quiet! Dark Rock 3 CPU cooler, 8GB of G.Skill Ripjaws-X memory and two factory-overclocked EVGA GeForce GTX 970 SSC graphics cards in an SLI configuration.

To find out how well the chassis can cool this particular setup, we log CPU temperature while encoding a large 4K video clip. This task puts full load on all available CPU cores and we extend the stress test by carrying out multiple passes. In order to provide a stabilised reading we then calculate an average temperature across all cores from the last five minutes of encoding.

To get an idea of graphics-card cooling performance, we log GPU temperature while playing Tomb Raider at a 4K resolution with Ultra quality settings and SLI enabled. Last but not least, we also measure chassis noise by using a PCE-318 noise meter to take readings when idle and while gaming.

All chassis are tested only with the standard manufacturer-supplied fans (any/all of which are set to 'silent' in the Asus BIOS or low-speed using a fan controller if present), and to take into account the fluctuating ambient temperature, our graphs depict both actual and delta temperature - the latter is the actual CPU/GPU temperature minus the ambient. For the record, the ambient temperature while testing the Cooler Master Silencio 652S was recorded as 18.2ºC.