by Matthew Harris on January 15, 2008 in Cases & PSUs
Got a hankering for a new case? Been bit by the water cooling bug? Having a bit of trouble reconciling the two? You should have a look at SilverStone’s TJ10B. Despite the nay-sayers claiming it’s not ideal for water-cooling, you might just be surprised!
Now, normally we’d be putting in performance numbers to outline how well the case performed but I’ll forgo that because I ran into some oddities. I tend to use a mixture of Speedfan and Core Temp to obtain my CPU core and case temps but for some reason, Core Temp is broken with the CPU I’m using.
It reports 11°C on core 0 and 5°C on core 1 at idle and under load it reports 25°C on core 0 and 17°C on core 1. Speedfan reports 34°C on the CPU at idle and 61°C under load. None of these numbers jibe particularly well but the case temps hang out at nearly 32°C steady under load or idle. The GPU’s are at 33°C (GPU 1) and 26°C (GPU 2) idle and 38°C (GPU 1) and 46°C (GPU 2) load.
Let’s list the load out since we’re talking about temps at idle and load.
- SilverStone SST-TJ10B
- ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition
- AMD A64 X2 4000 Brisbane (65nm) @ 2940Mhz 1.44V Core
- EVGA 7950 GT Superclocked X 2 @ 636Core / 750Mem
- OCZ Platinum PC6400 (4-5-4-15) @ DDR2 840 (5-5-5-15)
- Swiftech Apex Ultra w/ 2 X MCW60 GPU blocks & MCR320QP radiator
- Swiftech MCW-Ramcool/79 X 2
- Ultra X3 1000W PSU
- Seagate 500 Gig 7200.9 SATA II
- Western Digital 160 Gig SATA
- Samsung 16X DVD-RW
- Samsung 16X DVD-ROM
- Windows MCE 2005
As you can see I’ve managed to pull down a very respectable 40% over clock with a .12V increase in the Vcore. The ram has relaxed timings but it’s 100% stable at 5-5-5-15 whereas when I tried tightening it up it caused me to run into minor issues with certain programs. All told I’m at a loss as to why the temps are being reported like they are.
ASUS PC Probe claims the CPU’s hitting 44°C under load, Speedfan claims it’s hitting 61°C under load and Core Temp says the cores are at 17°C and 23°C under load. I dunno who to believe. I do know that the temps aren’t super hot because the GPU’s aren’t seeing any increase from the heat being dumped into the loop which is something I did encounter with my old system using the very same loop coupled with an MCR220QP and Black Ice Pro II X-Flow.
So let’s see how the SST-TJ10B rates:
Pros
- Well built case.
- Nearly 100% disassembly
- Held together with screws not rivets
- Solid as a rock
- Stylish
- The door swings both ways! (sorry I couldn’t resist)
Cons
- It could use the new fascia to mount the I/O ports and open up a larger roof vent
- No speaker, I mean really.
All told the TJ10 is a joy to work with, the modular design is fantastic to the modders in the crowd and all the other touches make for a case that’s hard to beat. There are a few niggles but very few and they’re stuff that not everyone would consider to be drawbacks. All told I’m happy to award the TJ10 a 9/10 and our coveted Editor’s Choice Award.
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