SilverStone Kublai Series KL05 Case Review

SilverStone Kublai KL05-W Computer Case
The SiverStone Kublai KL05 is a great looking case. The stance is tall and looks thin but that is just your eyes playing tricks on you. The Case is not exceptionally fat but 200mm is enough interior clearance for about any build you might want but this case. The Kublai KL05 was built especially for water cooling and the engineers did a great job making that a reality.

Featured Image

The front of the SilverStone Kublai KL05-W has a nice brushed aluminum look but it’s an all plastic front panel and easier to keep clean and keep it from getting scratched up. The controls are lowered some to allow for more room for Radiator fittings at the top and the two 5.25 bays below it allows even more room for custom loops.

The Back of the case has a place for one 120x120mm case exhaust fan which is movable up or down a few millimeter and the I/O Shield hole is standard and well fitting. The 8 vented PCI Blanks give more abilty to add that third video card if you so desire and an air vent to help the graphics cards with inhaling cool air with two rubber exterior in and out ports for outer water cooling towers. The power supply area at the bottom allows for the (Fan up) or (Fan down) PSU placement depending on your building preference.

Front and Back case

The windowed side is really clean and nice looking. The side panel is held to the case by the two thumb screws at the back and the front is held by a locking lip that holds the front into place. To remove it just take off the two back thumbscrews and pull it slightly away from the case and then pull toward the back of the case and the panel is free. Very easy and I love this new method of case panel construction. I also like the larger than usual hand hold on the back that is easy to hold onto during the removal process. Ohh.. And that dark spot in the center of the window. That is actually the lens of the camera peeking out from a white poster board that I used to make the shot without getting myself into it. Next time I will use a black colored poster board for this shot.

windowed side
The back panel or right side panel is very clean and straight with no out cropping, but this was not a concern since I did not run into any problems with wire management since I had plenty of room to route my wires.

back side case

The top hat type of cover is tall and open and easy to remove. Just take the two thumb screws off from the back as shown and then slide back away from the front cover and lift off. This is easy and nice. I really like the idea of giving so much room to the top of the case but they really had to do that because the inner case motherboard clearance at the top is only about 35mm tall.

Top panel Screws

Finally the Control Panel has the Reset Button that is pretty good sized and easy to press, two blue socket USB 3.0 surrounding the headphone and microphone I/O sockets and finally the easy to press Power Button with a hard drive activity indicator light and power all in the same lens at the far right.

Control panel

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