SilverStone Kublai Series KL05 Case Review

Building into the SilverStone Kublai KL05-W Case

Building in the case:
Tools

Tools Needed

The Build Component were:
-WD 3Tb black 7200 rpm 64k Cache
-Samsung 840 128gb SSD for start up and major programs
-Corsair H100i Liquid AIO Cooler
-2x140mm Lian Li case fans that I had in the shop
-Bequiet 850 power supply
-AsRock Z97 Extreme 4 motherboard
-Intel 4770k Microprocessor
-4gb of Avexir 1600 Blitz (green) Ram
-Gigabyte Windforce NVidia 760 4gb Graphics card
-Alpena 8″ 4″ X 2 Flex LED lights for front effect

First thing I did was select some 140mm fans to fit up front and then also added some ALPENA Flex 8″ 2 X 4″ inch LED blue lighting that I bought from my local Advance Auto parts supply store. I also decorated the inner circle of the plain Lian Li 140mm fans from an old case build and added some silver vinyl wrap that I buy from Metrorestyling dot com. They are really great and have an amazing variety of styles and colors to choose from.

Fan replacement 140s

Prepping the case is important for any case or build, I try to see everything in my mind first, so I knew that I wanted to use only two drives so I moved only one of the drive modules to the very top slide under the 5.25 inch bay and affixed it to the top slide and screwed it down and removed all rest of the parts from the module assembly bottom to give me optimum air flow and future upgrading if I needed it in the future.

Prep case

For me setting up the drives was a good place to set up since I was putting the drive module at the top. the fact that there is two ways to install the SSD made it easy for me to get a really clean wiring from the drive placements.

Drive drawer config

Mounting the power supply was simple and the holes in the back made great line in points for my wires as I kept the back of the motherboard as clear as possible for wire management. The back has plenty of room in it but since the case window is small and thin it’s easy to get away with running your wires out under the raised module drive bay and then back into the case from the back access holes. Please remember to install the I/O back motherboard shield before installing the motherboard as soon as possible before you mount the motherboard.

Power supply added

I did move that little 120mm lighted SilverStone fan from the front of the case to the back of the case for the exhaust fan. The back does not come standard with a back exhaust fan and the front looks best with beefy 140mm fans installed in it, so I set up my build this way. I mounted my motherboard with processor and water block hardware per-installed but I left the memory and the video card out for later installation.

Note: If you plan to mount the radiator on the top of the case with the fans under you should mount the radiator and the fans first (before the motherboard) since you will be mounting the screws from the inside out or from inside of the case up and set the fans for pushing out of the case for the least amount of dust accumulation.

p8 install

Since I had already installed my motherboard I mounted the fans on top with the radiator below. This created some tight spacing for the water tubes but was not enough to be a problem so I stayed with this configuration with the fans on top and blowing out of the case in a pulling fashion and the front 140mms doing the pulling into the case from the front.

installing cooling

As you can see from the picture below that the SilverStone KL05-W case has a great CPU Access hole in the back but I always like to set this up out of the case before installing the motherboard just in case. You never know what you have until you install it so I am safe that way. But since I have done it already you know that you can use this access hole easily without any problems.

CPU Access hole

Wire management was not a problem because the case window can hide a lot of space for excess wiring to be hidden toward the front of the case, under the drive bays in the configuration that I have here, also using a modular power supply helps as well. This is the birds nest that I had after finishing my wiring job with this case. Wire Management is not my strong suit with doing quick interchangeable builds for reviewing but the SilverStone was easy to build in and wire management was not a problem.

Wire Management

Finally in the end, I really liked the way the build turned out. It looked clean and really classy for an economy case and SilverStone did an excellent job making a uniquely good looking case that is bound to get your friend’s attention.

Full build front Power on

Full Build power on side

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