Cooler Master Silencio 550 Case Review

Manufacturer: Cooler Master
Product Name: Cooler Master Silencio 550 Mid-Tower Case
Model Number: RC-550-KKN1
Price As Tested: $109.99 (Newegg)

Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by Cooler Master.

I'm always skeptical of marketing hype, so my first stop was the factory specs, and I found something refreshing: detailed factory measurements! I hope this becomes a standard, at least with non-budget cases. Giving us these measurements is a good sign that Cooler Master is listening to reviewers and enthusiasts, and that's always nice to know.

Cooler Master Silencio 550 Features

• Includes two 800rpm silent fans (Supports up to three 120mm fans)
• I/O panel provides easy access for users
• High quality foot stand
• Side ventilation holes for better cooling performance
• Dust Filter provided for easy access to wash
• Stylish and Simple design

Cooler Master Silencio 550 Features Specifications

Closer Look: Exterior

One aesthetic of this case is that the front panel comes with a black mirror finish, and by "mirror" Cooler Master means it. I purposely left some of my equipment situated so that you could see the mirror like finish, because this type of finish doesn't appeal to all: (1) is an umbrella I was using to photograph the unit. (2) The actual photo bench I was working on with white background paper underneath. Last (3) is an orange backdrop I hung in the background. Now that's mirror to the bone. Oh yes folks, it's a finger print magnet. But whatever. It looks pretty neat. You know, I'm beginning to think that the person this case speaks to is a computer hobbyist in his (or her) 40s, upper middle class, and wanting something to match his condo in Manhattan, something to go along with his black lacquer baby grand piano. So, is it truly all looks and no function?

The back panel. Nothing interesting here. This is your basic back end of a computer case, and that's all. (1) back fan; (2) water cooling ports; (3) expansion slots x7; (4) the bottom of the case and the power supply hole.

So here is something on the outside of the case that is a little more interesting. The bottom of the case looking into the power supply section: (1) This is an easily removable screen that simply pulls off backwards. I like it. It's simple, effective, and easy to clean without having to turn your case upside down. (2) This is just the power supply perforated intake.

This should actually go in the next section because it's less of a "external closer look" and more of a "detailed external look," but the case has nothing more externally interesting and we need something more too look at in this section. It doesn't have any holes, plexiglass, artwork, nothing on the exterior except a very nicely painted black matte finish, and you can see that in the introductory image. So, let me introduce the Front I/O Panel.

You might have noticed only two USB ports. One is USB 3.0 (You'll need to run it out of the back of your case) and the other is the 20th century USB 2.0. So you have your basic stuff here, such as the headphone and mic jacks. You'll also notice that you get an SD card reader. I would have liked to seen two more USB ports, but okay, I can go with it. After all, you can plug your USB hardware into the back also. Last we have a hard drive light, a reset button, and the power switch. Everything is nicely laid out here, except that the vertically mounted SD slot will collect more dust and dirt than a horizontally mounted unit.

That's pretty much all their is on the outside of the case. This thing is externally spartan, but in a good way. The black matte finish is quality and hides finger prints, while the front is mirror like and is, thus, a finger print magnet. So on with the show. Can the Cooler Master Silencio live up to the "Three Noble Necessities" of case engineering: Price, Function, and Quality?

Detailed Exterior Features

So the outside is clean and sleek and obviously no frills. It's business like in appearance, elegant even, but not boring. It strikes me as something the Secret Service would have in their office to match their black Chevy Suburbans. If you needed a little more flash, you could install a couple of dark red LEDs inside and get a nice glow from light leaks coming from the front panel and the fan inlets and outlets. The real meat of any case, though, is not in its looks, but how it performs.

Let's just jump right in here: (1) This is the door, as you can see, but look, it's insulated with high density foam for sound dampening. So we begin to see the mysteries of sound dampening and the "silent" aspect of the Silencio 550. (2) There are only two 5.25" bays. That may or may not be a problem. For me, it wouldn't be a problem because I've never had anything more than two CD-DVD writers anyway. (3) I love this option. Some of you might not care, so foo to you. I love hot swap docks and Cooler Master included one in this case. You just slide a bare 3.5" drive right into it, no door, no mounting brackets, no nothing, just the bare drive. Very functional. Note that you cannot convert this to a 2.5" because the layout is different on the back of a 2.5" drive. Last, we have the front grill (4), but wait till you see what happens next.

Yessir, this entire front grill pops off. It pops off very easily too and pops on very positively. It's not cheap feeling in the least and it's double sided, adding to the feel of quality. See behind the grill? It's the front included fan (1). Below that we have the inside of the grill, which is the filter. I think this is nicely designed. Since this case is somewhat sealed by the side and front sound insulation, you should check the front and bottom filters often. Actually, the sound insulation on the sides and front panel seal it up pretty good so the filters are going to take a beating from our old friend Mr. Dust.

I wanted to show you what the filter looked like standing next to the filter receiver. Here, the filter is facing you whereas when it is installed, the filter you see would be hidden and the grill visible (1). Also, the door only opens right to left, so if your like me and like your case on your right, you have a problem. The door is not removable either. Other than this, so far I like the case. It's easy to get into, solid, sleek and nice looking, and it will be very quite; plus, I like the built in hot swap bay, much.

This is a shot of both the foot (1) and the paint job (2). As you can see, the paint is just really nicely done and it's nice and thick too. I wanted to shoot the bottom of the case for our paint inspection because if I were a case manufacturer trying to shave .0001 cents off production cost by skimping on paint, I'd do it on the bottom of the case. That way people don't see it until they have it, and instead of sending it back, they're going to keep it, rationalizing "No one sees the bottom of the case anyway." But we don't see any skimping on paint here. (Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas.) The feet are rubber on the bottom, wide, and low. This makes the case very stable.

We'll segue into the next section with a an image of the inside of a side panel. As you can see, the panel is sound insulated. The foam is high or medium density and feels exactly like sound insulation material, not simply foam (I've seen and felt it before). As mentioned before, the insulation really seals up the cracks. Other than that, nothing else special here. Just your basic side panel, but with insulation. Well, there is one thing, They're heavy, heavy in a solid manner, because of the
insulation.

Closer Look: Interior

Finally, here is, as the military would put it, "Case, Computer Side Open" like "Meals, Ready to Eat (MRE's) because this case, again, just reminds me of something CIA, Secret Service, or military:
(1) This might be the most important aspect of this section. These are side inlet gills. Remember I was saying that the case is pretty well sealed? Well, Cooler Master must think so too because they created these gill vents specifically for cooling purposes. The fans will literally suck air in from these slits, which are on both sides of the front bezel, and through the filter we saw in the last section.
(2) This is the removable hard drive cage. It glides inbetween the top 5.25" non-removable tray and the bottom 5.25" non-removable tray. Well, I guess they could be removable if you drill out the rivets.
(3) This is the back tray CPU hole, nice and large and pretty unexciting.
(4) The top non-removable 5.25" bays with the bottom taken by the hot swap SATA docking tray. There are sliding lockers, as you can see, and they work well and feel solid. You can take them off if you want to bolt in your drives, or double them up on each side. You only get two of them though.
(5) We have here the bottom non-removable 5.25" drive bays.
(6) Can you see it? It's the front fan.
(7) Here again we have the back fan. Note here that besides the power supply fan and the front fans, this is the only fan you can mount in this case.
(8) Moving back again to the front of the case, we have an empty slot where the additional, optional fan mounts. Hey, I just noticed something. I have you jumping all over the place with the numbering. Instead of going back and redoing every image with numbers on it, I promise next time I'll start with (1) on the upper left and descend to the right. Sorry about that.
(9) Anyway, last we have the very interesting power supply air-flow entry perforations at the bottom left of the case. Very interesting, indeed.

The reason I went to the trouble with the numbering scheme and details is that there may be those starting out on their computer education, and thus the detailed explanations might prove helpful to them. That, and I myself find that sometimes I wish I had a little more detail when things like drive cages and mounting methods are discussed.

No numbers here. This is the same picture but with the hard drive cage removed. You can clearly see the fan in the front now. The optional fan mounts directly underneath it. You have to slide it down between the front of the case and the bottom drive cage.

Here we have the hard drive cage going solo on us. This is nice. There are no screws or clips or other stupid homicidal inducing design flaws. You slide it in, it clicks, and you're in business. It fits nice and tight too and the nylon guides prevent rattling.

Here is another look at the permanent and removable aspects of the drive bays: (1) the back of the SATA hot swap bay; and (2) the removable hard drive cage. Everything fits together nicely.

For you fan aficionados, I wanted you to be able to see what Cooler Master is using. Here you get a clear shot of the numbers. Report back in the comments section and let us know. Is it any good? It looks like your basic fan to me.

Cooler Master tossed in one one drive converter, shown here with the back panel thumb screws (You get four thumb screws for the panels). Last, we have the most exciting item yet--an internal speaker. Are you kidding me? I haven't seen one of those in decades. I got a little chuckle out of that. I think some engineers have a sense of humor, not unlike Easter eggs in software. So here is a hardware Easter egg for you: An internal speaker. I wouldn't recommend playing "Taste the Bass" CDs through it though.

I'm happy to report that, indeed, all of the interior edges are rolled and there are no sharp areas to cut your fingers off. I hate nothing more than finishing a system build and then bleeding out because of cuts on my fingers and hands due to sharp edges. So let's get inside of this thing and see what the Silencio 550 has cookin'.

Detailed Interior Features

Let's get all of the numbers out of the way. Here we can see that the tape reads almost 16" without the removable HD cage. Cooler Master specifications state this space at 15.8" so it truly is 15.8" of video card space. Not bad.

Now here we have the same measurement but with the hard drive cage installed. It looks like a little over 11". Cooler Master specifications state this measurement at 11.1" and so again, they are spot on. The next measurement is without the fan but I didn't take that measurement. Cooler Master was right on with the first two, so suffice it to say the measurement without the top, front fan is what they say it is at 16.8". (That and since we already have two variables from the first two measurements, you can do the simple math in your head by deducting the width of a 120mm x 25mm fan, so you don't need to take the last measurement anyway. A very useful thing that logic.)

I don't think high wattage power supplies are oversized anymore, unlike in the past. I looked at a 1200wt Cooler Master PS and it was your standard, small, square diameter. But if you're like me and have an older PS, one of those 1000 watters that look like small refrigerators, then you'll appreciate the space you have here (1). Yep, 12". That's enough for a fridge and some left overs too.

Last on the list of measurements, we have cable space on the back side of the motherboard tray. Serious space here at a whopping 15/16th of a full inch. That's pretty nice. That's more than my old Cooler Master 830 evo stacker, which was, new, 300 dollars. Even with the insulation, we're still looking at 7/8"+ of space. Note too that the motherboard tray is not removable.

I'm not going to take a picture of the nuts and bolts, okay? I mean we've all seen them and this case comes with everything you need in that respect. It does have four thumb screws for the back panel, and that's better than screwdriver time. Well, guess what? We're finished with the details and the pictures and now we can discuss the overall aspects of this case in the next section. Then I can eat my now cold pizza.

Silencio 550 Final Thoughts

Here is the Cooler Master provided image of installed components. The circles show the cable routing. You can see the power supply cabling running out of the bottom cable hole nicely, and that's because you get almost a full inch of cable space on the back side. You can also see that the video card takes up just enough space that you would need to remove the drive cage for it to fit, leaving you with only two lower hard drive or SSD drive slot receivers. You do have, however, plenty of space to simply stack drives on the cage and on each other using any sort of kludge to do so (I cloth taped two SSDs back to back in my current case, with a nylon spacer between them, and then Velcro'ed them down on the bottom of the case, for instance). When I first received this case, I have to tell you, I didn't have high hopes that it would be anything I'd own. I've changed my thinking.

First, I would own this case if I wanted to build a clean, functional, nice looking box not the "Hey, I'm from the Borg collective, resistance is futile" look. At first I was thinking why a Mid-Tower case with the possibility of only three fans for "a high end system." Consider that if I put my 3.8Mhz OC'ed i7 920 Bloomfield in this case along with my GTX295 video card, and only had three fans, I'd probably cook it the first time I fired up "Crysis 2." I was thinking about the insulation too, but Cooler Master ships the Silencio 550 with only two 800 rpm fans. I mean a good 800 rpm fan is a pretty quite fellow in any case, much less one that is sound insulated. So what's the dealio? The dealio is that if I ran my 920 at stock speeds or with mild Ocing, it would have no problem in this case using two 800 rpm fans, and if it did I could either add another or increase fan speeds or both. So it can handle high end parts and keep them cool and quite. It's just a matter of how high end and what you do with them.

Second, the 920 series OCs are so, so, "antique" right? I mean we have the smaller die Sandy Bridge evolution of CPUs and they run extremely cool and extremely fast, so there you go. I'm thinking you could build a top end gaming station in this case using Sandy Bridge, three 800 rpm fans, and video beast card, and still get plenty of cooling, plus the added benifit of having it almost silent. Also, the 550 has lots of room in it for cable routing, even though it's a Mid-Tower case. So what's not to like about this thing?

Well, for one, you get two USB ports and one of them you have to drag out the back end of your case for it to work. That's right. The USB connector you get is not a mother board pin. It's a normal USB 3.0 connector, which means, you guessed it, you will need to run the cable through the case and out the back in order to plug the front USB 3.0 cable in. To me, that's a kludge, although I know it's pretty common. Then again, if it did come with a motherboard connector and your motherboard didn't have one, you'd be out of luck, unless there are converters out there and I have no idea if there are or are not. (I did a fast search and didn't find anything). If there are converters, it would have been nice for Cooler Master to include one.

Then there's that SD card reader, and to that I say, "Why?" Listen, SSD portable card readers just over the size of the SD card itself cost 9 bucks. So do we really need an SD card reader mounted vertically on the top of a case, ready to catch the fallout from the next volcanic eruption? You choose, but for me it was an easy question to answer. Let me think, "Nope." I'd rather have seen two more USB ports. It's not that big of a deal though.

Finally, the CPU cooler area gives us 154mm, and that's it. I did a search and compared a few coolers and found that some will fit and some will not, so watch for that. It won't be a problem finding a high end cooler that will fit. If you have a favorite CPU cooler that you want to use, however, or already have one, it may be problematic. You may need to be flexible.

Silencio 550 Conclusion

The Cooler Master 550 Silencio uses a Mid-Tower case and insulated front and side panels to sound dampen noise. The insulation is dense and seals the case well. You can only mount a total of three 120mm fans in the case, but for all but the hottest rigs, this is most likely going to be just fine Especially when you consider Sandy Bridge technology and how cool it runs, the problem of heat isn't really a problem as it was a few years ago (Think 920 Bloomfield OCed). The case comes with two 800 rpm 120mm Cooler Master fans, installed.

For a Mid-Tower case, it's surprisingly roomy and you get almost a full inch of back panel cable room, but only 154mm of CPU cooler space, which may or may not be a problem for you. The Silencio 550 will accept a video card up to 11.1" (281mm) with the removable drive cage installed, 15.8" (400mm) card with the drive cage removed, and 16.8" (427mm) card with the top front fan and drive cage removed. Included is a front loading built in hot swap bay, an SD card reader, and two USB ports, one USB 3.0 and one 2.0. However, the USB 3.0 does not have it's own native USB controller, so you need to run the cable out of the back of the case and plug it into the motherboard's USB 3.0 header. The front grill is double thickness to allow intake air from the gill vents in the front bezel and snaps in nicely. It also comes with a filter that is easy to clean. There is another filter on the bottom of the case serving the power supply, and it too is an easy to remove filter that slides off.

The case's look is sleek, spartan, but elegant, and painted very well. I have no problems with the case's outward appearance, but if you want "Bright Lights Big City," it's not the case for you. The painted surface is a matte finish that doesn't show finger prints, but the mirror like front panel is a finger print magnet. On the other hand, the front is nice looking because it is mirror like, and that's pretty cool. The gill vents on the front are nice looking, and are not there just for looks. They are a necessary cooling element because the internal sound insulation seals the panels well. As always, the construction, like all Cooler Master cases, is as solid as it gets, with all rolled edges so there are no cut points anywhere on the case. On the other hand, the case is so sleek as to not standout at all, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Pros:

+ Sleek, elegant look
+ Sound insulated
+ Roomy internal spaces
+ Lots of video card room
+ Hot Swap hard drive bay
+ SD card reader
+ USB 3.0 front panel I/O port
+ Filters on both air intakes
+ Built solid
+ Almost a full inch of back panel cable space
+ Internal removable hard drive cage
+ Comes with two 120mm 800 rpm fans

Cons:

- SD card reader instead of more I/O USB ports
- USB 3.0 from front panel has to be run outside the case
- Larger video cards requiere removing the internal drive cage
- Only two 5.25" bays
-Door is not removable and only opens right to left

Ratings:

• Performance: 8.00
• Appearance: 7.25
• Construction: 9.75
• Functionality: 9.00
• Value: 8.50

Final Score: 8.5 out of 10.

Recommended: Benchmark Reviews Seal of Approval.

Benchmark Reviews invites you to leave constructive feedback below, or ask questions in our Discussion Forum.

Related Articles:

• Sapphire HD4890 Toxic Vapor-X 11150-01-40R
• Roccat ISKU Illuminated Gaming Keyboard
• 8GB G.Skill Ripjaws 2000MHz DDR3 Memory Kit
• Thermaltake Level 10M Gaming Mouse
• ASUS M4A79T Deluxe AMD 790FX AM3 Motherboard
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 Video Card
• Antec Notebook Cooler 200
• Corsair Vengeance LP 16GB DDR3-1600
• NZXT Sentry 2 Touchscreen Fan Controller
• ZOTAC GeForce 8800 GT 512MB AMP! HDMI Video Card