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wow that realy looks like its made to go in there, makes me wanna WC my ft...............
 
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Also, it is old RV02, new version (RV02-E) has exact same internals as FT02 (removable hdd bay).
 
Evochuck said:
wow that realy looks like its made to go in there, makes me wanna WC my ft...............
Click to expand...

that really does look like a nice fit. Although, everything I've heard says the fans that come in the RV-02E/FT-02's are not suited to radiator duty, so I'm guessing those would have to be subbed out.
 
Tiporaro said:
Although, everything I've heard says the fans that come in the RV-02E/FT-02's are not suited to radiator duty, so I'm guessing those would have to be subbed out.
Click to expand...

And why wouldn't the Ap181 fans work well with radiators? They focus their air output great and have plenty of static pressure. At the low setting it has as much as a gentle typhoon AP14 and on high has more than the AP15.
 
FaRKle0079 said:
And why wouldn't the Ap181 fans work well with radiators? They focus their air output great and have plenty of static pressure. At the low setting it has as much as a gentle typhoon AP14 and on high has more than the AP15.
Click to expand...

Is that so? I thought they had been discussed as being poor for static pressure, but if they're very usable for this that'd be great. A drop in rad with current fan setup makes this way easier than my original considerations.
 
Clearly, static pressure is a function of a distance from the fan. AP181 produces mediocre static pressure at L=0, but due to the grille shape it drops off much slower and results in still decent static pressure at L=50cm, which makes it a great case intake fan. However, the requirements for rad fans are different: they need to produce high static pressure at L=0 and the rate of drop-off matters little.
 
Kisakuku said:
Clearly, static pressure is a function of a distance from the fan. AP181 produces mediocre static pressure at L=0, but due to the grille shape it drops off much slower and results in still decent static pressure at L=50cm, which makes it a great case intake fan. However, the requirements for rad fans are different: they need to produce high static pressure at L=0 and the rate of drop-off matters little.
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If you consider the gentle typhoon fans to have mediocre static pressure, and lots of people do just fine with them on radiators then the AP181 will do fine too.
 
FaRKle0079 said:
If you consider the gentle typhoon fans to have mediocre static pressure, and lots of people do just fine with them on radiators then the AP181 will do fine too.
Click to expand...

My understanding of gentle typhoons as rad fans was that they weren't particularly great, but were very quiet while still being adequate. However, I don't think the ap181's have quite the same dB's as GT's, and I'm not sure how they stack up otherwise.
 
Tiporaro said:
My understanding of gentle typhoons as rad fans was that they weren't particularly great, but were very quiet while still being adequate. However, I don't think the ap181's have quite the same dB's as GT's, and I'm not sure how they stack up otherwise.
Click to expand...

If you read Martin's fan comparison you'll note that there are no better fans than the gentle typhoons in the 120x25mm category when put on a radiator. GT had the highest effective CFM per dBA.
 
FaRKle0079 said:
If you read Martin's fan comparison you'll note that there are no better fans than the gentle typhoons in the 120x25mm category when put on a radiator. GT had the highest effective CFM per dBA.
Click to expand...

I have looked at that, and I agree that they're the best performers per dB, but they also have their limits and some people can tolerate a little more noise (not meaning excessive) for increased CFM. That said, I think most will agree that GT's are a great balance of delivering adequate performance for minimal noise.

In any case, when it comes to AP181's, I'm more concerned with whether there's a better choice in the 180mm range, and if a 180mm rad with AP181's is in the same league as a 120mm based setup. As noted above, the 180.3 rad looks like a beautiful drop-in for this case without even having to switch out the fans; but I'm wondering how much of a potential performance difference there is against a similar 120 rad put in this case with appropriate fans, as ease of installation isn't worth a significant drop-off in performance.

Edit for additional thoughts: Some quick math puts the 180.3 rad at almost 7 times (6.75) the dissipation area of a 120mm rad, so while I'm sure the conversion isn't strictly linear, if the efficiency is in the ballpark this would make for a very attractive solution for even a robust system. Following the rule of thumb that gets tossed around here a lot of 1 120 per cpu/gpu, if this solution is viable, this leaves adequate room for oc/overvolting even a tri-sli/tri-fire system.
 
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Edit for additional thoughts: Some quick math puts the 180.3 rad at almost 7 times (6.75) the dissipation area of a 120mm rad, so while I'm sure the conversion isn't strictly linear, if the efficiency is in the ballpark this would make for a very attractive solution for even a robust system. Following the rule of thumb that gets tossed around here a lot of 1 120 per cpu/gpu, if this solution is viable, this leaves adequate room for oc/overvolting even a tri-sli/tri-fire system.
Click to expand...

Some food for thought:

If we use a GT AP-15's full stats on a 120mm radiator, the GT will have 0.00403CFM per mm^2, while an AP181 at low setting on a 180mm radiator will have .00247CFM per mm^2 and high setting .00401CFM per mm^2. This would seem to suggest the GT is better for cooling since it achieves more airflow per area radiator.

Now most people put either a 360 or 480 radiator into the FT/RV02. With a 480 radiator with four GTs your total airflow is 232CFM and with the triple 180mm radiator with three AP181 fans it's 240CFM on low and 390CFM on high. So even on "low" the total airflow with the AP181 fans could be higher than the GT's (could due to not accounting for airflow losses).

Then there's the 97,200mm^2 area of the 3x180 radiator compared to only 57,600mm^2 area of the 4x120mm radiator, and we know surface area matters significantly. The triple 180mm radiator has more surface area than the Feser 480 and XSPC RX240 I'm running combined.
 
Nephren-Ka said:
This is my first build and all new to me.
But I have 2 x gigabyte GTX 580 Ultra Durable 3GB for SLI, and I have heard good reviews and really like the look of the FT02..but I have read that certain cards have cooling designs that are no good for the FT02...and the gigabyte 580 is one of those cards as it exhausts hot air into case

Just wondering has anyone one here ever tried to SLI overclocked Gigabyte gtx580 in this case?
and if so did it work ok?

If enough people convince me that my cards wont work too well in FT02..my other option that Im looking at is the HAF X, any suggestions

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

I run these cards @stock in the FT02 with 1 slot space between them. The gpu fans on auto (top card reaches 99% in Witcher 2), and the AP181s are at max when the cpu reaches gaming temperatures (regulated from the chassis fan outputs on my Asus motherboard).
Depending on the game the temp range is between 58-70c on the bottom card(left) and 74-83c on the top card(right). Crysis 2 managed to raise the temperatures to 63c/79c after a 1.5 hour gaming session. The highest temperature of 70c/83c was recorded while playing
The Witcher 2 for only 30 minutes. Neither of these temperatures are alarmingly high but the difference between the cards is, in my opinion, too high. In addition to that I'm not sure how much hotter the cards will be after a 3-4 hour gaming session.

How the temperatures will be with better slot spacing between the cards is also something I haven't been able to test. That might solve the problem I'm experiencing. With only on 1 slot between the cards I wouldn't recommend this case for these
cards (1 card should be perfectly fine, though). As has been stated many times on this forum, this case is better for reference type cards that exhaust air out of the chassis. Wish I'd come across this before i bought the cards :).
Love the case, so I'll probably return one of the cards and wait for Kepler for the next upgrade.

Update 10-24-2011:
The hottest card (the one to the right) maxes out at 86c and stabilizes around 84-85c with the gpu fans at 65%. This is after several hours of gaming in The Witcher 2. Most games leave the card running in the 70s or barely touching 80c. Furmark doesn't seem to stress these
cards enough to test max temperatures properly even if I try disabling the OCP, unlike my Asus Matrix Platinum that I used before (and destroyed the cooling on).

I also tried running a single Gigabyte card in this case and with 940Mhz on the core with 1125mV. Got max temp of 76c. Non-OCed the card doesn't go over 63c.

Hope this will help anyone considering these cards with this case. I don't think the high temperatures I'm experiencing when running SLI is a problem with this case, rather a problem with aftermarket coolers and a lack of sufficient spacing between them.
 
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WorldExclusive said:
I think it's better to also add a single rad at the top of the case.
Click to expand...

Unless you're suggesting that the 180 is way more inefficient than a comparable 120, you're essentially recommending the equivalent of 5.5 120mm rad's in surface area for a single gpu/cpu loop. Now, of course, I can't personally vouch for the comparison of the 180 vs 120, but if the dissipation is even remotely similar a 180.2 should be more than enough for a single gpu loop, shouldn't it?
 
WorldExclusive said:
I think it's better to also add a single rad at the top of the case.
Click to expand...

Maybe if you're running a tri-GPU setup... Otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd be very hard pressed to see much difference with even a 2 card setup (~1C).

Like I said earlier I have 6x120mm worth of radiator in my system and I didn't see a very large drop when I added the RX240 to my X-Changer 480 (2-3C). The 2x180mm radiator already has the equivalent surface area of a 4.5x120mm radiator. Turning that into a 5.5x120mm doesn't seem very cost effective, nor aesthetically pleasing.
 
Been using this case for 3 days now, and it seems my fears about HDD temps were unjustified.

I have 4 drives, arranged with the 2 1tb Seagate Barracudas flanking an empty slot in the middle, and 2 Western Digital Caviar Green 2tb drives in the outermost slots. I also have an SLI setup. Not the hottest cards (Galaxy GTS250's), but they do exhaust into the case, and I do have the GPU fans running at only 25% until temps on them reach over 90 degrees (custom fan profile set with RivaTuner). It's worth noting that the only thing I've found so far that gets the GPU temps that high is FurMark. In this case, none of my games get them anywhere near that. The hottest card (the one on the right, there's 1 slot between them) idles at around 51 during normal web browsing activity. The left one, around 48.

Even with the GPU's stressed to a steady 80 degrees, and the hard drives working at full load, none of the HD temps exceeded 40 degrees. I monitored temps while moving a few hundred gigabytes between my RAID1 arrays and looping a GPU-heavy demoscene product. They idle between 30 and 35.

All of this with the 3 180mm fans set to low, and stock cooling on my Athlon 2 x4. The only possible mitigating factors may be that I don't have anything in the 5&1/4" bays, and I have my PSU oriented so it's intaking air from inside the case, as opposed to outside. Don't see either of those making too much difference though. Like many others here, the PSU fan didn't line up properly with the vent on the FT02, and it seemed like the fanguard might interfere with the plastic clip for the filter on the case.

All of these temps are substantially improved over my old case (some no-brand POS) which I was running with the sides panels off. Life is now substantially cooler, WAY quieter, and (hopefully) relatively dust free. Sitting 4 feet from the case I can barely hear it over the background noise in my apartment (occasional traffic, slight hissing from the heating pipes). Unless the HDD's are really busy that is, I hear those a little. Running RAID though, that's something I'd expect.

Consider me one happy customer!
 
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Anybody else found the side panels of this case very prone to chipping, despite careful handling? Seem to remember a few posts where the special edition (red interior) FT02 had this issue.

I treat my case with care, and don't remove the panels often (mainly to clean the filters), but the paint has chipped in the top and bottom front corners of the windowed side panel. The case is less than two months old.

I've tried to reduce the paint removal by the thumbscrews by suing rubber washers, but the side panel corners are not so easy to protect. Any ideas?
 
Tiporaro said:
Unless you're suggesting that the 180 is way more inefficient than a comparable 120, you're essentially recommending the equivalent of 5.5 120mm rad's in surface area for a single gpu/cpu loop. Now, of course, I can't personally vouch for the comparison of the 180 vs 120, but if the dissipation is even remotely similar a 180.2 should be more than enough for a single gpu loop, shouldn't it?
Click to expand...

FaRKle0079 said:
Maybe if you're running a tri-GPU setup... Otherwise I'm pretty sure you'd be very hard pressed to see much difference with even a 2 card setup (~1C).

Like I said earlier I have 6x120mm worth of radiator in my system and I didn't see a very large drop when I added the RX240 to my X-Changer 480 (2-3C). The 2x180mm radiator already has the equivalent surface area of a 4.5x120mm radiator. Turning that into a 5.5x120mm doesn't seem very cost effective, nor aesthetically pleasing.
Click to expand...

Good points.

Those AP181 fans are a bitch to clean. Wow. :mad:
Everything is back to new but it took a while. Wished they had a detachable grill on them.

Reworker said:
Anybody else found the side panels of this case very prone to chipping, despite careful handling? Seem to remember a few posts where the special edition (red interior) FT02 had this issue.

I treat my case with care, and don't remove the panels often (mainly to clean the filters), but the paint has chipped in the top and bottom front corners of the windowed side panel. The case is less than two months old.

I've tried to reduce the paint removal by the thumbscrews by suing rubber washers, but the side panel corners are not so easy to protect. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Not really. I scratched my case a few times just cleaning it.
 
Reworker said:
Anybody else found the side panels of this case very prone to chipping, despite careful handling? Seem to remember a few posts where the special edition (red interior) FT02 had this issue.

I treat my case with care, and don't remove the panels often (mainly to clean the filters), but the paint has chipped in the top and bottom front corners of the windowed side panel. The case is less than two months old.

I've tried to reduce the paint removal by the thumbscrews by suing rubber washers, but the side panel corners are not so easy to protect. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I have the same exact problem, small paint chips at the corners and under the thumbscrews despite using rubber washers. WTB powder-coated side panels.
 
@ Kisakuku,

Seeing pictures of other FT02's in this thread makes it clear to me that my example has some sort of paint defect. My RV02 Evo has no such problems and is around a year old. I've written to Silverstone outlining the problem and are awaiting their response.

One of the reasons I bought this case was for the smooth, understated looks. I never anticipated that there would be issues with the longevity of the paint finish with a case that is held in such high regard.
 
Reworker said:
@ Kisakuku,

Seeing pictures of other FT02's in this thread makes it clear to me that my example has some sort of paint defect. My RV02 Evo has no such problems and is around a year old. I've written to Silverstone outlining the problem and are awaiting their response.

One of the reasons I bought this case was for the smooth, understated looks. I never anticipated that there would be issues with the longevity of the paint finish with a case that is held in such high regard.
Click to expand...

I might try a warranty exchange for both side panels when I get closer to the end of the warranty period.
 
hmz said:
Does the GTX 570 fit in this case?
Click to expand...

Yeah it will fit no problem. The ft02 has enough clearance for a GTX 590 or AMD 6990 but neither are optimal in this case since they have the radial design cooler that exhausts out both ends. You'll be fine with the GTX 570 though.
 
Kisakuku said:
I might try a warranty exchange for both side panels when I get closer to the end of the warranty period.
Click to expand...

I received a response from Silverstone support, based in Germany. They advised me to take my case to the place of purchase and initiate RMA. The problem will be persuading them that the chipping was not caused by rough handling, but that there is an actual paint defect.
 
Sure it looks good, but I don't think you will be able to mount a video card like the 6950 or similar length. When looking in my case, I only got like 25-30mm clearance above the 180 mm fan, and you will need at least 35 mm for the radiator.

Guess I'll be sticking with my gtx for a little longer.
 
Sweet, cant wait to steal his ideas of how to keep the oem feel (aka filters) + 180mm rad

I dismantled a fan assy yesterday and I realized there isnt really any way to fit the filter assy ( not including the riser) without the riser since it interferes with the bottom lip of the case........but as I type this, I realize, you could notch the lip 3x.......that way you would end up keeping the lip to mount the side panel and you would run filters riser less!
 
Just curious, would anybody happen to have the measurements of each individual grill opening on the bottom of the case? Also, can you remove the unibody piece with just a screwdriver? After seeing that 540 rad I'm contemplating buying an FT02 again hahaha.
 
Reworker said:
I received a response from Silverstone support, based in Germany. They advised me to take my case to the place of purchase and initiate RMA. The problem will be persuading them that the chipping was not caused by rough handling, but that there is an actual paint defect.
Click to expand...

Just received my FT02 today and the first thing I did was check the paint. Sure enough, right out of the box, one corner on each panel is chipped.

I think I could successfully RMA the case... problem is, I get the feeling that this would just happen again. I feel like the chipping could have taken place during shipping.

Second edit: Retailer is asking for pictures of the chipping. I literally had the case in my possession for less than 12 hours and was able to see the chipping on the side panels without even removing them. I hope this doesn't get ugly.

Edit: Initiated an RMA within 24 hours of receipt of my FT02 with ... now to wait and see what they say. If they accept the RMA, I'm going to get the replacement in person and have them crack the box open before I leave the store with it to determine if there is any chipping.
 
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Hey guys,

I decided to get a water system coz I am tired of fan noises and obviously want a higher OC. I've never build one, so school me on it! I've no idea what parts to get. I want a quiet and efficient water system.
 
theirlaw said:
Just received my FT02 today and the first thing I did was check the paint. Sure enough, right out of the box, one corner on each panel is chipped.

I think I could successfully RMA the case... problem is, I get the feeling that this would just happen again. I feel like the chipping could have taken place during shipping.
Click to expand...

As someone who has had several of these FT02's in their possession I can tell you that the chipped paint on the corners, particularly for the side panel with the window, is very common and you may have to go through 2, 3 or more cases before you get one without chipped paint.

And honestly I think they get chipped during production when the person that sticks the side panels on the case isn't careful enough with aligning it just right so that they don't bump the corner when putting it on.
 
Yeah I've obviously considered that. Had the retailer just accepted the RMA and I was able to do an exchange I'd probably have just done it... but now they want photos and they only have one left in stock locally and two left in Canada.
 
theirlaw said:
Just received my FT02 today and the first thing I did was check the paint. Sure enough, right out of the box, one corner on each panel is chipped.

I think I could successfully RMA the case... problem is, I get the feeling that this would just happen again. I feel like the chipping could have taken place during shipping.

Second edit: Retailer is asking for pictures of the chipping. I literally had the case in my possession for less than 12 hours and was able to see the chipping on the side panels without even removing them. I hope this doesn't get ugly.

Edit: Initiated an RMA within 24 hours of receipt of my FT02 with ... now to wait and see what they say. If they accept the RMA, I'm going to get the replacement in person and have them crack the box open before I leave the store with it to determine if there is any chipping.
Click to expand...


Sorry to hear that. I'm still trying to convince my retailer that the paint chips were not caused by user mishandling. Having to strip down the rig too wasn't much fun either.

@ burningrave101 - yes, the windowed side panel corners are where the chips are. I have my PC to the left of my monitor, so I get a visual reminder each time I glance to my left.
 
Retailer got back to me... looks like I might be getting new side panels ordered. I submitted my RMA within 8 hours of receiving the case though...
 
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