SilverStone Grandia GD08 Review

Around back it is all business. There is the option for the two 80mm fans, a power supply bracket that allows for your power supply to be mounted so the fan pulls in fresh air from outside of the case, seven expansion slots, and an extra bonus expansion slot for rear mounted expansion slot fans.

If you think the exterior is where the magic happens, you are mistaken. SilverStone designed an internal removable cage system that mounts your HDDs vertically to maximize the amount of drives possible, EIGHT OF THEM! The cage is lined with a soft material to keep vibration and noise to a minimum while sporting two handles for easy installation and removal. The only flaw in the design is that the two 2.5 inch drives are mounted directly above the 5.25 inch bays making it impossible to use them if you install an optical drive in the top bay.

Sadly, the GD08 is incapable of being fitted with the beloved iMON VFD because of the two front panel flip down doors that hide your optical drive; the exposed area just isn’t large enough. However, the optical drives are placed nicely behind this face of the chassis and are guaranteed to have button access from the front of the chassis. You may be asking yourself the question, why would this even be an issue? Well, most case manufacturers place the button below the hinged door directly over where the eject button on your optical drive should be. SilverStone decided to up the ante a bit and place the eject button on the side of each bay to further enhance the aesthetics of the GD08. The mechanism for eject button placement is quite clever and actually quite simple. The GD08 has a slide right behind the door, so when the front eject button is pressed, you can guarantee contact.

If you notice, the GD08 does not need a brace to run across the middle of the chassis like the Lian Li PC-C60 does. This is due to the very strong SECC body. Having the center of the chassis wide open like this makes the installation of a motherboard considerably easier.