As this year's holiday season unwinds from its climax over the past week and a half, many enthusiasts have been left wondering whether they have witnessed the full product offerings of the computer hardware industry, or if there is yet another wave of toys hiding under Santa's sleigh in some remote dimension of unawareness. We have already experienced the delay of Nvidia's Fermi architecture, the virulent paper launch of AMD's Radeon HD 5970, and the untimely delay of many capacitive multi-touch tablet notebooks and netbooks supporting Windows 7. If there is any product that can mend the heart of a truly patient PC hardware consumer this season after experiencing some unsatisfying, half-baked Black Friday sales, it would have to be nothing other than the castle and fortress of the silicon hardware itself – the chassis.
Today, SilverStone has officially announced the Fortress FT02 chassis, a work of art and aesthetics combining two of SilverStone’s most distinctive computer chassis breakthroughs – the unibody construction of the Temjin TJ07 introduced in 2005, and the 90-degree rotated motherboard design of the Raven RV01 from 2008. Several months ago, we were given the opportunity to review the company’s redesigned Raven chassis, the RV02, which has undoubtedly deserved our highest opinion of design ingenuity over the past several years of products we have witnessed.
SilverStone engineers have combined the rigidity of unibody construction with the unparalleled cooling layout of the Raven chassis, adding a hot-swappable hard drive cage and an acoustically padded interior for maximum versatility. The bay provides an abundance of cooling space for a large majority of system builders, consisting of two 5.25-inch drive bays and five 3.5-inch drive bays. The Fortress FT02 cabling layout also reflects a design win with the Raven RV02 chassis, allowing for integrated cable routing that eliminates virtually any peripheral cabling not in front of the motherboard for an accentuated aesthetic appeal.
In comparison with the company’s highly acclaimed Temjin TJ07 chassis, the Fortress FT02 features an elegant 4.5mm aluminum U-shaped unibody frame that not only provides unique styling, but also functional purpose. The entire chassis itself measures in at 212mm (W) x 497mm (H) x 616mm (D). At the bottom of the frame lie three large 180mm speed-adjustable fans for maximum air intake with positive pressure and stack effect cooling. In fact, they are even suitable for installing a large 120.3mm or 140.3mm radiator provided enough room for GPU placement.
One of the more prominent features on the Fortress FT02 for acoustic diehards and professionals is its entirely foam-padded interior. This effectively allows for advanced noise absorption and works conjointly with the U-shaped diaphragm of the interior. In similarity to the Raven RV02, it also supports larger EATX motherboards up to 11-inches wide, such as the standard EVGA X58 SLI Classified models, but not the EVGA X58 4-way SLI Classified as that measures 13.58-inches and is too worthy of any chassis on the market (see: open-air overclocking and Folding@home use). Given the larger motherboard layout, the Fortress FT02 also conveniently features the ability to house dual AMD Radeon HD 5970 cards measuring in at 12.2-inches in length.
SilverStone’s dream chassis for the enthusiast system builder is just around the corner, and it is definitely an item of innovation worth recommending. With a design layout advancing both chassis construction and thermodynamics in a streamlined fashion, it is without a doubt that this will be the product to buy for those in our small niche market who are patient enough to wait two more weeks. That’s right, the SilverStone Fortress FT02 is launching just in time before Christmas, at an expected price point under $300 USD and under €200 respectively. As of now, internal sources within the company claim that the FT02 is in limited supply and has been shipping out of Taiwan on a limited basis (seems to remind us of other things from Taiwan, like 40nm TSMC wafers). As a result, we can only expect the demand to rise higher than anticipated, but it is still worth one last fight for those who weren't able to claim an Nvidia Fermi, HD 5970 or other highly demanded piece of hardware this holiday season. We will be following up with a review very shortly and will provide updates on availability as they are given to us.