SilverStone Alta F2

[danc]

I hope this review goes to show the value of the engineering & thermal development work we've put into this case! The ALTA F2 is arguably the best overall cooling case you can buy right now as it broke lowest temperature record in 6 of the 12 thermal testing parameters in this review's thermal tests (other ones were within 1-3 degrees of first place). This feat was accomplished while being one of the quietest at load, merely 1.2 dBA louder than the quietest case on the chart (5th quietest case out of 74 tested by TPU thus far)!

PC Magazine's test on the ALTA F2 also showed similar results with other flagship cases (breaking record, one of the bests in cooling, quietest).


At time of photo shoot, the Hydrogon D120 was our top air cooler (admittedly designed for larger SFF cases) as we had already retired the likes of HE01 and HE02 flagship air coolers a while ago. We do plan on releasing new, bigger twin-tower style air cooler soon though!

If you haven't seen it, here are a couple of gorgeous builds with ALTA F2 from GGF and JCustom:

sON, i am disappointed. You made FT02, with a unibody thick alumimun outer shell, it looks way classier and way cheaper and same 3x180mm airflow. alta ftrash2 get outta here.

For $1000, i expect a full aluminum structure used for F2.

Please do not kill your brand like this, give us a real FT02 successor, and not something costing $1000.

FT02 without 5.25" bays, reduced 3.5" bays, easy access top panel for i/o, 140mm exhaust mounting, easy access bottom dust filters.

We can fit a 3x180mm rad in FT02 already, we just need a bit less old clutter of drive bays and a bit more back space to hide cable management.

alta F2 is trash.

 

[MxPhenom 216]

I hope this review goes to show the value of the engineering & thermal development work we've put into this case! The ALTA F2 is arguably the best overall cooling case you can buy right now as it broke lowest temperature record in 6 of the 12 thermal testing parameters in this review's thermal tests (other ones were within 1-3 degrees of first place). This feat was accomplished while being one of the quietest at load, merely 1.2 dBA louder than the quietest case on the chart (5th quietest case out of 74 tested by TPU thus far)!

PC Magazine's test on the ALTA F2 also showed similar results with other flagship cases (breaking record, one of the bests in cooling, quietest).


At time of photo shoot, the Hydrogon D120 was our top air cooler (admittedly designed for larger SFF cases) as we had already retired the likes of HE01 and HE02 flagship air coolers a while ago. We do plan on releasing new, bigger twin-tower style air cooler soon though!

If you haven't seen it, here are a couple of gorgeous builds with ALTA F2 from GGF and JCustom:

Please for the love of god drop the price so that maybe more then 5 people will buy it.

 

[micropage7]

actually the looks is ok, just the internal layout that kinda awful, eating more space and not efficient and one more the price

 

[Chomiq]

This should cost around $250-300 max, I don't really see what are we paying $1000 for over here? Shipping 22kg case?

 

[mahirzukic2]

This should cost around $250-300 max, I don't really see what are we paying $1000 for over here? Shipping 22kg case?

Shipping, that must be it.

 

[Chomiq]

Shipping, that must be it.

Who knows, maybe they air drop it.

 

[SilverStone Technology]

I'm interested in seeing how this new cooler performs. CES?

We won't be at CES, but the new cooler should debut in January.

I can get great thermals out of any case if I install good fans and organize the internal components properly. Sorry Silverstone, love a lot of your products but this one just doesn't make sense to me, especially at that price point.

Yes, almost any case can have "great" thermals with careful planning, but often at expense of elevated noise levels. One of our design goals for ALTA F2 was to have the best overall thermal of all cases on the market, which is infitiely harder to do. Mind you again, we did it without making the case loud!

sON, i am disappointed. You made FT02, with a unibody thick alumimun outer shell, it looks way classier and way cheaper and same 3x180mm airflow. alta ftrash2 get outta here.

For $1000, i expect a full aluminum structure used for F2.

Please do not kill your brand like this, give us a real FT02 successor, and not something costing $1000.

FT02 without 5.25" bays, reduced 3.5" bays, easy access top panel for i/o, 140mm exhaust mounting, easy access bottom dust filters.

We can fit a 3x180mm rad in FT02 already, we just need a bit less old clutter of drive bays and a bit more back space to hide cable management.

alta F2 is trash.

FT02 was released in 2009, so very different time (and cost)! Also FT02 was a much smaller case compared to the ALTA F2, so we could manage the yield associated with using unibody on that case, but likely not been able to now for something as big as ALTA F2. We tried making a FT02 successor with the ALTA F1 four years ago by designing it to a price point, but was lamented by some for not doing enough. So with ALTA F2, we went the other direction and tried to make an all-out better case in every performance metrics and accommodation.

One of the most important things that FT02 (and its RAVEN RV02 equivalent) had was its benchmark cooling performance/noise ratio (GamersNexus' re-visit on RV02 in 2018 showed it was indeed ahead of its time). We wanted to replicate this with the ALTA F2 too but it took us a lot more time and effort this time around to accomplish due to higher standard and tougher competition. Though from the comments left so far in this thread, nobody seems impressed by it?

 

[EatingDirt]

One of the most important things that FT02 (and its RAVEN RV02 equivalent) had was its benchmark cooling performance/noise ratio (GamersNexus' re-visit on RV02 in 2018 showed it was indeed ahead of its time). We wanted to replicate this with the ALTA F2 too but it took us a lot more time and effort this time around to accomplish due to higher standard and tougher competition. Though from the comments left so far in this thread, nobody seems impressed by it?

It's not a bad case, and the cooling is great, but the price hurts enthusiasm for what is a pretty neat case. I think most people simply aren't in the market for a $1000 case to save a few degrees on their components over a $300-600 case. If TPU were to do a Temperature-to-price ratio on their cases, I have little doubt that the ALTA F2 would fall at or near the bottom of the pack.

Aesthetics is subjective, but the case isn't all that appealing to me, personally. At this price point I'd expect to see an almost entirely metal & tempered glass chassis, often with rolled aluminium/steel, like you see on the Phanteks Ethoo Elite($900) or the Inwin 925 & 915(which are both under $600).

 

[danc]

We won't be at CES, but the new cooler should debut in January.


Yes, almost any case can have "great" thermals with careful planning, but often at expense of elevated noise levels. One of our design goals for ALTA F2 was to have the best overall thermal of all cases on the market, which is infitiely harder to do. Mind you again, we did it without making the case loud!


FT02 was released in 2009, so very different time (and cost)! Also FT02 was a much smaller case compared to the ALTA F2, so we could manage the yield associated with using unibody on that case, but likely not been able to now for something as big as ALTA F2. We tried making a FT02 successor with the ALTA F1 four years ago by designing it to a price point, but was lamented by some for not doing enough. So with ALTA F2, we went the other direction and tried to make an all-out better case in every performance metrics and accommodation.

One of the most important things that FT02 (and its RAVEN RV02 equivalent) had was its benchmark cooling performance/noise ratio (GamersNexus' re-visit on RV02 in 2018 showed it was indeed ahead of its time). We wanted to replicate this with the ALTA F2 too but it took us a lot more time and effort this time around to accomplish due to higher standard and tougher competition. Though from the comments left so far in this thread, nobody seems impressed by it?

Sadly friend, asking for $1grand, F2 does not impress one bit. We are looking at caselab expectations. You cannot just throw tinted tempered glass and call it a day.
We are expecting 2mm aluminium shell and panels, no funny shaped cutouts, no cheap plastics. Symmetry and class.
TPU review is very clear to point out the deficiencies of your asking price.

F1 does look much better than F2, a pity it is too tall, and we see going from 3x180 downgraded to 2x180. Same for FT05.

You have good template in FT02, just modernised the interior, clean up the exterior access, allow easier water loop placement.
I have a water FT02, it works, it looks great,compact but it is a bit a chore.

FT02, RV02 and FT03/mini were the best SS design.
TJ series are great too but clearly share designers with Lianli and Antec/Chieftec i believe.

Right now thermaltake is doing more interests with inverted case.

 

[Athlonite]

There really isn't anything other than the water cooling space in this case that would make me upgrade from my really old Raven RVO2 but not for 4x the price that's why I went with the Lian Li O11 XL instead I think Silverstone are going the way of nGreedia

 

[claes]

Though from the comments left so far in this thread, nobody seems impressed by it?

Just chiming in to say that I think it's pretty great, even if the price doesn't leave much of a market for it. Still loving my FT02, and you already know what I'd like to see you all do next with these 90* layouts, but given the way GPUs are going there's probably not much of a market for that either.

 

[fb020997]

And I thought my Lancool III was a very expensive for not being a CPU or GPU purchase (~175€ on sale, White ARGB version, vs. the usual 230€)…

 

[danc]

@SilverStone Technology

how hard to make FT02/RV02 redux? Just use back same tooling and remove this outdated area, move the sata cages up, most just need 4 sata cages, not 5. Also make them screws and not rivets so we can remove it, many have gone full nvme. Top panel need push button access, also if you can use aluminum for it.

Bonus: Make 140mm rear fan and extend the back by 2cm for cable management.
We can even keep the same 120mm rear fan and no extended back, if you want to reuse FT02 tooling, same materials, it will sell.

Boom more compact Alta F2, with 540mm + 120/140mm rad. Charge $399, it is fairer and will outperform many cases in this range in air and water.
180x180x3 rad has huge surface area.

 

[SilverStone Technology]

@SilverStone Technology

how hard to make FT02/RV02 redux? Just use back same tooling and remove this outdated area, move the sata cages up, most just need 4 sata cages, not 5. Also make them screws and not rivets so we can remove it, many have gone full nvme. Top panel need push button access, also if you can use aluminum for it.

Bonus: Make 140mm rear fan and extend the back by 2cm for cable management.
We can even keep the same 120mm rear fan and no extended back, if you want to reuse FT02 tooling, same materials, it will sell.

Boom more compact Alta F2, with 540mm + 120/140mm rad. Charge $399, it is fairer and will outperform many cases in this range in air and water.
180x180x3 rad has huge surface area.

Thanks for the continued enthusiasm on the FT02 / RV02! We really appreciate the passion you and other owners have shown us over the years on this series of cases. If you've followed us along, you would see that we never stopped experimenting making a newer flagship cases that can surpass what we've done previously. Examples of these include the Temjin TJ11 in 2011, Temjin TJ12 in 2014, and New RAVEN & ALTA S1 in 2019. There are even more prototypes builds that we never revealed publically. As you can see from the ones we've released or shown, we adjusted with the hardware demands or trends of the time. Most of these designs never made production due to many factors (cost, compatibility, performance, logistic, etc...) as we value the bars we've set for ourselves and by our passionate users. In the end, we had to make a choice in a design direction to go for after years of R&D without actually releasing a flagship case. So we choose to pursue ultimate airflow efficiency / cooling performance as the priority with the ALTA F2, this is arguably the most difficult thing to do and something we are good at. Top-end hardware compatibility was a must also so users can fit almost anything they like into it. We understand not all FT02 users will be moved by the ALTA F2, but hopefully with more test results, you guys can see what effort it was to make a case to surpass FT02 / RV02's relative achievement at the time!

We have stated publically in other media outlets that we will not be able to re-use tooling from the old case as all the changes and updates users wanted would require the case to become wider and taller to be able to accommodate today's modern hardware. Any time you change the overall size or dimension of the case, a new tooling would be required. Even if we make no changes and decided to do a production run of FT02 like we did in 2010, the estimated MSRP would likely be in the $500+ range. This would be for a case that by modern standard, too small to have cable management room and fit high-end GPUs. Its cooling performance will also only be middling compared to today's best high performance cases so the market for a case like this will be even smaller, forcing us to do only limited production run and make the cost per case go up to near $1000 MSRP!

 

[danc]

@SilverStone Technology

Thank you for reply. Yes i gladly pay 600+++ for a tuned FT02R or even a slightly compact A-F2R.

The current F2 aesthetics and size is not worth $1000 to me, yes i can afford it. Something about the plastic pop-out front panel, the tempered glass, too ugly and aggressive.

My FT02 is getting rusty, chipped and no usb-c, and a bit tiring to clean the dust with only decimiflex magnetic filters.

Yes i understand the limitation of vertical gpu vs heatpipes vs large heatsink today. My FT02 can only accomadate modern gpu with water blocks.

Can i suggest some cost reductions to bring down to mass market prices so it can sell,

-no tempered glass, back to arcylic window, a big case like this is on the floor and i have heard many TG accidents...reviewers will overlook the no TG once they see the bundled 3x180mm fans.
-remove the 2x 3.5" cages, the 3.5" floor tray
-back to single aluminium U-cage, dont need to show the F2 interior front when it looks that ugly
-magnetic regular steel mesh top panel
-simplified top vents, stick to 2 gpu layout, 90° and 11.3° tilted
-single psu placement
-volume size reduction by about 10% smaller from F2.
-have 2 version, the air cool and water cool.

air cool bundle with pcie ribbon cable and gpu bracket for the 11.3°, this solves the modern gpu limitations. Make it $699

water cool, as long we can do this kind of layout again, with a more modern interior, advertise it can accomodate THICK monsta 3x180mm + 1x120mm.

 

[ExGANDI]

Hot damn, not even my Caselabs S8 was that expensive.

In your baby case even Rampage Extreme motherboards wont fit properly. Not to mention something real like Dominus Extreme. IMHO if the case does not have 9 expansion slots it's not worth mention it. Well... 8 slots case is sometimes possible compromise... but still compromise. 2 days ago i have finished build (for AI) with ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE + 4x MSI 4090 SUPRIM LIQUID 24G + AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X and beleive me Meshify 2 XL is a really SMALL case. Now they reside on mining rig (can take a photo if you need) untill custom watercooling from Alphacool arrive (2x Monsta 360) + plus this case. And there are 2 PSU's so S8 is really tiny for that kind of build. But Alta F2 will do the trick. That's why the price is perfectly fine... This case can do things that allmost all others can not.

P.S. And now we will build "gaming" PC with Asus Dominus Extreme + Intel Xeon W-3175X with just one video card and just one PSU and still S8 is useless unlike Corsair 760T which CAN accomodate 35,5 x 35,5 motherboard (or Corsair 800D with some modding). So no offence but S8 is more of a showcase than usefull for huge builds.

 

[SN2716057]

In your baby case even Rampage Extreme motherboards wont fit properly. Not to mention something real like Dominus Extreme. IMHO if the case does not have 9 expansion slots it's not worth mention it. Well... 8 slots case is sometimes possible compromise... but still compromise. 2 days ago i have finished build (for AI) with ASUS Pro WS TRX50-SAGE + 4x MSI 4090 SUPRIM LIQUID 24G + AMD Ryzen Threadripper 7970X and beleive me Meshify 2 XL is a really SMALL case. Now they reside on mining rig (can take a photo if you need) untill custom watercooling from Alphacool arrive (2x Monsta 360) + plus this case. And there are 2 PSU's so S8 is really tiny for that kind of build. But Alta F2 will do the trick. That's why the price is perfectly fine... This case can do things that allmost all others can not.

P.S. And now we will build "gaming" PC with Asus Dominus Extreme + Intel Xeon W-3175X with just one video card and just one PSU and still S8 is useless unlike Corsair 760T which CAN accomodate 35,5 x 35,5 motherboard (or Corsair 800D with some modding). So no offence but S8 is more of a showcase than usefull for huge builds.

The S8 came out in 2014 and is no longer available but here's what I could find:

Mercury S8 Tech Specs

Exterior dimensions:18.74"H x 14.54"W x 19.03"D (476mm x 369mm x 483mm)
Native HDD capacity; 4 (+2 on MB tray mount but you loose SSD mounting. 1 HDD uses 2 SSD locations) (22 maximum)
Native SSD capacity; 4 (44 maximum)
Number of Flex-Bays (5.25'' bays); 9
PSU mounts: 1
Expansion slots: 8
Form Factor: mATX, ATX, **E-ATX, SSI-CEB MB tray size; 12.38" x 10.75" (315mm x 273mm)
Maximum radiator size: 120.3 (360)
Weight: 18.5 lbs (8.5kg)

Note: Exterior dimensions shown are for the case only. Rubber feet add .75'' (19mm) to height, optional standard casters add 2.6'' (67mm) and HD Casters add 3'' (76mm)

** "E-ATX" motherboards such as the; ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME, ASUS MAXIMUS V FORMULA/THUNDERFX and EVGA Z87 Classified will fit in this case. E-ATX motherboards such as the; Supermicro X7DAE will not fit in this case. Please cross reference the motherboard tray size with the motherboard dimensions from the manufacturer. If the dimensions of the motherboard are within the dimensions of the tray, it will fit.

CaseLabs announces the Mercury S8!

www.overclock.net