Friday, April 28th 2023
SilverStone Unveils ALTA F2, its 2023 Flagship Full-tower Case
SilverStone today unveiled the ALTA F2, its flagship gaming PC case. The case features a unique internal layout that maximizes component cooling using stack-effect cooling. The motherboard tray is rotated 90° such that its I/O faces the top of the case, while airflow from three large 180 mm Air Penetrator 184i PRO fans with air-channeling surfaces, direct air drawn from the bottom of the case onto almost all surfaces inside the case. There are three ways to orient your graphics card. The first of course sees it installed directly onto the motherboard, with its I/O facing the top, the next one sees it rotated, with its I/O still facing the top, but its fan vents facing the side-panel. The third and most unique orientation, sees the graphics card installed with its I/O pointing to the rear, but tilted sideways at a 11-degree angle.
The bottom chamber of the case is mostly empty, and serves as an air source for the 180 mm intake fans, but there are four 3.5-inch/2.5-inch mounts, should you want a handful drives located there. Three additional 2.5-inch drives can be mounted along spots on the motherboard tray, while four 3.5-inch drives can be mounted in a cage located in the front side. You get a total of 17 expansion slot possibilities—9 along the motherboard tray, 4 with a portion of it rotated, and 4 toward the rear.
Fan mounts on the SilverStone ALTA F2 include two 140/120 mm front intakes, four 120 mm or one 140 mm top exhausts, and three 180 mm bottom intakes. Radiator installation options include a 280 mm (or smaller) along the front-panel, a 480 mm or smaller long the top panel, and a 560 mm or smaller radiator along the bottom vents. In its conventional orientation, the case supports graphics cards up to 35.4 cm in length, but with the I/O oriented in the rear, you get a mammoth 60.4 cm room. The PSU bay supports up to 22 cm long power supplies. CPU coolers can be up to 20.5 cm tall. Measuring 261 mm (W) x 576 mm (H) x 658 mm (D), the ALTA F2 dry-weighs 21.14 kg.
The SilverStone ALTA F2 is expected to be available in Asia starting next week, followed by North America in the middle of May, and Europe by the end of May. Depending on the region, the case is expected to be priced in the USD $900 to $1,000 range.
The bottom chamber of the case is mostly empty, and serves as an air source for the 180 mm intake fans, but there are four 3.5-inch/2.5-inch mounts, should you want a handful drives located there. Three additional 2.5-inch drives can be mounted along spots on the motherboard tray, while four 3.5-inch drives can be mounted in a cage located in the front side. You get a total of 17 expansion slot possibilities—9 along the motherboard tray, 4 with a portion of it rotated, and 4 toward the rear.
41 Comments on SilverStone Unveils ALTA F2, its 2023 Flagship Full-tower Case
180mm fans are what turned me away from FT02 and made me opt for FT03 instead years ago.
Perhaps no Silverstone fan seems to be so great with regard to noise. Even with FT03, I replaced its fan by a quieter one and eventually removed it altogether, which was possible with 4670T and without a discrete GPU.
In my Alta F1, with 12900 and without a discrete GPU, I now use three NF-S12A's at bottom and a NF-A12X25 LS-PWM on NH-P1, which are controlled to run only above certain temperature thresholds.
WTF are Silverstone smoking is the case made of carbon fiber or copper oh nope it's just steel and plastic just like the RV02 which is cheap as fudge what makes this thing worth that much money
Thanks to all again for the feedbacks and especially to SilverStone users who chimed in and share your thoughts! Building cases with great cooing performance has always been our passion, often times taking priority over styling, cable management, and other aspects of case design that isn’t readily apparent upon first glance. We have already contacted quite a few prominent reviewers about checking out the ALTA F2 so hopefully they’ll validate the work we’ve done on this with appropriately powerful test systems!
The ALTA F2 also includes three of our best fans that retail for around $35 each and a thoroughly tested/validated (a year worth of testing and prototyping) PCIe Gen4 riser. We have an excellent track record with products like these, having included risers in many of our SFF case models for nearly a decade without incidence or recall.
It would be much better if there were a version of ALTA F2 without any pre-installed fans, preferably at a lower price. As I noted above, Alta F1 is better in this respect as it offers choices to users. I can replace its bottom fans by any other 12 cm 14 cm fans or remove them altogether. By the way, I am now experimenting by removing NF-S12As I've installed at bottom and moving them to the top as I thought this placement was more suitable for NF-S12As given their characteristics.
IMHO, case manufacturers, including but not limited to Silverstone Technology, should give a greater freedom of fan choice to users. They should not presume only one possible kind of use cases but take into account more diverser use cases. I hope case manufacturers consider following Lian-Li, who launched O11D Evo without any pre-installed fans.
Thanks @SilverStone Technology, seems like a great case to me. Too big and expensive for my tastes, but if I were doing a showcase water cooled build this’d be my choice. Might’ve been nice to sneak an itx mount in there.
For folks complaining about motherboard compatibility, I’m a little confused? Looks like it supports SSI-EEB according to the product page, it ought to handle most workstation boards without an issue.
IDK about all of these 180mm noise complaints, the FT02 is still the quietest case I’ve ever built in (probably 100 or so cases, and I’m a noise freak myself). Sure, I had to limit the voltage, but the cooling performance/noise has been unparalleled in my experiences. Too much for anything but enthusiast components, for sure, but these aren’t cases meant for the midrange. Maybe the F1 had mount issues? I never got to build in one :(
silentpcreview.com/silverstone-fortress-ft02-revisited/
silentpcreview.com/quiet-sli-gaming-pc-build-guide/
For ALTA F2 however, the situation is a bit different, the fans included in the ALTA F2 are the newer generation, highend fans that are now capable of spinning down to incredibly low RPM (basically to a stop from high of 1200rpm), so there should be no need to replace them for cooling performance or quietness. 180mm fans, which this case was designed for, are on a completely different level of performance/noise ratio compared to 120mm/140mm fans so it'd be a shame not to use them. If there are many choices for 180mm fans on the market and we didn't make the best ones, we would probably choose not to include them. But we do make the best 180mm fans on the market so we had to include them in our 20th anniversary flagship case!
If you can, please give our new Shark Force 140 ( www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/fans/SF140B/ ) a try, it has superb performance/noise ratio and should work better than the NF-S12As in your ALTA F1. Like the Air Penetrator in the ALTA F2, it is also capable or spinning down to zero so you can fine-tune it to exactly the speed you like.
Your 180mm fans on ALTA F2 do seem to be considerably better than 140mm Air Penetrator fans that come with ALTA F1, although its highest noise level seems to be a bit too high for me. Still, if it can spin down to 200-300, even to 0, rpm, I may not have to worry so much about bottom fans of ALTA F2. As I noted above, bottom fans are the only thing I was concerned about with regard to ALTA F2, which I thought was otherwise perfect. I look forward to its launch.
Thanks also for letting me know of Shark Force 140, which I haven't heard of. I'll look into it.
ALTA F1 was initially slated for release in China only after pandemic, tariff, and other factors as chronicled in the thread about it on Hardform ( hardforum.com/threads/new-silverstone-alta-f1.2001003/ ). So the situation with ALTA F2 will be different, it is our 20th anniversary product after all, so we want to have worldwide release this time!
With some though and creative engineering I was able to externally mount an Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420 on top of the Cosmos II and still have the sliding top front panel work correctly. Even better if in the future I decide to remove the 420 the stock top panel will go back on with no signs of any modding ever being done to the case externally. That damned this sure is heavy though! I only buy cases with at least two 5.25" front drive bays and nothing with glass side panels. Modding for personal tastes, function and airflow is why I never buy expensive new cases. I wish somebody would do a clone of the Corsair Carbide 500R, my idea of the perfect case (I have two I bought new when they first came out. Under $70 each after rebate including free shipping).
You should definitely also check out our SETA D1 that was released a couple of months ago, it has four 5.25" bay in a modern, capable chassis!
www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/SETA_D1/
www.amazon.com/dp/B0C5LF52TL