Review System

Assembly

Installing the motherboard is done using screws and spacers. Several of the spacers have edges to hold the motherboard in position as it is screwed down. There is plenty of space above the top and forward-facing edge of the board, while the openings in the shroud are well-placed for keeping the visible cable mess to a minimum. There is a bit of room allowing you to go for extra-wide boards, but anything bigger will mean that you will have to remove the individual drive bays and 5.25" bracket. The SilverStone SETA D1 should easily be able to house any GPU you can throw at it with the fans in the front, but unfortunately, you will have to remove two of the four pre-installed HDD trays. This is quite the shortcoming as you have to sacrifice potent GPUs - of which SilverStone directly suggest you should go for two with the included support brackets, but then forcing you to live with a largely diminished unique selling point of the premise for lots of internal storage.


Adding an SSD to the build is done using the plates on the back or utilizing the 3.5 and 2.5" capable trays. When using the trays, any storage unit is just screwed into place and then the tray may be pushed back into one of the available slots.


To add a 3.5" drive, first detach the cage and pull it out from underneath the shroud. Doing so reveals two possible placements for the cage if in need of additional room for the PSU. Each drive rests on screws with rubber rings, which hold it in place securely. Once filled, simply slide the whole cage back into place and secure it with a thumb screw.


Adding external drives also utilizes classic screws. Simply pop out the metal mesh cover of your choice and then slide the drive into place to line the front up with the chassis exterior. There is ample room so that even longer optical drives should fit fine, even if you are far more likely to go for hot-swappable HDD cages these days.


Lastly, installing the PSU is pretty straightforward. There is lots of room to get it in and out of the shroud even with cables routed through to connect things like the front audio or fans. As you can see, you could throw all but the most extreme power supplies at the SETA D1.


You may install an AIO of up to 360 mm into the ceiling and top of the case, but since you need room for the 5.25" cage, we opted for a 240 mm unit instead. You could potentially move the drive cage down and the HDD cages to the very top to squeeze in a 360 mm and retain most, if not all storage capabilities. However, once again, the case body requires you to compromise between the unique selling point of storage or general capability like a large radiator in the ceiling - as you can see we had to move the optical drive down one slot to make this AIO fit. In hindsight, we could have rotated the AIO so that the tubing was in the back as this is a compact 240 mm unit, which may have allowed us to keep the drive at the top, but then obstructed the rear fan airflow a tad bit. On the upside, thanks to the offset mounting holes, there is lots of space between the motherboard and AIO—you won't have to worry about any hardware colliding with it. The whole AIO even slots in above the rear fan, maximizing the whole area for cooling.


With everything installed, the interior and backside of the SilverStone SETA D1 make an excellent, clean impression. Thanks to the many hooks for zip ties and well-placed, grommet-covered openings, keeping things nice and tidy is easily done. In the interior, you will have to work around AIO tubes a bit or may even be forced to rotate the unit so that the tubes are in the back in case of optical drives. Besides that, the interior looks clean as well, with the drive bays helping in hiding any cable messes as well, so you can get away with a bit of it easily. If using an SSI form factor motherboard, you will still have horizontal openings that are currently covered to wire cables through, thus making the D1 uniquely capable of tidy setups even in that scenario. That said, using such a board will likely mean you will likely loose complete access to the 5.25" bays. If SilverStone had gone for the shorter brackets that we have seen in some other cases, things may have been a tad bit more flexible.,

Finished Looks

With everything installed the case makes a distinctly old school impression. That is by no means meant in a negative undertone - it is simply unusual to see a chassis with an optical drive installed these days (Editor's note: feast your eyes on the HD DVD, Blu Ray, DVD combo drive by the way!) A white LED lights up right underneath the power button to let you know the system is up and running. The location of the LED is actually also useful, as it allows you to find the power button easily even in a dark environment. In the rear, everything is where you would expect to see it for a modern ATX enclosure.