Rage3D SilverStone Lascala LC13 HTPC Case Review Rage3D SilverStone Lascala LC13 HTPC Case Review
While they make a lot of products such as Power Supplies, coolers, and tower cases, the one area where they have excelled is the HTPC case market. They actually have more HTPC cases than they do tower cases and release new and updated versions on a fairly regular basis. One of the newest of those HTPC cases is the Lascala SST-LC13, which I'll be looking at in this review.
SpecificationsThe LC13 has an aluminum front panel and 1.0m SECC steel body construction. It has 2 5-1/4" drive bays, 2 external 3-1/2" bays, and 2 internal 3-1/2" bays. It accepts mATX, ATX, and eATX motherboards (though you must remove the internal 3-1/2" drive bay to install an eATX motherboard). It's also sized to fit in a standard HTPC rack and like many of SilverStone's cases, it's available in silver and black to match your other Home Theater components.
The complete spec list for the case is below.
| Material | Aluminum front panel, 1.0mm SECC body | |
| Colour | Black | |
| Silver | ||
| Drive Bays | External | 5.25” x 2 3.5” x 2 |
| Internal | 3.5” x 2 | |
| Cooling System | Front | 92mm intake, 2100rpm, 21dBA |
| Rear | 2 x 60mm exhaust, 3000rpm, 25dBA | |
| Expansion Slots | 7 | |
| Front I/O Port |
USB2.0 port x 2 1394 Firewire x 1 Earphone jack x 1 MIC x 1 |
|
| Power Supply | Optional standard PS2 (ATX) | |
| Net Weight | 9 kg | |
| Dimension | 430 mm (W) x 163 mm (H) x 430 mm (D) | |
The front of the LC13 is mostly taken up by a large brushed aluminum door that hides 2 5-1/4" drive bays and 2 3-1/2" bays along with 2 USB 2.0 ports, a Firewire port, as well as headphone and mic jacks. The door itself is held in place by 2 magnets on either side of the case and gracefully glides open on a pair of greased gear wheels. When the door is closed the case is one of the cleanest, sleekest I've ever seen.
Along the bottom edge of the case are the power and LED lights. The power button is made from machined aluminum and matches the case. There's a machined bevel to take the edge off which puts a nice silver "ring" around the edge of the button as well. There's no reset button, so the only way to reboot the machine is power off then on again.
Even though the LEDs are hidden behind small holes drilled in the face of the case, they still glow very bright. The Power LED in particular can be distracting when you are watching TV in the dark. Simply not connecting them is the easiest solution if you're like me and find them way too bright.
The rear of the case is pretty standard as far as cases go. There's the standard color coded port panel (I still have to wonder why case manufacturers bother to include these things as pretty much all motherboards these days come with a custom one). There's also a full compliment of expansion bay slots as well; I've seen at least one other HTPC case that only had 4 of these.
The PSU bay is smartly turned sideways to allow for more horizontal room inside the case, which puts the PSUs fan directly in line to draw heated air away from the CPU and out the back of the case.
Also on the rear of the case are 2 60mm fans. I would have preferred a single 80mm fan instead of the dual 60mm, but obviously the space restrictions on the rear panel wouldn't allow it.
Offset on both sides of the case are arrays of ventilation holes to allow fresh air to circulate within the case. It would have been good if SilverStone had thought to put some of those holes over the area where the CPU is as well to help deliver cool air directly to the CPU but they missed the idea. Maybe for a future version they'll put the drill to work there too.
Inside the case is a nice big open area for installing motherboards as big as the eATX specification (you may need to remove the 3-1/2" drive bay when using eATX motherboards). One side is conveniently left completely open, barred by only a small chrome plated rod for added structural support, to make sliding in the motherboard nice and easy (even when you have a large CPU cooler already installed).
The LC13 is pretty flexible when it comes to installing drives. SilverStone used smart bay placement to help minimize cable clutter and used removable bays where needed to make installing the drives easy.
The 5-1/4" drive bays are stacked which makes daisy chaining 2 optical drives possible with regular dual-IDE cables, and they are easily accessible on both sides thanks to the removable 3-1/2" drive bay.
Tucked under the 5-1/4" bay is another single 3-1/2" bay for installing a HDD. You access the bay by sliding it out from the right side of the case. Not only does this allow for easy access to the drive, the placement also lets you keep most of your IDE/SATA and power supply cables grouped in that area as well to help keep the motherboard area clear. There's also plenty of room behind the 5-1/4" bays for the PSU wires and the necessary drive connections and plenty of room underneath the bays to route drive cables from your motherboard, so it's fairly easy to keep clutter to a minimum in this case.
There's only one minor issue in that the upper right corner of ATX motherboards gets blocked under the 5-1/4" drive bay, potentially causing problems depending on where the components are placed on your motherboard. Personally I only had a few minor issues that were easily solved with some not so clever lateral thinking.
On the far left side is a 92mm fan intake. SilverStone included one of their 92mm fans here but unfortunately, like the rear 60mm fans, the 92mm intake makes way too much noise for my tastes. If you're going for this case I'd also recommend picking up a silent case fan from SilenX or Nexus to replace it.
The fan draws in cool air through a slot that's cut into the underside of the front panel. It's a pretty big slot that in most cases should easily provide enough fresh air for the 92mm intake. However, because the slot is so close to the underside of the case, a problem might arise depending on the surface you have the case sitting on. If, for example, you have the case sitting on a carpeted floor then there's a good chance that the slot will be blocked by the carpet fibres. As long as it's on a solid footing, such as in a home theater rack or a TV stand, then it should be fine.
Good cooling performance is one of the most difficult objectives to achieve for any HTPC case design. Not only do case designers have to keep the overall case design small enough so that it fits within a standard sized HTPC rack or shelf, they also have to always keep aware of the noise generated by the cooling fans in the case. They are often forced to use smaller diameter fans because of the small case size, but can't compensate by running the fans faster because of the unacceptable noise they would generate in a Home Theater environment. As can probably be applied to all cooling solutions, there will probably always be a trade-off between performance and low noise.
With that in mind I decided to test the performance of the LC13.
I compared the LC13 again a CoolerMaster ATCS HTPC case. The ATCS only supports mATX motherboards, so to keep the text hardware consistent I used the same mATX motherboard in both cases. The hardware specs are listed below.
To get these results I logged idle and load temperatures for the System and CPU for around 2 hours using Motherboard Monitor. CPU Load was acheived using the Folding@Home client.
As you can see, the LC13 cooling performance easily beats out the ATCS. The LC13 System Load temperature is actually lower than the ATCS System Idle temperature, and the LC13 CPU Load temp is only 1 degree above the CPU Idle temp of the ATCS!
The overall construction and build quality of the LC13 is top notch; everything has that good solid feel to it that you expect from quality cases. Looks are purely subjective of course, but I think most people will agree that the LC13 is a very clean and sleek looking case.
The twin 60mm exhaust fans, along with the 92mm intake and side ventilation holes give the LC13 plenty of airflow throughout the case, and the excellent cooling performance is obviously reflected it that. I would have like fans to be a little quieter than what they are, but they aren't too bad. The performance vs silence trade-off is probably worth it for most people.
Finally, the versatility of the case can't be overlooked. Support for full sized ATX motherboards (and even eATX boards) along with support for full sized ATX Power Supplies makes for a lot more component choices when it comes to building your own HTPC.
If you're looking for a HTPC case, this is one you'll definitely want to check out.
