Do you need the ultimate roll-your-own box for the NAS to end all NASes? Do you want to build a workstation with a massive bank of hot-swappable local storage nestled inside? Do you want the option to do either in one PC case? With those three questions, we just winnowed down its likely DIY buyers to just a handful, but SilverStone’s one-of-a-kind CS383 should make anyone who replied “Affirmative!” to any of them very happy. Like the Liam Neeson trope, this $379.99 case has a very particular set of skills; it’s all about the storage bays and the generous interior space. So you’ll want to kit it out to the max—with a lot of drives and full-fat cooling, not just the default fans—to make buying it, and building in it, worthwhile.

Design: Bursting With Bays

The CS383’s eight-drive, hot-swappable backplane makes its potential use as a massive network attached storage (NAS) chassis a given, but then there's the rest of the case: NAS systems don’t often require dual-CPU motherboards or a 420mm-format radiator to cool them. A bit of PC history, though, might explain the CS383’s origins.

Rather than be dictated by the size of its drive bays (as has been the case with most NAS drives we have reviewed), the CS383 resembles workstation cases of the distant past. We can almost picture it holding four GeForce GTX 580s and a pair of Intel Xeon 5690s spitting out data to eight 10,000rpm WD VelociRaptor platter drives. Back in the day, you’d need all eight of those drives to reach 1.8TB in RAID 50, since each drive was only 300GB. And that solves the riddle—at least, some years back—of why you’d want an eight-drive backplane on a workstation. Why would you want one now? Substitute those 300GB drives for 18TB or 20TB models, and do the math to see what’s possible. (Anyone for more than 100TB of local storage?)

The top of the CS383’s door features a cutaway section for its front-panel buttons and ports. Here we find the standard power and reset buttons, with power and drive activity LEDs, two additional LEDs for displaying the activity of discrete network cards, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a dual-link Gen 2 Type-C port, and a four-pole 1/8-inch headset jack. That last part just means that it’s a standard headphone jack with an extra segment for the microphones of single-plug headsets, and that users of legacy two-plug headsets can get their mic to work by adding a generic four-pole headset splitter cable.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Turning the key latch on the left side of the front panel allows its door to swing right, revealing a 5.25-inch bay at the top, a triple 5.25-inch bay at the bottom, and eight 3.5-inch drive sleds on the CS383’s backplane in the center. Though the included keys aren’t numbered, this builder’s collection revealed it to be a type 905.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Small screws that protrude from the sides of spring-loaded hinge pins allow users to easily remove the door as desired. The door itself is made in layers, its inner layer screwed to the outer layer, trapping a dust-filter sheet between.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Designed to hold 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA drives with their interface connectors in the same position, each drive tray slides its drive into a set of power and data connectors at the back of its cage. Those connectors are soldered to a flat circuit board, which explains why this type of cage is called a backplane.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Unlike the front filter that’s screwed in place, the bottom dust filter is designed for easy slide-out removal. A removable mounting plate on the power supply bay above it allows the power unit to slide in from the back of the case.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Other rear-panel features include a 140mm exhaust fan on a 120mm/140mm dual-pattern mount, an eight-slot expansion panel that can be removed and repositioned to stand cards vertically on their PCI Express slot connector, and screw tabs with knurled screws at the top to help reduce the likelihood of side panels falling off if the case gets bumped.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

All the panels are secured with snaps, though the side panels also have tabs at the bottom to again help prevent the panels from falling off. Snapping away the vented top cover reveals a removable mount that’s designed to hold up to three 140mm or 120mm fans and/or radiators up to 466mm in length (by our measurements). Builders could squeeze a few more millimeters out of the space if they’d like to use the fans as spacers to mount the radiator a bit lower, though the maximum combined radiator and fan thickness at the front of the opening is a modest 57mm.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The plastic face panel is secured with no fewer than eight plastic snaps, eight locating pins, and eight screws. Once it’s detached from the case, it’s still secured to the backplane with two screw tabs. And because those tabs overlap the edge of the face panel, you’ll have to remove all eight screws that secure the backplane inside the case’s built-in drive cage before you’ll be able to pull the thing apart.

After doing all that, you’ll find that the CS383’s frame started life as a design with 10 5.25-inch drive bays.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Behind the front bays, two adjustable card support tabs are mounted to a removable card brace, which is then attached to the top of the power supply shroud. Additional holes in the shroud allow builders to move the card brace forward and back, or attach the end of a graphics riser cable to help stabilize the graphics card in the optional vertical orientation.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The CS383 has more than enough space for a 13-inch-deep motherboard, which, in addition to being the same size as an SSI-EEB server board, is the maximum size for a board to be labeled Extended ATX (EATX). SilverStone configured the CS383’s forward-most standoffs to fit a 10.5-inch SSE-CEB (mid-size server) motherboard rather than a usual consumer 9.6-inch ATX board. Esoteric tip: Though SilverStone includes an adapter socket to move these standoffs to the ATX positions using an ordinary #2 Phillips screwdriver, we found it much easier to use a 3/16-inch nut driver that came with one of our ancient PC building toolkits.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

SilverStone concealed the fact that the CS383’s eight-drive backplane is actually two four-drive parts by hiding both boards behind a single steel sheet. Each of these boards is equipped with its own set of four SATA data ports, its own SATA-style power input, its own 4-pin Molex-type power input, and its own 92mm cooling fan. The SATA and 4-pin power connectors of each circuit board connect to the same circuits, so you only need to use one; you can choose whichever power connector is most convenient for your build. (We chose SATA for both.)

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Because the CS383 has so many open 5.25-inch bays, a builder who needs more than eight 3.5-inch drives could potentially add a five-drive backplane to the bottom and a single drive adapter to the top. Things could get even wilder if we began exploring our 2.5-inch drive options, as we’ve seen versions that adapt up to eight 2.5-inch drives to just one of the four available 5.25-inch bays. But the CS383 offers even more mounting options for those who don’t get enough from its frontal area alone: A dual 2.5-inch bay covers the back of the CPU socket zone, and another covers the space behind the motherboard’s slot area. And if 2.5-inch drives aren’t your thing, the lower of those two trays optionally supports a single 3.5-inch drive instead.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Oh, and if you looked at the lower 5.25-inch bays and thought that they might be useful for adding a second power supply, SilverStone thought of that too. The CS383 includes an adapter plate to put a power supply there, as well as a knockout on the case's back panel into which a flanged C14-to-standard-C13 power extension can be mounted to plug in the second supply.

Building With the SilverStone CS383

The CS383 includes a pair of front-door keys, a bundle of zip-style cable ties, that front-bay power supply adapter, enough screws and rubber dampers to fill all the mounting locations with the associated hardware, and a bracket that adds threads for screwing down the flanged end of the front-power extension cable that the CS383 did not include (see page 7 of the CS383 manual).

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

When all of our hardware is bolted down, we’ll be able to connect the power LED, power button, HDD LED, and reset button to our motherboard’s 9-pin front-panel section, the audio combo jack to our motherboard’s HD Audio front panel header, the Type-C port to our motherboard’s Type-E (Gen 2x2) header, and the Type-A ports to one of our motherboard’s Gen 1 (USB 3.2) headers. Chosen to fit into a wide range of cases, our test components don’t include any additional cards to feed activity signals to the case’s extra two front-panel LEDs. So those NIC1 and NIC2 LED leads you see below will go unused in our test build.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The first thing you might notice is that we didn’t get the card support brace perfectly square with the rest of the case; we didn’t notice that until examining our pictures much later. It functioned as intended, anyway, and sticklers are welcomed to adjust their own parts to get things looking straight.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

As the case lacks side windows, and the front panel is blocked with devices, the only way to see that our system is running is to either observe the case’s status LEDs or look down through its top panel vents from above. You’ll have to trust us: This is the finished product!

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Performance Testing the SilverStone CS383

Here’s a list of the test components shown above that we used for our test build, along with the settings we’re using to validate the CS383’s cooling and noise control.

Despite its dual 92mm intake fans and oversize 140mm exhaust, the CS383 left our CPU approximately 7 degrees C warmer than it had in SilverStone’s own Seta A2. Both of those cases are tied for the hottest voltage regulator temperature in our test group, and the so-so airflow in the CS383’s stock configuration even impacted our GPU temperature.

You'll want to add more fans if you plan to run hot components in the main component chamber, not just power a NAS configuration with more easygoing hardware.

The twin 92mm fans of the CS383’s backplane let out a muffled whine that was barely stifled by all the hardware that sat between them and the front door. Despite the unwelcome pitch, those parts did help knock the sound pressure down to a second-place finish in this lot.

We should point out that our radiator is less than half the length of the CS383’s fan mount; air exiting the top of it could potentially be recirculated through the front half of the case’s radiator opening. Concerned that the top panel’s relative smoothness might be contributing to that problem, we removed it and saw an improvement of 4 degrees C at the CPU, 2 degrees C at the voltage regulator, and about 1 degree at the GPU. All with less than 1 decibel of noise increase.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)