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SilverStone Nimiz SST-TJ03 Review
[Abstract]
Product: Manufacturer: Supplied by: Price: Review Date: Temjin 3 Nimitz (TJ03) Full Tower Case SilverStone SilverStone USD 250 / RM 950 18 January 2005 Recentl...
[Content] PCDigitalMobileGame
The Temjin 3 - Exterior
When I first got a call from my colleague who received the parcel, it was on Christmas day (it arrived on Christmas Eve), I was greeted with, “Hey, your Christmas present from SilverStone just arrived.?I then rushed to the office to check it out and we performed the opening ceremony. We were greeted with this sleek aluminium box. Our first impression when we took it out of the box was it was quite light as opposed to the hefty TJ05. Being constructed entirely of aluminium alloy, the TJ03 weighs in at only 9.6 kg. In my opinion, it looks simple but beautiful, which catered more to my taste. Opinions will vary, as my colleague (Prem) said his first impression was it looked plain and does not look like a RM1000 case. The TJ03 is also available in black.
Its build quality is quite rigid but if you lightly knock on the side panels, it makes an irritating rattling sound. Upon closer inspection, I noticed the side panels are thinner compared to the rest of the case. This seems to be the reason why it sounds weak. I accidentally knocked onto one of the side panels and to my shock, it resulted in a slight dent noticeable by looking at it from an angle. Fortunately, it was recoverable by bending it back to its original shape. Because of this, you need to be careful when handling this casing. SilverStone had an explanation for this: If you look closely at the top and bottom of TJ03's side panels, you will notice that they are folded 180 degrees to create hooking points. If SilverStone were to use 1.5mm aluminum panels, this type of folding would result in very visible cracks along the edge. They wanted to have a side panel that was created from one solid sheet of aluminum as opposed to increasing the number of parts. Therefore, this seems to be the explanation why they have always used 1.0mm thick side panels when designing their range of aluminum cases, since their days at ATCS (yes the designing team are from the old ATCS series). This has not changed for years and Cooler Master probably hasn't altered this formula for their current all aluminum cases either. As far as we know, Lian-Li is the only company that makes aluminum side panels out of either 1.5mm or 2.0mm sheets. But this only applies to their newest V-series cases where the side panels do not require folding.
The simple design on the front can be said to be appealling depending on one's personal taste. Some may call it too plain but some will like its classy and minimalist design, which is neither too flashy nor over-styled.
The edges are nicely machined off so that there are no significantly sharp edges. However, a closer inspection reveals slight imperfections. This isn’t really an issue anyway as its not easily noticeable. Being a review unit, possibly the one we got was slightly imperfect.
Opening the upper door reveals six (6) 5.25?drive bays. The drive bay door closes with a steady clunk, held close by two strong magnets. A closer look shows the large amount of aluminium used to make the doors. In fact, the sections at the top, bottom and centre between the doors are solid chunks of aluminium.
The lower door reveals the 120mm fan’s dust filter. Two plastic clips are used here to hold the door close. The dust filter, which consists of two layers looks capable of filtering out most of the dust being drawn in with the air. Cleaning the filter is a simple affair. You may wonder how would air be drawn into the case though the seemingly hole-less front. Actually, the intake holes are nicely hidden inside the gap in the aluminium door as seen in the pictures above.
Opening the I/O door reveals an IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port, 4 USB ports, a speaker/headphone and a microphone jack. This has become a standard feature in most casings. In this case, featuring an aluminium door concealing the ports when not in use. Again, it can be seen here the abundance of aluminium used as with the rest of the front bezel.
The power and reset buttons were made out of stainless steel. However, in practice, I did find them a little irritating, as pressing them doesn’t feel smooth and makes a scratching sound. The picture above reveals the obvious reason. The sides of the buttons have grooves all round which rubs unto the aluminium when being pressed. This should not be an issue for a casing of this price. Using some fine sandpaper to smoothen out the surface should solve the problem. Both the power and hard disk activity lights feature blue LED’s. Pretty cool, but a common feature nowadays.
The case feet looks nice, surrounded with aluminium and padded with rubber underneath for added grip to make sure your case doesn’t easily slide. If you want to install castors or wheels, simply unscrew the case feet and install the castors onto the provided mounting holes.
According to SilverStone, most of the cost of TJ03 did not come from it being all aluminum even though it is more expensive to produce compared to steel. The majority of the cost comes from the aluminum finish that they have applied to the case with their top of the line brush anodized treatment on the exterior and chromate treated interior. Basides, not forgetting the labor required for producing this low volume product. The TJ03 is manufactured differently from all of SilverStone's other tower cases as it is still made with more man operated stamping and hand assembly as opposed to automated molds and tooling. Therefore, this explains the hefty price tag. And now I'm beginning to understand it the more I examine this casing. We also found out that the engineer responsible for designing the TJ03 was also the same guy who created the ATC-110.
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