SilverStone Kublai KL03

Last September we had our first encounter with the SilverStone Kublai series when reviewing the Kublai KL02. We found that the Kublai series, which is targeted at economically minded consumers, had inherited many traits from SilverStone's flagship Temjin series while costing much less. The build quality of the KL02 chassis was excellent for being a $150 case and it ended up receiving our approval. Following the success of the Kublai KL01 and KL02 cases, SilverStone has released the KL03 as another steel and aluminum chassis, but this time it comes with support for Extended ATX motherboards. In this review, we are looking at the SilverStone Kublai KL03 as we fill it up with dual AMD quad-core Barcelona processors and other high-end hardware.

Features

- Longer mid-size tower chassis design for all around integration
- Temjin quality aluminum front door finish and construction
- Dual 120mm fans included for excellent cooling
- Perforated expansion slot cover for improved graphics card cooling
- Optional 120mm side fans for graphics card cooling
- Front door and panel with vents for better cooling performance
- Hot-swappable hard drive cage
- Tool-less design
- 2.5mm aluminum front door, 0.8mm SECC body
- SSI, Extended ATX, ATX, Micro ATX
- 4 x 5.25" External Drive Bays
- 2 x 3.5" External Drive Bays
- 4 x 3.5" Internal Drive Bays (with vibration dampening)
- 4 x 120mm fan mounts
- 14.0kg, 220 x 524 x 594mm

Contents:

As we have been accustom to seeing with all of SilverStone cases from the Temjin to Milo series, the Kublai KL03 was packaged very well. SilverStone uses a heavy-grade cardboard on the exterior and then on the inside they use a number of large Styrofoam blocks for protecting the chassis, which is wrapped in a heavy-gauge plastic. On the exterior of the retail box were various pictures of the Kublai KL03 along with listing the features/specifications for this enthusiast-grade chassis. Included in a smaller box are the Kublai KL03 user's manual and the needed mounting hardware. The Kublai KL03 is available in four SKUs, with the differences being a black or silver body and with a side window or without. On the review bench at Phoronix is the silver model with a window (SST-KL03S-W).