SilverStone Fara 514X Review | PCMag

SilverStone is known for meticulously constructed PC cases made of premium materials. (See, for two prime examples, the superbly built Alta cases we spotted at Computex 2024 a few months back.) The $99.99 Fara 514X enters the market, though, from the other end: It marks SilverStone’s latest jump into the mainstream DIY pool. That pits it against a bevy of $80-to-$120 cases contending for the biggest chunk of the largest market segment. (Competing models include Corsair’s 3500X ARGB and NZXT’s H5 Flow.) Whether the Fara can prevail is a matter for analysis, but the TLDR: Four attractive fans for around $100 give it a pretty performance edge.

Design: Piling on the Airflow

The Fara 514X is designed to provide the most possible airflow for the lowest practical price, forgoing common features like dust filters that might hinder airflow and add cost. That’s not to say that it’s a cheap case. Its classic mid-tier materials still push a mainstream-typical 18.7 pounds, despite most of its sheet metal face panel having been cut away to produce an airflow-friendly mesh. The remaining mesh appears fine enough to trap most household dust without adding a filter, so that anyone who operates from a dusty space will likely need to clean it frequently. It’s good, then, that it snaps off.

The case’s front-panel connectors (two USB 3.x Type-A, headphone, microphone, and one USB 3.x Type-C) are lined up along the right edge of the top panel. Ahead of those are a drive-activity LED, an LED mode button for the integrated ARGB controller, a suitably tiny reset button, and a lighted power button with a blacked-out center.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Around back are the power supply mount, a recessed slot panel, and a 120mm fan mount with around an inch of vertical position adjustment for the pre-fitted ARGB fan. The unventilated steel panel of the case’s right side is also visible from this angle.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The cabling behind the motherboard tray isn’t pretty, but you get plenty of room to organize it. We can also see here the motherboard’s giant access hole for installing CPU support plates without removing the board, as well as the two 2.5-inch drive trays that reside beneath that giant hole.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Most of the cable mess feeds to and from the ARGB controller, which also includes an unregulated power hub for fans. By “unregulated,” we mean that while there is an ARGB input for color control, there’s no PWM or voltage-level input for RPM control. The hub takes 12-volt juice from a Serial ATA power-supply cable and splits it out to four fan headers.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

We had to move most of the above-mentioned cables out of the way to reveal the two-unit 3.5-inch hard drive cage, as well as its screw. While the edge of cage is only 217mm from the power supply mount, removing the cage opens this space to over 400mm of clearance. An alternative in-between mounting location provides 249mm of clearance to the rear panel, by reducing the radiator-mounting space on the back of the front panel.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The Fara 514X’s three ARGB intake fans are mounted to the front of its front structural panel. An around-96mm gap in the power supply shroud behind that panel allows thick radiators to be mounted there, though builders should understand that the angle required to tilt long radiators through the hole will define the radiator’s maximum thickness.

Also note the locations of cable-passage holes and of the somewhat-NZXT-reminiscent cover that hides the vertical cable passage in front of the motherboard mounting area.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The reason we wanted readers to notice the location of the vertical cable passage is that like the lower drive cage, it, too, can be moved forward or removed. While the stock position shown above is designed to work with standard (9.6-inch-deep) ATX motherboards, the forward position shown below (left) is spaced for motherboards up to 11 inches deep. Things get strange from here, because while SilverStone’s description cites 11 inches as the maximum motherboard depth, removing the cover completely (below right) allows full-spec (13-inch-deep) Extended ATX boards to fit. Moreover, on the motherboard tray you’ll even spot a couple of standoff holes marked “E,” and the extra standoffs to use those holes are included in the Fara 514X’s installation kit.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

As for that removable cover, it includes an adjustable-height graphics-card brace and a bunch of holes to broaden that brace’s range of adjustment.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Getting back to the radiator space, the top of the Fara can also hold a 360mm-format radiator up to 406mm in total length, or a 280mm-format unit of any practical length, though the latter will surely crowd any cables that you’d like to run over the top of the motherboard. That’s because the mount rests about 58mm above the motherboard’s top edge.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The Fara 514X’s sole dust filter covers its power supply air inlet. Secured via tabs on its periphery, this type requires direct access (that is, tipping the case) and is a little tedious to remove.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Building With the SilverStone Fara 514X

The Fara 514X doesn’t include a manual, and when we finished building out and testing the case, one hadn’t yet been posted. [Update: A digital one had been posted by the time we edited and published this review, at this link.] But the accessory kit appears to have the usual assortment of screws and cable ties. In reality, we found that if we treat the hex/Phillips combo head screws as power-supply screws, we had only enough #6-32 screws remaining to install the two 3.5-inch hard drives or to fill the PCIe card slots with cards. A surprise inclusion is the previously mentioned set of three extra standoffs required by 13-inch-deep boards, and one of the reasons that it’s a surprise is that only two of the holes for those mounting positions were bored and tapped by the manufacturer.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Cables include the classic front-panel button and LED group, HD Audio for the headphone and microphone jacks, USB Gen 2×2 for the Type-C port, and classic 19-pin internal USB 3.x for the two Type-A ports.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

We started our installation with the motherboard and an AIO CPU cooler, only to discover when we went to install our tester graphics card that the PCIe card slots are filled with breakaway covers, and that those covers would not break away with our motherboard installed. So, we pulled the motherboard, broke away three covers, and reinstalled the board. That was a bit of a drag.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

We also discovered that the cable access hole cover was too close to the tray to allow our graphics card cable to pass through. So we removed the cover, only to discover that it couldn’t be moved out of the way with the card installed. And so we removed the card, ran the GPU and main 24-pin power cables through, reinstalled the cable hole cover, then reinstalled the graphics card. To be sure, the final installation looks spiffy, but getting to that point, via all these reinstallations, proved a bit frustrating. Learn from our pain!

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

The build may have been a little more work than we’re used to, but it still looks just as nice as any other that we’ve done with our set of standard ATX case-testing hardware.

(Credit: Thomas Soderstrom)

Testing the SilverStone Fara 514X

So here’s a recap of the standard test equipment we use for ATX cases…

On to our thermal tests. There’s only a 10-degree C difference between the best and worst cooling results of similar cases in our test set here, but the Fara 514X falls right in the middle of this group’s CPU temperatures. We were surprised to see it fall flat in GPU temperature, though the difference between it and the Montech Air 903 Base was only around 2 degrees C.

The Fara 514X comes in second behind the Thermaltake View 270 TG ARGB in noise, though anyone considering an 18.7-pound case middleweight case like the Fara 514X probably wouldn’t take a second look at a 14-pound lightweight like the View 270 TG ARGB. In this case, the extra weight comes from the added structural integrity of thicker steel.

Verdict: Lots of Air, But Lots of Competition, Too

The value argument is a borderline one to make at the Fara 514X’s $100 MSRP. Though that pricing may sound cheap for a new SilverStone model, it’s within $10 of the recently awarded Corsair 3500X ARGB, which retains its Editors’ Choice award in the midprice ATX case category for its snazzy wraparound-glass look, three fans, and also-solid build quality. It’s also significantly undercut by a case that has both a slide-out power-supply dust filter and screwed-in slot covers: the Montech Air 903 Base. We may see the price adjust as time goes on, but for now, the Fara 514X, while a perfectly solid, competitive case that we recommend, may need a Hamilton or so of price trimming to bring the hurt to the rest of the field.

About Thomas Soderstrom

Contributor

Years back, when a small website called out for product-review editors. I leapt at the opportunity: I’d just wrapped up a four-year stint as a systems supplier. That experience provided the credentials I’d need for the transition from industry supplier to industry observer. For one thing, I’d been the first source for an exposé on capacitor plague (“Got Juice”) at EDN.

By that time, I’d already self-published some guidelines on hardcore PC stuff: pin-modifying processors to defeat compatibility checks and overclock non-overclockable systems. I saw a chance to get paid for my knowledge, and have since written more than a thousand pieces (many of them for the seminal tech site Tom’s Hardware) before finding my latest opportunity: with PCMag.

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