Gadgetory

welcome to my unboxing pretty much the coolest thing ever this is the silver stone fortress series FTO three mini okay the new desktop computer paradigm in smaller size so they have an FTO three it's an M ATX case however this one is mini ITX and if you guys know have watched a few of my videos you may already know that I'm pretty into the whole small things that are extremely high performance so the concept of the FTO 3 is to have a very unique internal layout that allows for outstanding cooling and very high performance components in a very small enclosure so you might compare this to something like you know a wall here let's have let's have a look at it and then we'll see how it stacks up to some of the other products and hopefully it's okay bear with me here guys oh that was clumsy it's a good thing that Silverstone packs their products pretty well because even when someone like me goes in nums out and breaks it it should still be okay because there's pretty good foam down there yeah not a scratch excellent ok right so there are other products that claim to do this whole extremely high performance PC in a very small enclosure thing however I would argue that the fto 3 mini is actually smaller than some of the other ones that that claim to be doing that so let's start with the outside of the unit let's take take this off first oh I love Silverstone cases another thing that you guys will probably know if you've if you've watched more than a few of my videos is that Silverstone really does it for me with certain things that they do like um excuse you bless you and all that stuff like this beautifully curved thick aluminum pieces that make up the construction of this case that is just amazing and then the anodizing finish that they use on their cases I know for a fact is phenomenally durable because I have one case mighty jo7 that I've had for years that has been subject to all kinds of abuse and the anodization still looks amazing this one's actually just this one's perfect Wow just absolutely beautiful can you can you see it can you see kind of the finish on it this beautiful aluminum case so there's only four pieces going around the outside curved piece here straight panel here curved panel here and straight panel here what you find on the bottom is also really cool this is a 140 millimeter air penetrator cooling fan it is a filtered fan and one of the things that silverstone has really pioneered is the whole positive internal air pressure with like a rotated ATX layout they first did that with their raven case and now they're taking it to like a whole new level so if you filter an intake and you have nothing but intakes you achieve a couple of things one is it becomes very difficult for dust to get into your case because you've got a filter over the fan and if you have positive air fresh air pressure inside the case it means that air can't be sucked into these little cracks whereas if you were using all exhaust then dust could easily be sucked in in other places and that's more just one thing that you're achieving so let's just leave it at that because I forget where I was going with that the filter can be easily removed all you do is undo this go wash it in water let it dry and then pop it back into place just like that air penetrator fans by the way are awesome if you didn't already know that then you do now you can take my word for it they're outstanding they're some of the best fans on the market for a couple of reasons number one is they have extremely good static pressure properties so that means that if you have just one fan and you have to push air through something big you want it to be an air penetrator also they're very directional so you see these fins on the other side of the fan blades those direct the air to where you want it to go where you actually point the fan which is awesome so normal fans you can see if you have like smoke blowing into them they just kind of blow the air all over the place air penetrators blow like a cyclone we're in a column away from the fan itself so they will directly cool whatever you point out which is awesome as well rubber feet on the bottom and I think that pretty much wraps it up for the bottom of the case I'm going to go ahead and fill the filter here's another thing that's Silverstone just gets it for certain things that other manufacturers don't you see the big gap between the filter and the fan that reduces turbulence and improves the efficiency of the fan pulling air through the filter dramatically solar stone a plus they know what they're doing alright let's flip this bad boy over and this case comes with very specific instructions for how to disassemble it and reassemble it comes with a very thick book so I'm gonna I'm gonna have to do that off-camera but I will show you the steps as we go I just want to finish up at the outside so slot loaded optical drive silverstone logo in the middle very clean very nice-looking and then at the top you've got a very very open mesh with a handle right here to pull it off power reset 2 USB 3 and front audio ports as well as your indicator LEDs so you can pull this off and that gives you access whoa I was not expecting that to happen ok so no but I guess we'll just take it off because we're going to disassemble it anyway so that gives you access to your power supply so that's an SFX power supply as well as your two expansion slots that you get on I love one expansion slot and then one empty slot for like a high-performance dual slot video card as well as your rear i/o and you can actually see right through to the very bottom of the case now where that cooling fan is going to be blowing air right up over the CPU socket as well as directing some air towards kind of the back of the video card where we'll be able to get the cooling that it needs and blow that out the back of the case or the top of the case as well so let us disassemble this a little bit and I'll be back so slick and I are so impressed with this case we're going to have to do a high-performance build in here just to show you guys how it all fits together so three of the four panels just snap off using the little rego just using these little guys right here and there's sound dampening here like Silverstone really does think of everything to make sure the panel's don't vibrate all that good stuff in turn terms of hardware installation it's pretty simple actually all you got to do is take off this cage then you lay it down like this you have full access to everything you need including them and your motherboard here installing your power supply up here this is a really cool thing silver stuff is like the oh man they just thought of everything on this one check this out so it's a 140 millimeter fan on the bottom here but they put 120 millimeter fan mounts here here here and here why did they do that because they left room for you to install and they even recommend they're like look if you're going to put a high-performance CPU in here throw in a liquid cooling radiator so if you use a slim radiator such as a Corsair h-60 you can orient the tubes here and run them straight down along the back of the video card over to your CPU socket which means that the cooling in here doesn't have to be Mini ITX level cooling it's off the floor by enough that you're going to have ample air flute air flu airflow going through that radiator and just awesome they really did just think of everything right expansion so you do have to use a slim slot loading optical I mean I think it makes it makes the front look really nice they're not that expensive you can find them so it's not that big of a deal so you mount that in here you've also got room for a two and a half inch storage drive here and a three and a half inch storage drive here so you can fit everything you need for a high-performance system in this thing without any issues high performance graphics card high performance CPU SSD or even up to three SSDs if you use three and a half inch to dual SSD mount and high performance graphics card however there are some caveats if you put in a high performance graphics card you want a rear blower card so one with the fan oriented here and blowing the air out the back because that will cooperate with the natural air flow in this case something like a GTX 590 which blows air out the back as well is going to fight the airflow of this case so even though the case can probably fit oh I can't anyway well there you go so even though the case could potentially fit cards that have fans here blowing out the back or here blowing out both sides you want to make sure that you're optimizing your can for the case that you're planning to use so that means fan here blowing out the back and then you won't have any issues I think that pretty much wraps it up other than that yeah we're just really going to have to do a buildin here because this thing is amazing much smaller than something like a bit Phoenix prodigy however you can still fit an unreasonable amount of hardware in this little mini ITX enclosure from silverstone so thank you for checking out our unboxing and first look at the FTO 3 mini and don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech tips from unboxings reviews and other computer videos oh yeah and I have to give Silverstone huge kudos they're manual isn't in it isn't in colour or anything however this is the most complete and instructive manual that I've seen other than the last Silverstone one that I looked at they even give you a full installation guide with like lots of little tips and tricks and how did how to actually do it not just how to you know give you an instruction that's sort of vague and then walk away they even give you like limitations here's your PSU limitation CPU cooler height diagram and limitations CPU cooler so here's a recommended liquid CPU cooler here's how to install it here's how to orient the barbs correctly here's your GPU coolers what's optimal like they just spell everything out for you and make everything really really easy upgraded maintenance fan filter removal guide fan foots removal guide fan removal guide just awesome stuff cart okay that's not my heart but you get the point hearts on your stone