System Review – PC-Club Silencer

Introduction

Depending on your technical prowess, configuring and building a PC can take as little as a few hours or as much as weeks of angst and hair-pulling as you try to decide what's best. Our Buyer's Guides are meant to help with choosing the components, but there are still quite a few people who prefer to get a built-to-order system that runs out of box. All of the large OEMs provide such systems, but their quality, features, customization, etc. are often more limited. PC-Club has sent us a complete system for review that offers many unique features, and so we've put it through the paces.

In terms of direct competitors, the best market for the Silencer is probably the Small Form Factor arena. The case is taller and deeper than most SFF designs, but it's also flatter and offers more in the way of expansion. More importantly, however, is that noise levels are a primary consideration. The case is actually a micro-ATX form factor, so at the very least, it will take up less space than your typical mid-tower chassis. One of the advantages for end users is that the components are all off-the-shelf parts, so upgrading or replacing components shouldn't pose a problem. Then again, you don't usually buy a pre-built system if you're really concerned about upgrading and tweaking the internals.

Given the similar target audience, we're going to run the Silencer system through the same review process that we use in evaluating SFF cases. We'll even provide some benchmarks with the included hardware as well as with the SFF platform hardware, just to see how it compares. Suffice it to say, if you're looking for something out of the norm, the Silencer is an interesting product that addresses a growing desire of computer owners. What audience does it target? The name should give you a clue.