Overview
When someone talks about a white colour casing, the image pop up in my mind is the Pentium 4 era beige white colour computer. A few weeks back, a casing arrived at our office and it blew our mind and idea about the white casing. Enter the Silverstone Primera PM01, a gorgeous mid-tower chassis with the crazily sexy curved line that looks like something out of a Sci-fi movie, think of a modern stealth jet fused with Lamborghini, that’s what the Silverstone Primera PM01 is all about.
Exterior
Now templated glass fan you may skip this casing or be prepare to be stun by the beauty that is PM01 well balance of functionality and eccentricity. No 5.25 bay can be found at the front of this baby, which gave it the futuristic curved looks. And that top cover… mmm, some might say these is similar to the approach of a certain NXZT casing, but it certainly gives out a very different vibe with it piano finishing. With the power and fan light switch streamlined into the curved line, and the USB ports (2 USB 2 and 2 USB 3) and audio jack well placed along side, Silverstone definitely puts a good amount of effort into making the design of the PM01.
And the back of the top penal, if smoke were to come out from here, I would say this is the most stimulating part of the casing. The back panel is lifted and given a serious ventilation hole, below it is the 140mm exhaust fan, the fan can be removed to fit a single liquid cooling radiator.
At the side of the casing, you’ll be treated with an angled window. The angled window is well designed to compliment the front grid and the top panel, making all the elements comes to form a good balance of straight and curved line.
Back of the PM01, you will only spot 7 expansion slots, if you are coming from an XL-ATX motherboard, bear in mind that you will have to scarify one of your PCI-E or PCI slot. With the 120mm exhaust fan, there’s nothing really strike us as groundbreaking.
The front panel design is a glossy mesh grid that shapes like a shield. Nothing out of the place, we just glad that this panel as glossy as it is, is not a finger print magnet. And a front panel of the PM01 can also be accommodating water cooler radiators, you can fit an 18.25-inch unit here without any issues.
Interior
Now let’s enter the belly of the beast! The first thing you will notice about the interior of the PM01 is the lack of 5.25inch bay. Silverstone has opted to remove all the bay and give us a clean interior, and we welcome such bold decision! Who use 5.25 bay nowadays anyway! That being said, those of you who planning to use an adaptor to change 5.25 bay to carry HDD, steer clear, you can’t convert this beautify casing into a mini server.
All your drives and Power Supply will be hidden in a second compartment. In this compartment, you can fit four 3.5 inch drives and three 2.5 inches here. I love this secondary compartment as it creates a tunnel for the air to pass through and keep the radiating heat of PSU away from your motherboard.
Another great design is that the PM01 comes with a 3-pin fan power hub above the secondary compartment. This hub is powered by a 4-pin ATA to 3-pin female cable. The speed of the fan connected can be control via connecting their own 3-pin to 3-pin fan cable to the hub from a fan controller.
Standing at 571mm height and 220mm wide, the PM01 is larger than your typical mid-tower casing. As big as it is, none of these spaces is going to waste as the PM01 give generous room for expansion and cable management. Everywhere in the casing, you can see cable management cut-out and arrangement space, we at TechSlack loved this as behind are the days of messy cable.
Conclusion
Priced at RM379 and sometimes lower, the Silverstone Primera PM01 is a serious contender in this price range. Honestly speaking there many another choice in the market, but for us, our eyes are set on this baby.