Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 review

Nanoxia is best known for its PC case fans, and the company’s debut Deep Silence 1 chassis is one of the quietest we’ve ever tested.

The case looks simple, but there’s a wealth of soundproofing technology inside. Each side panel is coated in sound-deadening material and its two front panel doors, one for the 5.25in drives and one for the twin front fans, are backed with sound-deadening foam. The case comes with three preinstalled fans, and these were practically silent at their default settings. There’s also room for another five fans; the inside of the case is pretty cosy, so you may want to add some extra cooling if you have powerful components. You can raise a ventilation panel on the top of the case for extra cooling, if you don’t mind spoiling the case’s sleek lines.

The case’s 3.5in and 2.5in combined drive bays have an interesting design; there are two three-drive bays and one two-drive bay, and you can stack them on top of each other or side by side. This modular design means you can make room for larger components such as long graphics cards, and is useful due to the case’s relatively compact dimensions.

The modular bays don’t have tool-less clips so require a screwdriver to fit your drives, but we had to be careful when sliding in our disks; the bays are very shallow, so you have to make sure you steady the drive with your hand so it doesn’t tip while you’re screwing it in. We didn’t get on with the clips on the case’s three tool-less 5.25in bays, which we found very flimsy and fiddly to slot into place.

The rest of the case is very spacious, with room for graphics cards up to 315mm long. Its numerous pre-cut cable routing holes are also handy for keeping wires tidy and out of the way of airflow, but the smaller cable routing holes in the motherboard tray are only available if you’re using a MicroATX motherboard. The case’s front panel is concealed on the top behind a spring-loaded flap, and contains two USB3 and two USB2 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks.

The Deep Silence 1 beats the Corsair Obsidian 550D on noise levels, but it loses out on build quality and user-friendly features. Corsair’s case in still a better buy.