Specifications, Availability and Pricing

On the outside of the FT03 Mini you will find four panels made of sandblasted 2.5mm thick aluminum, that then got anodized black for this sample. For those not into black exteriors, there is also a silver or natural version of this chassis. The chassis is comprised externally with four panels, three of which are easily removable. On an aesthetic level, the chassis is really slick and simple looking with three solid black panels and a front panel with a slit down the side for the slot load optical drive and a SilverStone logo on the front. Under the chassis between the feet is a 140mm Air Penetrator fan that cools the entire chassis. This air flow works from the bottom up and exits the plastic top of the chassis that also contains the I/O panel while the large diamond shaped grid of the plastic top allows the heat to pass right through.

On the inside they moved to all steel for the construction. The motherboard tray in the back that can hold a DTX or Mini-ITX motherboard turned 90 degrees so the rear I/O faces up and after a bit of parts removal, is very easy to access and install a board on. At the top of the chassis you will need to hang an SFX form factor PSU since the overall size is so small. Since the floor of the chassis is taken up mostly by the 140mm fan, that left Silverstone with few options to mount drive bays. They came up with a three part system for this. There is a removable tray at the bottom of the motherboard tray to allow a 2.5"� drive to be installed. Then at the front of the chassis there is a two part rack that will hold the slim-line ODD, a 3.5"� storage drive along with a 2.5"� drive option as well. So, it's not exactly something you migrate your RAID array to, but there is plenty of room to get in all the basics and a few extras.

With the relative new-ish release of the SST-FT03 Mini, there aren't too many places carrying this chassis in the States. As I just went to look there is two listings, one at Sundial Micro and the other is at Newegg. Both e-tailers have the same list price of $132.99, but Newegg.com beats the other on shipping with an overall cheaper deal of $148.39 where Sundial is getting closer to $160. Either way you look at it the price is pretty high if we try to look at it in a dollar per pound perspective.

The cost may be a touch on the high side, but the retooling involved, the R&D and all the trial and error in the beta stages of this build cost time and money and from what I see Silverstone really went back to the chalkboard and while they left the picture of the outside alone. They erased everything about the interior and started that all over, delivering a tiny chassis with a good feature set, an aesthetic appeal to anyone who sees this and once again kept up to my expectations of what a SilverStone chassis is all about on a basic level.