Introduction
The second SFF gaming PC that I built was something I wanted to do a little differently, using the same components but an air-cooled CPU versus the AIO cooler in the Raijintek build.
SilverStone's awesome FARA V1M PRO case had more than enough room for the Ryzen 5 3600X, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. SilverStone sent over some Air Blazer 120i Lite RGB fans to fill the case with, the CPU cooler and PSU.
It's an all-SilverStone affair here with our FARA V1M PRO system, an air-cooled SFF gaming PC that is capable of pushing 4K 120FPS gaming. I had the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO gaming PC punished with crypto-mining and 4K 120FPS+ gaming, with the system holding up with its sides on and mining on the CPU and GPU all day and all night long for a couple of weeks without a hiccup.
You can install a Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX motherboard in the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO, with a CPU cooler that can be as high as 163mm -- GPU wise you can have a beast inside. GPU support is up to 379mm in length, with my NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics card fitting inside without a problem.
SilverStone supports a regular ATX power supply inside of the FARA V1M PRO, so if you really wanted to throw in a 1000W PSU... you can. I've got an 850W PSU inside, enough for any manner of high-end PC gaming hardware.
FARA V1 M Features
SilverStone has plenty going on inside of the FARA V1M PRO, with a beautiful ARGB light strip down the front of the case, and a single 120mm ARGB fan that looks fantastic in the front of the case. There's an adjustable drive case for flexing big storage inside of the case, and plenty of I/O and removable filters on the top and bottom to keep your SFF gaming PC clean.
You can use a Micro-ATX or Mini-ITX motherboard inside of the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO, so you're not just limited to Mini-ITX motherboards (as there's a good chunk more Micro-ATX boards that you can use inside of this case).
There's no issues with the largest graphics cards on the market, with support for up to 379mm-long graphics cards and 163mm high CPU coolers in the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO.
I might have used an air cooler in my SFF gaming PC using the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO, but there's plenty of support for a 240mm AIO cooler here, too.
Parts Used
Here's the parts I used in my build, a few of the parts I had to buy myself -- the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 I purchased myself from an Australian retailer, the LG CX 77-inch 4K 120Hz OLED TV was the present I purchased myself for hitting 10 years here at TweakTown, while the rest of the parts were provided to me by some awesome partners in Raijintek, Sabrent, and others. Thank you, everyone!
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (buy from Amazon)
- CPU cooler: SilverStone Hydrogon D120 ARGB
- Motherboard: ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 (buy from Amazon)
- RAM: Kingston Hyper-X Predator 16GB DDR4-3200 (buy from Amazon)
- SSD: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 4TB NVMe M.2 (buy from Amazon)
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition (buy from Amazon)
- PSU: SilverStone DA850 Gold
- Case: SilverStone FARA V1M PRO Micro-ATX
- Fans: SilverStone Air Blazer 120i Lite 3-in-1 ARGB
- TV 1: LG CX 77-inch 4K 120Hz OLED (buy from Amazon)
- Monitor 2: Eve Spectrum 27-inch 4K 144Hz
- Desk: OmniDesk XL 2020 series
- OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional x64 (buy from Amazon)
SilverStone FARA V1 M Build Pics
I actually loved the air cooler in the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO, keeping the Ryzen 5 3600X processor cool during 4K 120FPS gaming sessions. Even the super-hot NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics card stayed at under 80C GPU temps, the 24GB of GDDR6X memory still hits 110C but I'll be replacing the thermal pads on that soon in a new article.
SilverStone makes good use of the RGB lighting on its fans, lighting up the CPU and the top RGB fans lighting up the entire top of the PC. It looks great.
The SilverStone FARA V1M PRO looks great from all sides, even the front -- the RGB lighting on the front of the case and the small tease of the fan at the front of the case looks fantastic.
Final Thoughts
Inside of the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO case, my NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition graphics card ran cooler than my first SFF gaming PC inside of the Raijintek PAN SLIM. There's much more airflow here in the SilverStone offering, as well as additional 120mm case fans getting air flowing through the system.
If you want to cram in an enthusiast-level AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, Radeon RX 6900 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080, GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, or GeForce RTX 3090 inside of the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO -- you've got no problem there. I installed all of those cards without a problem, and many custom cards on both GPU sides and it was all gravy, baby.
Call of Duty: Warzone and DEATHLOOP ran beautifully on the system, powered by the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090. 4K 120FPS isn't too hard in Warzone thanks to DLSS, where 60FPS+ at 4K with FSR enabled in DEATHLOOP was achievable.
The air-cooled CPU held up well, and performed no different to the 240mm AIO liquid cooler that I used in the Raijintek PAN SLIM. SilverStone impressed with a small case, air-cooled, and still packing in enough CPU and GPU horsepower to run 4K 120FPS gaming.
I was using the SilverStone FARA V1M PRO along with my LG 77-inch LG CX series 4K 120Hz OLED, with both COD: Warzone and DEATHLOOP looking amazing on the big screen. The GeForce RTX 3090 is the GPU level I'm concentrating on with these SFF gaming PCs, where I'm trying to have a PC in a system that's not much bigger than a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, but capable of 4K 120FPS gaming.
SilverStone impressed me with their RGB-laden FARA VM1 PRO, air-cooled the entire way with the AMD Ryzen 5 3600X (and soon, Ryzen 7 5800X) processor, plenty of PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD storage, and a GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. In the end I did test the Radeon RX 6900 XT, RX 6800 XT, and RTX 3080 Ti -- given the RTX 3090 works flawlessly, everything else on the market will be even better in the FARA VM1 PRO.
So far, SilverStone has my heart with their FARA V1M PRO being my favorite SFF gaming PC so far, but I do have a couple of more systems to build. SilverStone has also sent over another case, so I will have a follow-up article with a build inside of that, too.