Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 (DS4) Mini-Tower Chassis Review

Introduction

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It is sort of funny how case designs from many different companies tend to arrive in groups of cases of similar form factors, features, or improvements over the average offerings; there is always this connection between three or four cases. Let me take that a step further: What would happen if you took a lot of what we found in the NZXT H440, with its pure white goodness and a high level of attention paid to soundproofing and reducing the cases environmental impact, and crossed it with the compact, yet well laid out design of the much smaller Fractal Design Mini R2? Well, thinking about that for a moment sort of leads you to what we are about to see today.

Now, this chassis does not have to be white, it does ship in black as well as anthracite (dark grey). Ours however, was shipped in white. Then, take that attention to noise proofing a chassis. While NZXT does a great job, so does Nanoxia, as their previous cases to hit the lab for testing have shown us in the past.

However, this chassis, like the Fractal Design offering, is a compact chassis to use with Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX motherboards only. Again, an offering to a growing niche in the gaming segment, but also think along the lines of small and quiet office system as well. With the simplicity and straightforward lines found in this design, it could fit right in anywhere.

With really nice offerings in both silence and a good layout inside of such small confines, we have a sharp eye out on Nanoxia and their newest Deep Silence 4 chassis that we are looking at today. Unless they have done something wrong, we already know it is a given that this chassis should be dead silent, but what happens once we add a full air cooling build in here, move some things around, and see just how well this chassis holds up through our testing?

Stick around, and I really think you will be pleased with what Nanoxia has brought forward this time.

Specifications, Availability and Pricing

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As the top of the chart shows, the Deep Silence 4 comes in three versions: black, white, and anthracite. This design is classified as a Mini-Tower; it is compatible with either Mini-ITX or Micro-ATX motherboards, and offers four expansion slots. This high quality steel and plastic chassis is 380mm in height, 200mm wide, is 480mm from front to back, and weighs in at 7.8 kg empty. Also, now is as good of a time as any, so we may as well cover the 265mm video card limitation if the HDD bays are left intact. Once removed, there is 395mm afforded for cards. As for the air CPU coolers out there, anything 160mm or less should fit, and we will test that one out.

On the inside of the chassis, there are two 5.25" bays that are hidden behind a door in the bezel, but they are not removable without drilling rivets. Below that is a stack of six bays that will allow for either 3.5" or 2.5" drives to be installed. The chassis also offers a 2.5" drive location on the floor. These drives are broken up into three racks, one at the top containing three trays, one in the middle containing two trays, and a single bay riveted to the floor of the chassis. The top two sections are completely removable.

The motherboard tray offers wire management with grommets and tie points, and also offers access for the CPU back plate via a large cut out. Also, in the chassis you will find one 120mm fan in the front. The top has room for a 120mm or 140mm fan as well, but there is a sound deadening plate installed for when it is not in use. There is also another 120mm fan installed at the back as the exhaust.

Availability seems to be quite high as we look around the internet. You can find this chassis in any of the three colors you wish to have. This chassis offers all of the basics, and some modularity, while being able to claim near silence, as in nothing audible at a foot or so away. The chassis also offers a more simplistic aesthetic appeal.

The pricing of this niche design is more in line with others. As you will see below, the Deep Silence 4 is listed well under $100, and for those looking to house a small build in a sound proofed chassis, take a long hard look, as Nanoxia delivers their take on what makes a good mini-Tower chassis.

PRICING: You can find the Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 (Black) retails for $79.99 at Amazon, and the Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 (White) retails for $79.99 at Amazon.

Packaging

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Even with lower costs involved, Nanoxia still goes all out on the packaging to attract the eye. The naming at the top is bright green and yellow. The yellow features to the right of the chassis image, and the finishing line at the bottom, again in green, are bound to make you stop and look longer to see what is inside.

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Spinning things to the left, we now have a panel that offers two specifications charts. Below that are boxes showing the three versions, and ours has a red sticker placed on white.

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The back offers the same header to the panel as the front did, but below we now have six images of various parts of the chassis with basic descriptions of what they are.

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The last panel offers the same as the opposing panel. Again the same charts, and again we are marked to have the white Deep Silence 4 inside of the box.

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The Deep Silence 4 is shipped inside of thick Styrofoam caps, and they are thick enough to take the weight of this chassis. Inside of those, the chassis is wrapped in a plastic liner to protect the plastic front as well as the matte white paint finish applied to the rest of the chassis. The combination of packaging has again served it well, and allowed this chassis to arrive in top notch condition.

Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 Mini-Tower Chassis

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The front of the chassis is matte in its finish; this one of course is white, and it is broken up into two sections. The lower part blocks off the front fan, and allows ventilation through the sides. The top section then covers the bays and other goodies.

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Behind that top section is a layer of foam to grab any sound that may come through the bays. To the left, the Nanoxia name is impressed into the bezel, and below the bays there is a reset button and two fan control switches.

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Above that door, as the top meets the front bezel, we find the front I/O panel. There are 3.5mm jacks to the left, a power button surrounded with a LED backlit ring, and two USB 3.0 ports and a single USB 2.0 port to the right.

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The rest of the roof is mostly an expanse of steel; that is until you near the back of the chassis. There you will find a mesh area with a panel screwed into place to block chassis noise. If you plan to use a 120mm or 140mm fan here, that panel will need removed, and it will raise the noise level of this chassis.

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The left side of the chassis offers a matte white side panel with no real styling or anything to attract the eye. However, the front edge offers a spot to get your finger into to open the top panel. Further down is the side ventilation that allows the 120mm fan in the front to draw air in, while redirecting and cancelling noise.

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The back of the Deep Silence 4 offers a pair of holes at the top for external water cooling support above the rear I/O and exhaust fan. At the bottom, there are four mesh expansion slot covers, and a large hole for the PSU to fill in just a bit.

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The right side of the Deep Silence 4 is a mirror image of the left side of the chassis. Again, nothing special to look at, and no door bump out to be seen. However, we do have more of that venting on the side of the bezel, which offers much more intake flow.

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Under the chassis, we find really small plastic feet with rubber pads applied. It does afford a stable footing, but they do seem tiny. There is also a dust filter for the PSU at the left, and various holes drilled in the floor to allow you to attach things there.

Inside the Deep Silence 4

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The side panels are fully interchangeable since neither has anything special to offer. Also, both panels are fully backed with dense sound deadening material to help keep things very quiet.

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With the panel now off the chassis, we can see what is going on inside. At this point, we will just address that the wiring is well tended to, and that the hardware can be found strapped to the side of the HDD rack. Also, it seems that our drive rack is askew, but we cannot find any damages elsewhere.

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The pair of 5.25" bays offers tool-free clips on both sides, and they work well to hold a drive very securely. You also still have the option to back these up with screws, but there is really no need to.

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As we mentioned, the HDD rack offers six trays, all of which will hold either 2.5" or 3.5" drives. They are broken up to allow options for what goes where, but the bottom single bay always stays in the chassis and is not removable, where the top two sections are.

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For our purposes, we only have one HDD to install with the build, so we went ahead and took the other two sections of bays out of the chassis. Also, after removing the sections, they were just out of square a bit, and easily bent back into shape.

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The top of the chassis offers a removable sound proofing panel to the left, under the mesh we saw from the top. To the right of it, there is another panel of sound proofing applied to eliminate vibrations through the rest of the steel panel.

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The motherboard tray offers six holes to run wiring through, three of which contain grommets, and we are also given less than ten wire tie points. With closed off side panels, the need for wire management at its highest levels is not needed in this design.

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The floor of the chassis offers room for the PSU off to the left, and has four small rubber pads to keep the PSU off the floor. To the right are four holes that allow a drive to be installed there, as long as the PSU wiring does not interfere.

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The back of the chassis offers a green bladed, black framed fan like we saw in the front of the chassis. Both of these fans have braided cabling, and require 3-pin connections for power. The expansion slot covers use thumbscrews to allow easier handling for mounting the cards here.

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Behind the motherboard tray there is roughly 20mm of room to run wiring. Off to the left there is much more room, and we also see that the front fan controller wiring comes out right above the fan; we need to get that all connected cleanly as well.

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As for the rest of the wiring, the front panel connections, the HD or AC'97 audio cable, and Native USB 3.0 cabling, everything is black right to the tips to help it blend in against the motherboard and the grommets.

Accessories and Documentation

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This is the box we found tied to the side of the HDD racks that contains the hardware. If they took the time to print the top of it, we may as well show it off. If you want a list of its contents, you will need to check inside of the booklet.

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The accessories that come along with the hardware are shown here. There are six tie strips at the top, a pair of plugs to swap out the segmented grommets at the back, and we are also given an 8-pin EPS power cable extension to help out those with shorter PSU leads.

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You also are given a 3.5" bay adapted cover, just in case. Below are the standoffs, ODD screws, fan screws, and the HDD screws across the middle. At the bottom, we have the SSD screws, the motherboard screws, screws to floor mount a drive, and the PSU screws.

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The manual is printed in German first and English second, but in both sections you are given a parts list, basic wiring diagram, and a step-by-step guide through the build process. They do take the time to provide a fair amount of text, and it makes this more of a booklet than a manual. If you get stuck, quickly scanning this will sort out any stumbling points you may run into.

The Build and Finished Product

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Unless you need to change the fan, since the bay covers remove without pulling the bezel, wiring and such is of little concern. Once this panel is closed again, the front of the chassis looks no different than when we got it out of the box, and we do like that about this design.

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Inside we had no issues fitting in the 160mm tall NiC C5 cooler, and it looks as if to fit this card, the bays would have to come out anyway. Everything else went together as expected, with no major complaints or downfalls to this design.

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The same goes for the back of the chassis. The dust cover snaps in easy enough, the card lined right up, and it was not a hassle to get it mounted with the thumbscrews. We would have liked to see a gasket, but by our testing results, the PSU does not add any vibrations.

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Where other cases do not allow for this lower socket to work well for access, the Nanoxia allowed us full access to it. As for the wiring, since we kept the 24-pin and the PCI-E leads in the front, what we did have to tend to here went together easily, and stays well away from the side panel.

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As we packed everything up and were about to add power to this system, again we really like that there is no visible change to the outside. It is simple, flat, and something even your better half in the house can stand to look at; we appreciate that it stays that way when the build is completed.

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If the fans are set to the low setting, you are going to need to look at the top of the chassis to verify it is even functioning. We were seeing 35 dB ratings at this point, and outside of a foot nothing could be heard at all, so the ring illuminating green to show chassis power is handy.

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When the storage devices are active, that ring will flash what I believe is an orange LED. In our booth, the light mixing with the green turned more of a yellow though. Also, with this lighting being contained to the top, it should not blind you, or flood the opposite side of the room with light.

Final Thoughts

While this is not the most feature rich chassis we have seen in this mini-tower slash micro-ATC tower segment of the market, in my mind, Nanoxia is still able to deliver on their promises. They state that this chassis is silent, and even with the fans on the high setting, this chassis still did not break the 30 dB mark. For those who don't know, that is the supposed point to where the average person perceives sound. We had to be at a foot for our audio measurements, and most people use a chassis that sits two feet or so away if on the desk top.

So in essence, you are going to be hard pressed to hear this chassis, which brings up another avenue for sales as well, the HTPC segment. While delivering on what the name insinuates is a huge part of it, there is also enough modularity in the design to allow for really powerful video cards, and with the grommets and black wiring, we had a very clean looking finished product, even though there is not a window to view any of that hard work.

While we liked having dual zone fan controls on the front of the chassis, we did find that even with the fans running on the high setting, the internal temperatures were a bit warmer than usual. This could be remedied with possibly trying a single radiator AIO, but putting a fan in the top helps tremendously with temperatures, although there is more noise associated with that too.

In this design, there are a lot of good things to find and use, and nothing really sticks out as anything they should or could have done differently. Everything worked as intended, and even with a slightly warped drive bay, with a bit of force, we had that situation fixed anyways. Considering the plan of attack with a design like this, I can see a lot of customers gravitating to what the Deep Silence 4 has to offer.

All the way around, the Deep Silence 4 delivers on Nanoxia's claims of what this chassis can do. While not as feature rich as other cases we have seen lately, there is definitely enough to get by and still have a very nice and silent build housed in here, anywhere you need it to be. The flat surfaces, matte texture, and simplistic styling, make it crossover to other categories as well, and that is something a lot of the more aggressive designs cannot do. Here we have a chassis that is quiet as a mouse, but can be more appreciated anywhere in your home, and is much less likely to make the wife scream when she sees it.

When we add the very affordable pricing into the mix, we think the Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 will find quite a few new homes after this review goes up. The Deep Silence 4 may be a bit niche, but the crossover capabilities also make this chassis very reusable down the line if you decided to upgrade the gaming rig again next year.

PRICING: You can find the Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing, but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.

United States: The Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 (Black) retails for $79.99 at Amazon, and the Nanoxia Deep Silence 4 (White) retails for $79.99 at Amazon.