Name: Silencio 550
Brand: Cooler Master

TechRadar Verdict

Pros

+
Dust filter
+
Decent internal space
+
Nice understated design

Cons

-
Cables difficult to install
-
Back panel fixing is difficult
-
Not that quiet

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As its name suggests, Cooler Master's Silencio 550 is all about minimising noise.

The inner panel walls are foam padded. The front panel gets some sound-proofing treatment too. And the dust filter for the two 120mm front fans mutes internal whirring further still.

As a concession towards the 'near silent operation' promised, these two front fans are the only ones in the case. PSU, CPU and GPU fans in any system will augment that headcount, but the omission of any top case fans is notable.

Building a system inside the Silencio 550 is easy enough. It's not the biggest case, measuring 210 x 415 x 505mm, but there's plenty of room for large graphics cards and motherboards.

The removable storage bay's handy, and the side mounts for hard drives are a nice alternative to the flimsy cages found in most cases.

We like its understated visual design too. The big problem is that it's hard to feed cables through to the backplate, with just two small holes cut into the chassis. When this domino's knocked over, fixing the rear panel back on becomes a problem too. There is a revision on its way that's meant to fix this issue though.

It's not as quiet as we were expecting either, and temps suffer as a result of minimal internal fans. Cooler Master's own CM 690 offers much better cooling and isn't much louder.

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Ad creative by day, wandering mystic of 90s gaming folklore by moonlight, freelance contributor Phil started writing about games during the late Byzantine Empire era. Since then he’s picked up bylines for The Guardian, Rolling Stone, IGN, USA Today, Eurogamer, PC Gamer, VG247, Edge, Gazetta Dello Sport, Computerbild, Rock Paper Shotgun, Official PlayStation Magazine, Official Xbox Magaine, CVG, Games Master, TrustedReviews, Green Man Gaming, and a few others but he doesn’t want to bore you with too many. Won a GMA once.

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