Installation

Since the Silentium T2 internal airflow path is reversed, first thing you need to do if you have a tower CPU Cooler installed on your motherboard is to flip it around; on some coolers the fan can simple be changed to the other side. On other coolers like the Coolermaster Hyper TX2 we have to uninstall/reinstall the heatsink.



Next up is preparing the hard drive(s) to be installed inside the system, first you apply the small layer of thermal pad which has been precut to fit 3.5” HDDs:



Next you screw the aluminum heatsink on the side of the HDD; if you use only one HDD you install a soft place holder in the empty space.



If you’re using two hard drives you only need to place the vibration absorbing pad at the top;



Then you can squeeze everything into the open space in the T2 and secure it using the Velcro tape.



The motherboard installation is easy enough, although do it before you install any optical drives as full ATX motherboards will fill up the case nicely. If you use a Micro-ATX board you have room to spare, of course.

Next up are the optical drives and any 5.25”/3.5” devices you want installed (LCD/Fancontroller/etc). There are installed by removing the plastic front panel:



And then using the included drive rails to click them into place:



Half-length devices as the Sunbeamtech Fan controller installed nicely with the included drive rails. And while the control knobs stick out a bit, the front door can still be completely closed without issue.

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Initially we tried to install our reference system which consists of an Intel 975X motherboard, E6600 CPU (and Hyper TX2 cooler) in combination with a Geforce 8800 GTX and two WD Raptors. However the 8800 GTX proved to be too long for to fit:



So we swapped it out with a Geforce 7900 GT which fitted nicely. We installed the fan duct for tower CPU Coolers:



Hooked everything up, made sure we connected the right cables on the motherboard as well as the backside and hit the power button.

Not much happened. We traced back our installation process, making sure we didn’t skip any crucial step. The Intel “Bad Axe” 975X wants an 8-pin EATX power connector. The pre-installed AC PSU only has 4-pin one available (P4 S478 era). While some motherboards with 8-pin connector will work with the 4-pin installed, the Intel 975X does not. Newer high end/enthusiast boards also require the same 8-pin EATX connector; this is quite an oversight on the part of Arctic Cooling, not providing this connector from the PSU.

So we removed everything from the case and installed another system ->