 Welcome to my unboxing of pretty much the coolest thing ever. This is the Silverstone Fortress Series FTO3 Mini. The new desktop computer paradigm in smaller size. So they have an FTO3, it's an MATX case, however this one is mini ITX. And if you guys know, have watched a few of my videos, you may already know that I'm pretty into the whole small things that are extremely high performance. So the concept of the FTO3 is to have a very unique internal layout that allows for outstanding cooling and very high performance components in a very small enclosure. So you might compare this to something like, you know, a, well here, let's have a look at it and then we'll see how it stacks up to some of the other products. And hopefully it's okay. Bear with me here guys. Oh, that was clumsy. It's a good thing that Silverstone packs their products pretty well because even when someone like me goes and nubs out and breaks it, it should still be okay because there's pretty good foam down there. Yep, not a scratch. Excellent. Okay. Right, so there are other products that claim to do this whole extremely high performance PC in a very small enclosure thing. However, I would argue that the FTO3 mini is actually smaller than some of the other ones that claim to be doing that. So let's start with the outside of the unit. Let's take this off first. I love Silverstone cases. Another thing that you guys will probably know if you've watched more than a few of my videos is that Silverstone really does it for me with certain things that they do like... Excuse you. Bless you and all that. Stuff like this. Beautifully curved thick aluminum pieces that make up the construction of this case. That is just amazing. And then the anodizing finish that they use on their cases, I know for a fact is phenomenally durable because I have one case, my TJ07, that I've had for years that has been subject to all kinds of abuse and the anodization still looks amazing. This one's actually just a... This one's perfect. Wow. Just absolutely beautiful. Can you see it? Can you see kind of the finish on it? Just beautiful aluminum case. So there's only four pieces going around the outside. Curved piece here, straight panel here, curved panel here, and straight panel here. What you find on the bottom is also really cool. This is a 140 millimeter air penetrator cooling fan. It is a filtered fan. And one of the things that Silverstone has really pioneered is the whole positive internal air pressure with like a rotated ATX layout. They first did that with their Raven case and now they're taking it to like a whole new level. So if you filter an intake and you have nothing but intakes, you achieve a couple of things. One is it becomes very difficult for dust to get into your case because you've got a filter over the fan and if you have positive air pressure inside the case, it means that air can't be sucked into these little cracks. Whereas if you were using all exhaust, then dust could easily be sucked in in other places. And that's more just one thing that you're achieving. So let's just leave it at that because I forget where I was going with that. The filter can be easily removed. All you do is undo this, go wash it in water, let it dry and then pop it back into place just like that. Air penetrator fans, by the way, are awesome. If you didn't already know that, then you do know. You can take my word for it. They're outstanding. They're some of the best fans on the market for a couple of reasons. Number one is they have extremely good static pressure properties. So that means that if you have just one fan and you have to push air through something big, you want it to be an air penetrator. Also they're very directional. So you see these fins on the other side of the fan blades? Those direct the air to where you want it to go, where you actually point the fan, which is awesome. So normal fans, you can see if you have like smoke blowing into them, they just kind of blow the air all over the place. Air penetrators blow like a cyclone of air in a column away from the fan itself. So they will directly cool whatever you point them at, which is awesome as well. Rubber feet on the bottom. And I think that pretty much wraps it up for the bottom of the case. I'm going to go ahead and put the filter. Here's another thing that Silverstone just gets it for certain things that other manufacturers don't. You see the big gap between the filter and the fan? That reduces turbulence and improves the efficiency of the fan pulling air through the filter dramatically. Silverstone, A+, they know what they're doing. Alright, let's flip this bad boy over. And this case comes with very specific instructions for how to disassemble it and reassemble it. It comes with a very thick book. So I'm going to have to do that off camera, but we'll show you the steps as we go. I just want to finish up with the outside. So slot loaded, optical drive, Silverstone logo in the middle. Very clean, very nice looking. And then at the top, you've got a very, very open mesh with a handle right here to pull it off. Power, reset, two USB 3 and front audio ports as well as your indicator LEDs. So you can pull this off and that gives you access. Whoa, I was not expecting that to happen. Okay, so now what? I guess we'll just take it off because we're going to disassemble it anyway. So that gives you access to your power supply. So that's an SFX power supply as well as your two expansion slots that you get on a, well, one expansion slot and then one empty slot for like a high performance dual slot video card as well as your rear IO. And you can actually see right through to the very bottom of the case now where that cooling fan is going to be blowing air right up over the CPU socket as well as directing some air towards kind of the back of the video card where it will be able to get the cooling that it needs and blow that out the back of the case or the top of the case as well. So let us disassemble this a little bit and we'll be back. So Slick and I are so impressed with this case. We're going to have to do a high performance build in here just to show you guys how it all fits together. So three of the four panels just snap off using the little, just using these little guys right here. And then there's sound dampening here. Like Silverstone really does think of everything to make sure the panels don't vibrate, all that good stuff. In terms of hardware installation, it's pretty simple actually. All you got to do is take off this cage, then you lay it down like this. You have full access to everything you need, including mounting your motherboard here, installing your power supply up here. This is a really cool thing. Silverstone was like, oh man, they just thought of everything on this one. Check this out. So it's a 140 millimeter fan in the bottom here, but they put 120 millimeter fan mounts here, here, here, and here. Why did they do that? Because they left room for you to install and they even recommend, they're like, look, if you're going to put a high performance CPU in here, throw in a liquid cooling radiator. So if you use a slim radiator such as a Corsair H60, you can orient the tubes here and run them straight down along the back of the video card over to your CPU socket, which means that the cooling in here doesn't have to be mini ITX level cooling. It's off the floor by enough that you're going to have ample air flow going through that radiator and yeah, it's just awesome. They really did just think of everything. Right, expansion. So you do have to use a slim slot loading optical. I mean, I think it makes the front look really nice. They're not that expensive. You can find them, so it's not that big of a deal. So you mount that in here. You've also got room for a two and a half inch storage drive here and a three and a half inch storage drive here. So you can fit everything you'd need for a high performance system in this thing without any issues. High performance graphics card, high performance CPU, SSD, or even up to three SSDs if you use three and a half inch to dual SSD mount and a high performance graphics card. However, there are some caveats. If you put in a high performance graphics card, you want a rear blower card. So one with the fan oriented here and blowing the air out the back because that will cooperate with the natural airflow in this case. Something like a GTX 590 which blows air out the back as well is going to fight the airflow of this case. So even though the case can probably fit it, oh, can't anyway. Well, there you go. So even though the case could potentially fit cards that have fans here blowing out the back or here blowing out both sides, you want to make sure that you're optimizing your configuration for the case that you're planning to use. So that means fan here blowing out the back and then you won't have any issues. I think that pretty much wraps it up other than that, yeah, we're just really going to have to do a build in here because this thing is amazing. Much smaller than something like a BitFenix Prodigy. However, you can still fit an unreasonable amount of hardware in this little mini ITX enclosure from Silverstone. So thank you for checking out our unboxing and first look at the FTO3 mini and don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos. Oh yeah, and I have to give Silverstone huge kudos. Their manual isn't in color or anything. However, this is the most complete and instructive manual that I've seen other than the last Silverstone one that I looked at. They even give you a full installation guide with like lots of little tips and tricks and how to actually do it, not just how to give you an instruction that's sort of vague and then walk away. They even give you like limitations. Here's your PSU limitation, CPU cooler height diagram and limitations, CPU cooler. So here's a recommended liquid CPU cooler. Here's how to install it. Here's how to orient the barbs correctly. Here's your GPU coolers. What's optimal? Like they just spell everything out for you and make everything really, really easy. Upgraded maintenance. Fan filter removal guide. Fan filter removal guide. Fan removal guide. Just awesome stuff. Heart. Okay, that's not a heart, but you get the point. That's not a heart, Silverstone.