Silverstone RM44 Rackmount Chassis Review

[Fluxmaven]

 

 

 

Quote

Howdy, Today we’ll be looking at something fast that was made possible by SilverStone. No, I’m not talking about the British race track. I’m referring to a custom PC in a sweet rackmount enclosure from SilverStone Technology. Founded in 2003, the Taiwanese company SilverStone Technology has spent the last two decades becoming a leader in their field. They produce a wide variety of computer enclosures as well as power supplies, coolers, fans, and accessories.
 

The product we’ll be looking at today is their RM44 Rackmount Chassis. What really sets this case apart from the majority of 4U cases on the market is that it is designed to support 360mm liquid cooling radiators. While home users with server racks are likely still a niche market, we definitely do exist and would like to build out powerful workstations that don’t sound like a jet taking off. We’re going to see if we can manage to fit custom water-cooling for both CPU and GPU in this case while maintaining decent temps and noise levels. Think it will work out? Read on to find out!

Read the full review HERE

 

[ENTERPRISE]

Release

[Avacado]

Well done Flux! Haven't seen parallel flow on a GPU in awhile, looks good. 

[pio]

Such a cool case, and an even cooler build!  $355 is a steal for a 4u rack case that holds water cooling.  The one I have was a "cheapie" at $480 that's a specialty 4u case too; it holds 20x 3.5" drives.  Yours.....holds a rad+.  Seems like fair pricing to me.  

Build looks amazing.  The review was easy to read, lots of great pictures. 

[Fluxmaven]

Thanks guys! Even though I killed some stuff and it didn't end up exactly how I had planned, I still had fun building in this case. This was the first time I've ever done a parallel loop. I have just always stuck with serial for max performance. Also parallel requires more fittings which is why I did a couple runs of the thicc tygon since I came up one fitting short on the smaller ones.

 

I'd agree the pricing is very fair compared to other cases on the market. I had been looking into possibly doing a watercooled rack build for a while and there really aren't many options out there. I just feel like rack cases in general have a higher price point that deters normal home users from going this route. 

[Mr. Fox]

Excellent review. Looks like a good rack-mount option.  Something like that would work well for me because I use external radiators and pumps.

 

You could probably use a Cablemod 90° 12VHPWR adapter to get the lid on it, but I do not blame you for avoiding problems with sharp cable bends. I really do not like the new 12VHPWR GPU power cables because of the sensitivity to bending. I can't really see the logic behind deploying it. I guess NVIDIA needed to disrupt status quo by changing something that didn't need to be changed. I prefer the "ain't broke, don't fix it" approach. 8-pin PCIe cables were an example of that. There was no problem that needed fixing. 

[Fluxmaven]

Thanks for taking the time to look at the review! 

 

I will probably end up putting a 1080mm rad on a rack shelf behind the case on QD fittings since I wasn't able to achieve the results I'm used to with just a slim 360 and 160mm rads. 

 

As for the 12VHPWR connections, I wish they hadn't bothered. I already have plenty of custom cable sets and I think triple 8 pin PCIe power cables looks nice. If it weren't for the abysmal Folding@Home performance, I'd just go all AMD GPU's and not have to bother with the new connector. 

[Mr. Fox]

On 02/04/2023 at 21:54, Fluxmaven said:

Thanks for taking the time to look at the review! 

 

I will probably end up putting a 1080mm rad on a rack shelf behind the case on QD fittings since I wasn't able to achieve the results I'm used to with just a slim 360 and 160mm rads. 

 

As for the 12VHPWR connections, I wish they hadn't bothered. I already have plenty of custom cable sets and I think triple 8 pin PCIe power cables looks nice. If it weren't for the abysmal Folding@Home performance, I'd just go all AMD GPU's and not have to bother with the new connector. 

Did Zotac have a change of heart about you keeping the 4070 Ti or allowing you to buy it at an irresistible price?

 

The 6900 XT is the first red card I have owned since the HD 7970 days (2011). I hated them back then and wrote them off as garbage because I had too many GPU failures (HD 6900 and 6950 and 7970) and Catalyst drivers were absolute trash. I moved to the green side and never looked back. It's easy to hate NVIDIA as a company. I think they are probably the most crooked PC component manufacturer, but their graphics cards are better in every way in my opinion. So, getting the 6900 XT was kind of a "wish me luck" leap of faith with hope that it would turn out OK.

 

As far as the 6900 XT goes, it's certainly not horrible, but it doesn't really do much to impress me. It will allow me the opportunity to rack up some hardware points on the bot, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking to buy a GPU. Overall, it is a bit lackluster. I like it enough to keep it, but probably would not buy another one. I will say that it is kind of fun tinkering with the More Power Tool, but apart from that I am not finding much to write home about. 

Even on water, the reported 6900 XT hotspot temps are ludicrous... to the point that I am almost inclined to think the insane hotspot temps are a product bug that is erroneous and totally inaccurate. It doesn't make any sense that there can be a 30°C or higher delta between core and hotspot temps at any given point in time under a high stress overclocked load.

 

Edited April 7, 2023 by Mr. Fox

[Fluxmaven]

15 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

Did Zotac have a change of heart about you keeping the 4070 Ti or allowing you to buy it at an irresistible price?

 

The 6900 XT is the first red card I have owned since the HD 7970 days (2011). I hated them back then and wrote them off as garbage because I had too many GPU failures (HD 6900 and 6950 and 7970) and Catalyst drivers were absolute trash. I moved to the green side and never looked back. It's easy to hate NVIDIA as a company. I think they are probably the most crooked PC component manufacturer, but their graphics cards are better in every way in my opinion. So, getting the 6900 XT was kind of a "wish me luck" leap of faith with hope that it would turn out OK.

 

As far as the 6900 XT goes, it's certainly not horrible, but it doesn't really do much to impress me. It will allow me the opportunity to rack up some hardware points on the bot, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone looking to buy a GPU. Overall, it is a bit lackluster. I like it enough to keep it, but probably would not buy another one. I will say that it is kind of fun tinkering with the More Power Tool, but apart from that I am not finding much to write home about. 

Even on water, the reported 6900 XT hotspot temps are ludicrous... to the point that I am almost inclined to think the insane hotspot temps are a product bug that is erroneous and totally inaccurate. It doesn't make any sense that there can be a 30°C or higher delta between core and hotspot temps at any given point in time under a high stress overclocked load.

 

Unfortunately no, they took it back. I would have been interested if they offered it at a discount. I think all 4070ti's are badly priced at MSRP (that Zotac is between $880-999 depending on vendor/sale). I bought my MSI 4070ti for $585 open box at Microcenter when they received a flood of returns from all the people that realized nobody would pay a scalper markup on an already overpriced card 

 

At around $600 or less I think the 4070ti is a good card. It's just hard to swallow paying $800+ for such a cut down card when previous gen flagships can be had for for less. Even with all the DLSS trickery making them perform similar to a 3090 or 6950 today, I like having more VRAM to keep cards relevant for longer. My favorite example being my 6gb Titan Black. I was still using that regularly as recently as 2 years ago, whereas a 3gb 780Ti started showing its age much sooner. 

 

Funny enough, the most recent AMD cards I own prior to getting the 6950XT are a pair of 7970 Ghz cards. Back when they were relevant I was still using mostly Nvidia cards though. Last year I had them in a system with a 5600x and they actually ran great in crossfire playing Assetto Corsa and the drivers were fine. 

 

I don't remember the 6950 temps off the top of my head, but I don't remember them being horrible with the block. Of the recent testing I did, the XT was the hottest with the stock cooler. With the block and a mild undervolt/overclock it was scoring way higher on benches before I even started pushing it. I just haven't had time to mess with it since I finished the reviews. 

 

In the last few years I've switched from running 100% Intel + Nvidia in my regular rigs, to giving AMD a chance. I have been enjoying my Ryzen CPUs and so far the 6950XT has been great too. If their F@H performance wasn't so bad compared to Nvidia, I'd probably pick up more of their GPUs.

[maddangerous]

Nice review! I think I might be getting this case possibly, once I can greenfield my whole server setup.

 

It looks like, if you're not running any long expansion cards (gpu, etc) then there would be room for a thicker rad and push/pull fans in the front? Although I suppose that's going to depend on motherboard size, since dual cpu systems have huge motherboards.

[Fluxmaven]

On 02/05/2023 at 14:48, maddangerous said:

Nice review! I think I might be getting this case possibly, once I can greenfield my whole server setup.

 

It looks like, if you're not running any long expansion cards (gpu, etc) then there would be room for a thicker rad and push/pull fans in the front? Although I suppose that's going to depend on motherboard size, since dual cpu systems have huge motherboards.

You could fit a thicker rad with push/pull and a larger motherboard, but the issue then becomes pump/reservoir placement. If you didn't have any tall/long expansion cards you could put the “expansion card retainer” bracket further forward to mount a pump/res combo and it would just be suspended over the motherboard.