SilverStone Sugo SG05: The Mini-ITX Standard Bearer
by Dustin Sklavos on August 19, 2012 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- SilverStone
- Mini ITX
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- HTPC
Noise and Thermal Testing, IGP
I'll admit I had some reservations about the cooling potential of the SilverStone Sugo SG05. While the 120mm intake fan more or less has a straight shot to the back of the case, the power supply comes installed facing downward (meaning the intake potentially competes with the CPU's heatsink), and the inevitable cable spaghetti may interfere with getting that air to the processor. As it turns out, I didn't have a whole lot to worry about.
Noise and thermal testing for the SG05 was done with ambient temperatures between 25C and 26C; it's pretty hot in California right now, and I can't exactly run the air conditioner during testing (just before and after).
The SSD is essentially passively cooled by being next to a giant vent, but that doesn't seem to be an issue. Meanwhile the airflow of the SG05 is able to produce excellent thermal results for the CPU; Cooler Master's Elite 120 may have a 120mm intake fan as well, but that fan is blocked by both the front ventilation design and the drive cage behind it. The SG05's intake has much less interference.
Fan speed is also quite good; the SG05 has a reasonable amount of headroom. Keep in mind that the only two cases beating it in thermal performance are both a good amount larger; in terms of volume the Prodigy is nearly three times the size of the SG05.
That copious size has another benefit for BitFenix's enclosure, though: it keeps the noise down. The SG05 runs pretty quietly, though, and an enterprising user could probably get noise levels lower by using a quieter intake fan as well as more aggressive fan control on the CPU's heatsink/fan unit. In fact, the cooler we use for testing has a switch on it for exactly that purpose.
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doctormonroe - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Silverstone have already released a SFF PSU that is 80 Plus Gold certified:http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=342
Jackattak - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
By the gods that's one hot little number, and modular to boot! I looked it up on Newegg and they're selling it for $99USD right meow!http://www.Newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=17...
fr500 - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
The 450w power supply does get noisy. It's a very interesting case, my build is a few years old now and still going strong but it's been considerably modified over the years.I bought the original with the 300w PSU, had an i5 760 and a GTS250 back then. When I wanted to upgrade GPU the ST450-SF wasn't out so I went for a modular ATX PSU. A corsair H50 and a GTX570HD
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/149537/Pictures/Photos/DS...
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/149537/Pictures/Photos/DS...
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/149537/Pictures/Photos/DS...
Still going strong, cool and quiet behind my TV (CPU idles at 27c and gets to 50 under load)
fr500 - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Had to give up the 3.5" bay for the H50 and the optical & 2.5" bay for the PSU, then I fitted 500GB laptop HDD and a 60GB SSD to the botton on the case and problem solved.DanNeely - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Silverstone has several other variants of the Sugo case with 600W PSUs. Using one of them should kill the PSU noise since anything smaller than a dual GPU card is unlikely to put enough load on it to ramp the fans above idle.fr500 - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Mine is not noisy :) it has an ATX PSU as you can see in the picturesImSpartacus - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
"The great thing about reviewing these Mini-ITX cases is that oftentimes there just isn't a whole lot to them,"Lol! I love hearing little reviewer-centric quips like that.
...so I guess this means you have time to do even MORE reviews, eh?
philipma1957 - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
The coolermaster has some good points, but it needed endless mods. I pull the cheesy face plate off it and mounted an aluminum grill, It added air but the case needs custom cables to allow for proper airflow. So if you want a nice machine with the cooker master be prepared to break out a lot of tools. I am still playing with it.When I am done It will have an;
i7 3770k
a 256gb msata ssd
a full size samsung blu ray
a full size seasonic psu
a geforce gtx 670
all noctua fans .
It will be nice when I am done but it is not worth the effort.
My guess is this silverstone is better by far in terms of ease of assembly
owned66 - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
i built one a while agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXOl7TKVwLM
Daniel Egger - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Actually there's a *very* good reason to go with what you consider an unworthy 300W PSU: Better power efficiency at low power usage. Since it is almost impossible to cram equipment for 300W max consumption into such a case and even that is much more likely to run at <20% power utilisation rather than 80% it simply does not make any sense to have >300W PSU in a mini-ITX case.