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
Assembling the SilverStone Sugo SG05
For how smitten I was with Cooler Master's inexpensive Elite 120 Advanced, it had a couple of kinks that made it less enjoyable to assemble than SilverStone's Sugo SG05 is. Having to provide space for an ATX power supply and a full 5.25" optical drive bay meant cutting into some of the case's internal space, and the drive cage wound up actually being detrimental to the design in some ways. The SG05 is a remarkably clean design and was very easy to assemble, especially for a case of its diminutive size.
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Installing the motherboard was for the most part very easy; standoffs come built into the tray, although it's nigh impossible to screw the board in on one corner without removing the power supply. You'll have to remove the bracing bar from the PSU along with the drive caddies, but you would've needed to remove at least the caddies anyways. Call me lazy, but I actually just left the corner of the board floating and still found it plenty secure. More responsible users may be inclined to remove the PSU to completely mount the board. There's a healthy amount of space around the board to connect power cables and headers, as well.
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Honestly, the worst part of assembling our system in the SG05 was the optical drive and 2.5" drive caddy. Getting the screws into the 2.5" drive required a bit of dexterity, while the slimline optical drive's tiny, tiny screws made installing it a nightmare. I'm not a particularly steady person in the first place, and these are the kinds of screws a housecat will swallow without a second thought. Part of that is just the nature of the screws used to mount slimline drives and I'm not sure how much SilverStone could've done to make this process easier. As for the 3.5" drive bay, I actually eschewed that entirely. That cage is removable, and I found that when assembling the SG05 the copious amount of cabling stemming from the PSU made it exceedingly difficult to install.
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The drive bays seem to be where SilverStone decided to make their sacrifices in the name of getting the SG05 as small as it is. If you're determined enough you can jimmy the 3.5" drive cage in, but as you can see in the image above, the cable spaghetti nature of building in a small enclosure makes it pretty difficult. You'll also have to remove the front fascia (there are six plastic snaps you can bend up) to pop out the bay shield.
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When you install an expansion card in the SG05, you're also going to be deciding just how far you're willing to push the limits of the enclosure. The ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti we use for testing our bigger cases did indeed fit in the SG05 (and we had to test with it, naturally), but that card is 10.2" long and it was really as big as you can get away with; I had to angle and tilt to fit it inside. Keep in mind that certain shorter card designs may have the PCIe power leads facing the back of the card instead of the top, too, so you'll want to account for that when calculating clearance.
Mushing all the cabling down and getting the shell back on the SG05 wasn't too difficult, but the tremendous amount of ventilation means that any lights inside the case are probably going to be visible. The memory kit we use for testing has LEDs on it and those LEDs are very easy to see while the system is running, along with the LEDs on the motherboard itself. Enterprising builders will have no trouble making the SG05 glow.
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janderk - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
This is exactly what I wanted to say.If you aren't into heavy gaming (I just program) this thing will idle well below 50W and will hardly go over 150W if you load it.
The 300W supply will be much more efficient in this kind of usage. I wish the review had added the power used in idle and under load (with and without an additional graphics card). That would provide the curious with the right information if 300W is enough for them.
For those of us who care about the environment (or like saving on the energy bill) it is quite hard to find a low Wattage good quality power supply. Compliments to Silverstone to providing one. Hopefully there will be a 200W option next year :)
Metaluna - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Just to add to this: More efficiency = less heat generated in the PSU for a given load. With these SFX PSUs being limited to 80mm fans, they can't really move much air without ramping the speed up to audible levels. It's even worse because these cases are more likely to be sitting on your desk close to your ears.That said, it really depends on the design of the specific PSUs, and since the power draw is so small anyway, any small differences in efficiency might not be very noticeable in practice. A good 450W will probably not be significantly worse than a budget 300W for example. I certainly wouldn't give up something like front panel USB 3.0 just to get the smaller PSU, for example.
batteries4ever - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
I am with the 300W fans, and would go even more extreme towards an external 200W brick...... and a smaller enclosure. enclosures are like suitcases, each size has its justification!RaistlinZ - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
I'm sorry, but your choice of PSU really isn't going to have one iota of difference on the global environment. Seriously.Zap - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
To paraphrase a common quote:"Every journey begins with a single step."
UpSpin - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
As always, great review.I also own such a MiniITX case, just with a different front (SG06). I run it with a quad core Intel CPU and EVGA GTX560Ti. Runs fine and silent. Silent but only because I modded the case.
The ODD isn't really worth the wasted space. I haven't used it at all since I own the case (1 year), but because some people still use DVD or BluRay they should keep it, maybe optional?
The 3.5" clamp is somehow stupid, better inlcude a few 2.5" holdings. (That's what I did) Make an open air construction and place it in front of the front intake fan. Then customers can add 3 or 4 2.5" HDDs, like 1 SSD, 3 RAID 1TB drives. Because the HDD holding is a lightweight construction, they don't block the air flow and get cooled fine. (I put 3 HDDs in a closed custom made shock absorbing case (tube) with a low spinning fan which blows air through the tube, thus I don't hear the HDDs at all. But such a construction might be too expensive for mass production)
But the really annoying part is the PSU fan. The fan is too small. In the current design most of the air must get blown through the PSU fan. The heated air from the HDDs, Mainboard and mainly CPU + the heat produced by the PSU must get pushed through the tiny PSU with a 80mm fan. That's idiotic. It's loud and reduces the lifetime of any PSU drastically. I had to replace the 80mm fan with a 120mm fan and made a custom case for the PSU, now it's silent and cool.
The case itself is very clairaudient because of the huge amount of air holes. This makes the noisy PSU even more annyoing and difficult to make the PC silent with standard components.
Because the PSU issue isn't solveable with the current design and default PSU cases, and the case is very clairaudient at all, Silverstone should redesign the whole case and optimize the airflow. Like putting the PSU at the front, reduce the amount of air holes but optimize the air flow, maybe put the mainboard on the side & GPU to the bottom (better airflow for the mainboard, GPU fan noise gets absorbed from the desk), or anything else.
It's difficult to build a small system which is both powerful and silent with standard components. For the money it's a great case, but if you want it silent, you have to mod it, which is the only real drawback I have. Once you've done that, you'll have a powerful PC in the smallest case possible.
Olaf van der Spek - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
Why doesn't the PSU take in fresh air via the top? Would seem like a much better design.Socaddict - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
I have the PSU in mine flipped. Didn't take any real work to sort out.hybridE4t - Monday, August 20, 2012 - link
Having it pull air from inside the case then exhausting it will aid throughput of air through the entire case and lead to better cooling throughout, particluarly if your other fans are orientated to complement this push-pull effect. Not recommended for low quality PSUs but as SilverStone are supplying both the case and PSU the fact they've orientated it this way suggests that they're confident it provides a net benefit.Jumpman23 - Sunday, August 19, 2012 - link
I've been reading reviews on Newegg on the older version of this case with the 450W PSU and a lot of people are saying that the connector included in the PSU is wrong for slim optical drives and you need to buy a separate adapter in order for it to work. Is this still the case with this? If it is, it's a pretty big oversight.