SilverStone Sugo SG09 Case Review: Someone at SilverStone Loves Tetris
by Dustin Sklavos on October 20, 2012 6:35 PM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- SilverStone
- MicroATX
Noise and Thermal Testing, Overclocked
SilverStone seems to have done an excellent job engineering the Sugo SG09 for CPU cooling, but graphics card cooling in our stock testing wasn't the revelation the processor side was. They've almost proved that you can still have a very small system with great thermals (admittedly sacrificing some thermal performance on the storage side), so how well did the SG09 handle our higher voltage overclocked testbed?
Just as well, as it turns out.
Testing was again done at an ambient temperature of ~23C with the top intake fan at both low and high speeds.
Graphics card temperatures are competitive, but they're not exceptional. Meanwhile the CPU temperatures continue to impress; the 180mm intake fan's low fan speed actually seems to be enough to basically saturate the cooling potential of the heatsink itself, as raising the fan speed offers virtually no improvement in performance.
Again, fan speeds are competitive. The reviewer's guide promises the SG09 is equipped to handle high performance, high heat components and by and large that seems to be true.
Unfortunately the case is still, frankly, kind of noisy. It does better here where overclocking pushes noise levels harder, but I continue to strongly suggest installing a fan controller. It's obvious the SG09 has a substantial amount of cooling power on tap, so the prudent thing would probably be to get system performance where you want it and then find a good balance between thermals and noise.
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lmcd - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
It's hitting $100 pretty much everywhere...lmcd - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
This looks like the perfect case for me: it's nice and compact but I don't have to deal with ITX.* Nice cooling for maybe even CF, and I don't mind noise since I tend to game loudly. As for fans, I'll make sure my nicely-sized mATX board has enough fan headers; shouldn't be too hard. One optical drive is perfect and I don't mind spending a bit extra on it later (might not get it initially though) and will use a cheap external in the meantime (note: a cheap external is around $30 and so the "unbearable" slim drive can easily be mitigated this way).*ITX boards with wireless built in tend to be expensive and late to the market, and I need a wireless card, but want discrete graphics. As such, ITX is a no-go for me.
extide - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Check out the ASRock Z77 M-ITX board. It's pretty sweet IMHO and I am dying to do a build with one :)lmcd - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
I'm actually looking at this for my next build, which should be around the time of Haswell. And I'm interested in maybe even dual-GPU with this case (two 7850-equivalents).piroroadkill - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Oh dear.If you need a premium microATX case, surely there's only one choice, the Fractal Design Define Mini..
Orvtrebor - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
I can't believe this is the final product....Hideous.
Someone on another forum that starts with an [H] drew an awesome modified version of this case when the prototype was first shown. Pretty sure it's in the SFF forum.
It is literally 10x better than this mess.
dave1_nyc - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
I forget the model, but several years ago there was one of the Sugo cases that I thought was so nice I was just looking for some reason to build in it, either in the all aluminum version or the steel-with-an-aluminum-front version.But honestly, could this thing *be* any uglier.
joos2000 - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
There are some rather obvious errors in your reasoning, at least to me.
First of all, if you are even remotely interested in building a small system, then you are obviously looking at putting the smallest components in there. Having a full height disc player more than doubles, probably triples the volume requirement in the box for what is, in most cases, a completely redundant device in a modern system. So all of a sudden, you go against your requirement of portability and minimalism so you can save a buck on an optical drive? How does that make any sense at all?
I wouldn't be all surprised if most of the builds based on this box will be without a DVD/BR all together. And yes, I am presuming that pretty much all of the builds based on this case will be LAN gaming systems since it is far, far to ugly to have next to your telly in the living room.
And when did PC games come delivered in blu-rays anyway? Pretty much all PC games come on DVD's still, so paying through the nose for a blu-ray player for a LAN box just doesn't make sense. At all.
That's my impression anyway and why I think Silverstone have made the right decision both in slimline form factor and skipping blu-ray's for their gaming systems.
EnzoFX - Tuesday, October 23, 2012 - link
My thoughts exactly as summarized in my original comment =P.tzhu07 - Sunday, October 21, 2012 - link
Really tacky and plasticty looking. I'll definitely be sticking with Fractal Design cases.