Introducing the SilverStone Sugo SG05

We've been looking at a few mini-ITX enclosures as of late, an interest sparked largely by the surprise success of the Bitfenix Prodigy and the general industry tend towards smaller, more powerful systems. As I've mentioned before, the fact is that this is the direction these things are heading in; unless you need something that can handle multiple video cards, you can get a fairly robust system in a smaller form factor. Ivy Bridge knocked power consumption down substantially, and the raw efficiency of NVIDIA's Kepler has allowed for a massive jump in graphics performance (reviews of the GeForce GTX 680M are impending).

Of course, while Bitfenix's Prodigy is a pretty excellent enclosure, it's also remarkably large for a Mini-ITX case. The Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced we reviewed recently brings things a bit more in line with the form factor, but its cooling performance left a lot to be desired. Meanwhile, in the background, SilverStone has been campaigning for us to take a look at one of its older cases, the Sugo SG05. They're of the opinion that the SG05 is capable of producing stellar performance while being smaller in volume than the competition. This case has been around for a little while, but was it ahead of its time?

As it turns out, SilverStone hasn't been sitting idle with the SG05. Though it was introduced more than three years ago, SilverStone has incrementally introduced updates; the most recent updates upgrade the front USB ports to 3.0 and add a 450-watt 80 Plus Bronze certified SFX form factor power supply. That's not a regular cheap power supply, either, but a quality SilverStone unit. In short, the SG05 provides very nearly everything you need to produce a modern Mini-ITX desktop.

Keep in mind that our review unit is basically the top of the line for the SG05; there are ever so slightly less expensive models that still use USB 2.0 and/or have a lower power PSU included. Really, though, this is the one you want since SilverStone includes a USB 3.0-to-USB 2.0 adaptor for the internal header and you only save about ten bucks going with the lesser 300W power supply.

What's important to remember as well is that it's honestly very difficult to get much smaller than the SG05 while still integrating the PSU in the enclosure and allowing for any kind of optical drive support. I personally feel at this point that the slimline optical drive is barely worth the added expense (I've been using the blu-ray drive in my desktop to watch The Real Ghostbusters DVDs and that's about it), but thankfully it doesn't take a heck of a lot of space and you can always use the space to just install another 2.5" drive instead. The lack of 3.5" bays is probably going to be a bit of a buzzkill to some users, too, but that's part of the price of admission.

In and Around the SilverStone Sugo SG05

The great thing about reviewing these Mini-ITX cases is that oftentimes there just isn't a whole lot to them, and that's true of the SilverStone Sugo SG05. This is the smallest case I've reviewed yet (at least until the impending review of the Antec ISK 110), and SilverStone makes smart use of the entire space. You can get most of the information you need just by looking at the case, and in fact when I went to assemble it I found myself checking the manual just to make sure it really was this simple.

The front is a clean black plastic bezel with sharp lines. On the right are the pair of USB 3.0 ports, the indicator LEDs, and two very small power and reset buttons, while the top of the fascia features the slimline optical drive bay. Of course the star of the show is the beefy 120mm intake fan at the center, and this 120mm fan represents the bulk of the cooling system. It isn't the most attractive thing in the world, but it's very functional as you'll see later on.

When you look at the top and sides of the SG05, you see how SilverStone is managing the rest of the case's thermals: copious, copious ventilation. This type of design choice winds up being a bit of a double-edged sword; there's nothing keeping the internal fan noise internal, but it also allows enough cool outside air to reach the components that the fans don't have to work as hard in the process. In my experience, smart airflow design can oftentimes be more conducive to keeping noise down than any kind of sound dampening material. Where I do think SilverStone misses the boat a little bit is the back. There's the expected extrusion to cover the expansion slots, but I feel like they could have and should have ventilated the space between the downward-facing PSU and the I/O cluster.

Popping open the SG05 reveals a very straightforward internal design. Given the fact that none of the case's dimensions exceed a foot, there just isn't space inside for any kind of chicanery; every inch must be accounted for. With that in mind, there's a removable support bar for the PSU (not strictly necessary but a nice touch) and the 3.5" drive cage and optical drive/2.5" drive cage are removable. That's it. There's the 120mm intake fan in the front, the cluster of headers for the case's I/O, and motherboard standoffs built into the bottom, but that's the extent of it.

Finally, SilverStone includes a very robust power supply with the SG05. The 450-watt unit is 80 Plus Bronze certified, and has a healthy 36 amps on the single 12V rail. This should be adequate for just about any video card you can actually fit inside the enclosure; NVIDIA's recent GeForce GTX 660 Ti may very well be an ideal candidate.

For how simple the SG05's design is, though, I feel like there's a bit of wasted potential here. The optical drive cage probably could've supported a pair of 2.5" drives side-by-side on the underside without interfering with the expansion slots, or alternatively could've included some means of mounting a 2.5" drive to the optical drive area. Interestingly, SilverStone opts not to include one of their 120mm Air Penetrator AP121 fans in the front, sticking with a more conventional fan. The AP121 can get a little noisy, though, and they may have just elected to err on the side of silence.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Testing Methodology

For testing Mini-ITX cases, we use the following standardized testbed in stock and overclocked configurations to get a feel for how well the case handles heat and noise.

Each case is tested with just the Core i3's integrated graphics as well as with a discrete graphics card. The system is powered on and left idle for fifteen minutes, the thermal and acoustic results recorded, and then stressed by running four threads (three with a dedicated GPU) in Prime95 (in-place large FFTs) on the CPU, and OC Scanner (maximum load) is run when the dedicated GPU is installed. At the end of fiteen minutes, thermal and acoustic results are recorded. If the enclosure has a fan controller, these tests are repeated for each setting. Ambient temperature is also measured after the fifteen idle minutes but before the stress test and used to calculate the final reported results.

We try to maintain an ambient testing temperature of between 22C and 24C. Non-thermal test results aren't going to be directly comparable to the finest decimal point, but should be roughly comparable and give a broader idea of how the enclosure performs.

Thank You!

Before moving on, we'd like to thank the following vendors for providing us with the hardware used in our testbed.

• Thank you to Puget Systems for providing us with the Intel Core i3-2120.
• Thank you to Zotac for providing us with the Z68ITX-A-E motherboard and GeForce GTS 450 Eco.
• Thank you to Crucial for providing us with the Ballistix Smart Tracer memory.
• Thank you to Kingston for providing us with the SSDNow V+ 100 SSD.
• And thank you to SilverStone for providing us with the NT07-1156 heatsink/fan combo.

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.

Noise and Thermal Testing, Dedicated GPUs

It's funny, when we put together the revised testbeds, the Zotac GeForce GTS 450 Eco was chosen because it employed a single-slot cooler and would be indicative of the kind of video card most HTPCs would use. Yet many modern Mini-ITX cases (and even comparatively old standards like the SG05) include two expansion slots. The solution? Test the case with the GTS 450 and our standard ATX testbed card, the ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti! That's exactly what I've done here with the SilverStone Sugo SG05.

CPU temperatures are still pretty solid and consistent with the SG05, even when we include the GTX 560 Ti with its 170-watt TDP. Note that idle thermals actually increase a little with the GTS 450; I suspect this is at least partly due to the way the 560 Ti directs airflow directly at the CPU by effectively blocking the front of the video card off completely from the rest of the system.

The SG05 again produces moderate temperatures for both the GTX 560 Ti and the GTS 450. In fact, impressively enough the GTX 560 Ti's temperatures are roughly on par with many ATX cases; the ventilation on the side of the SG05 definitely seems to be doing its job.

Unfortunately, SSD temperatures are where things get a bit sticky with the GTX 560 Ti. Because of the way it blocks off the side vent coupled with the heat it generates, airflow around the drive bay winds up being fairly minimal. Heat gets trapped between the video card and the drive bay, just like it does in Cooler Master's enclosure.

The CPU fan also seems to be working a bit harder, though ~2% is essentially within the margin of error. SilverStone's FT03 Mini has a superior airflow design for the CPU, no way around it. It shares the same basic chassis as the Sugo SG05, but enjoys a beefy 140mm Air Penetrator intake fan.

Once again fan speed falls in line, though I'm keen to point out the GTX 560 Ti's fan speed in the SG05 is actually comparable to some of our best ATX form factor case results. That extensive ventilation pays big dividends for SilverStone.

The noise results bear out one of my main theories of case design, too: smart airflow design can do wonders for keeping noise levels low. By being a bit more closed off, Cooler Master's design actually increases the amount of noise generated since the fans have to work harder. The SG05 is by no means quiet, but it's not spectacularly loud either. I'm not sure you could really make a case this small that runs much quieter; at that point you really need to start cherry picking components.

Conclusion: Still a Strong Contender

Having put the SilverStone Sugo SG05 through it's paces, I can see why our SilverStone rep was so interested in having us take a look at it, especially on the heels of our other Mini-ITX reviews. The SG05 has been around for a little while, but you can argue that it's still among the best at what it does. The next smallest case we've reviewed is the Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced, a case which supports larger components and also has a cheaper sticker price. Both of these things make it an appealing alternative, at least at first, but what happens when we break things down?

First of all, once you factor in the price of a power supply (because remember, the SG05 includes one and the Elite 120 Advanced does not), the difference drops to about $20. Also consider that given the size of these enclosures, there's no real benefit to getting a power supply that supports more than 450W since using components that are going to need as much or more than that means generating more heat than the Elite 120 Advanced is probably capable of handling. Really the major benefits of the Elite 120 Advanced are the full size optical drive bay and the increased capacity for storage; if those things are important to you, then your decision is made, but keep in mind a slimline blu-ray reader/DVD writer combo drive can be had for not much more than a full size one if you're willing to chance eBay.

The fact is, the SG05 offers incredibly compelling performance and a solid value for the money. I think there are still a few quirks with the design (the drive caddies probably need an overhaul), but it holds up remarkably well for a three year old, incrementally-updated enclosure. Just like SilverStone's enormous FT02, sometimes a design is so right on the first try that not a whole lot really needs to be done to improve it. That seems to be true here, and at less than $120 for a complete enclosure (with quality power supply), it's hard not to recommend it. If you're looking to do a Mini-ITX build and want something smaller than the BitFenix Prodigy, shortlist the SG05.