SilverStone Sugo SG05 (Mini-ITX Chassis)

Downsizing the Chassis

There's no running away from the recession and tech firms like most other sectors have been affected too. But besides the common refrain to downsize and cut costs, this trend can also be seen in how consumers, businesses and even some DIY enthusiasts are now favoring smaller, more power efficient computing solutions over big, powerful and noisy machines. Obviously, this will affect the whole industry, like those who design chassis.

In SilverStone's bid to shrink the small form factor chassis even further, its latest chassis, the Sugo SG05 is designed for mini-ITX motherboards. While admittedly a small, niche segment, mini-ITX boards have been around for a long time and with Intel's Atom emerging as the catalyst for another burst of interest in such small, low-powered systems, SilverStone felt that there is a market for enthusiasts to outfit these small chassis into full featured systems. In fact during our trip to CeBIT in Germany earlier this year, we noted that most vendors have begun to cater to this segment as well as more micro-ATX designs that are signaling a change in demand for more compact systems.

Back to the Sugo SG05 chassis, SilverStone actually recommended the use of a mini-ITX motherboard we reviewed recently, the for this review. With its GeForce 9300 mGPU chipset, such a combination certainly has the potential to be a light and silent home theater media center, especially when it can support a LGA 775 processor. Yet another option is the fresh new that we reviewed.

The SilverStone Sugo SG05

Weighing slightly over 3kg when empty, the Sugo SG05 is a simple, boxy design that has quite the emphasis on case ventilation. One of the things we noticed is the abundance of ventilation holes, dotting the sides, top and of course fronting the chassis itself is a rather large 120mm front intake fan. Rated at 1200RPM, it should be quiet enough to stay inconspicuous.

Speaking of which, the front bezel is more about functionality rather than aesthetics. Obviously the presence of the 120mm fan is a rather big deterrent for those hoping to instill the SG05 with some creative flair. Nevertheless, with all the expected I/O and LED indicators at the front panel, we have no complaints about this chassis.

We did find it rather difficult to remove the plastic front panel from the chassis, as they were held by rather stiff plastic clips. Behind the front panel, the 120mm fan comes with its own filter that can be removed for cleaning.

The Sugo SG05 supports up to two expansion slots. From the rear, the design reminded us of Shuttle's small form factor PCs, with the power supply (PSU) located in the middle and which usually also comes with two expansion slots.

The SFX PSU is itself rated at 300W and is 80 PLUS certified. Manufactured by FSP, it's significantly smaller than the usual ATX PSU and is ideal for such a small chassis. While the power rating may not seem like much, the high efficiency should make up for it, with a 16A output from one of its 12V+ rails. There's no PCIe 6-pin power connector however, so you'll need a Molex converter, which contributes to the 'volume' of cable in this chassis.

Removing the chassis cover, there certainly doesn't appear to be much space in the SG05, with the numerous power cables looking like a potential nightmare when it comes to cable management.

The Installation

As SilverStone states that the SG05 can accept a graphics card of up to 9 inches long, we will test this out with a GeForce GTX 250 equipped with a dual-slot cooler. Other chosen components for the installation include a Zotac Mini-ITX board with a dual-core processor and cooler fan mounted together with a 3.5-inch hard drive.

Hard drives of the 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch variety are supported by the SG05 but you're limited to two. Also, you can either install a pair 2.5-inch drives or a mix of a 2.5-inch and a 3.5-inch, but not a pair of 3.5-inch drives. This is due to the drive cage having only sufficient space for a single 3.5-inch drive, since one of two bays included is only suitable for a 2.5-inch.

Since this drive cage is made up of two separate metal bays linked together with screws, putting them back together is not as easy as we had expected. The same could be said of the installation for this chassis in general. SilverStone continues to rely heavily on screws for this chassis and its other designs too, when other brands may be experimenting or fully converted to tool-free designs.

Another obstacle that may stump some users is the choice of a slim optical drive bay on the SG05. Obviously, it helps to have a slim optical drive due to space constraints but it's not as widely available as the normal version. SilverStone has planned for this by offering customers its own slim optical drive but it's an additional cost that is not included with the SG05. If you're interested, the models are SOD01 (slot loading DVD drive) and TOB01 (tray loading DVD drive).

Meanwhile, we had to make do with a slim optical drive scavenged from a notebook that didn't fit that well with the chassis. The bezel of the drive was marginally too thick and could not slot neatly into the SG05's slot. In any case, it illustrates a potential stumbling block that enthusiasts should consider before getting this chassis.

Installing the motherboard was not too much of a trouble, with the motherboard standoffs already in place in the chassis. What hindered us quite often during the process were the power cables, which got in the way constantly, whether we were fitting the motherboard or the drive cage. SilverStone probably could have gone for shorter cables that take up less space given the small confines of the chassis.

At least we had no issues with installing our 9-inch GeForce GTX 250 graphics card. Using a Molex power connector, we had just the right amount of space to angle it to fit the 6-pin PCIe power connector on the graphics card (using an adapter). There was no excess space though so some cable twisting is required. The dual-slot fan on the graphics card however had more than sufficient room, though that of course used up both expansion slots on the motherboard and the chassis.

One of the advantages of the SG05 chassis design highlighted by SilverStone is that one can use a stock or third party cooler for the CPU, as the height clearance (measured at 78mm) does not necessitate a custom, low profile cooler. While we could fit our stock cooler for the CPU comfortably, it looked a bit snug and most typical third-party coolers would probably not fit. However, those like the Scythe Shuriken (64mm) may be suitable.

Ventilation however appears to be well handled by the SG05. Besides the 120mm intake fan, the other ventilation holes, especially the ones near the graphics are nicely positioned and more than adequate.

 

Conclusion

Despite the efforts of companies like AOpen and Shuttle, the small form factor (SFF) PC segment has never really taken off in a big way - at least in the DIY market. Big OEM vendors like HP and Dell have had some success selling small desktop systems but these are pre-built ones that differ from the customization offered by SFF models targeted at enthusiasts.

SilverStone too has been relatively new to the scene, with the first of its SFF oriented Sugo series debuting in 2005. The goal as ever for such SFF enclosures has been to maintain the form factor while expanding the possibilities that one can outfit it internally. For instance, even high-end or even dual graphics cards could be supported in this chassis. Unlike Shuttle who has its own custom motherboard and CPU cooler integrated in its SFF chassis, SilverStone has stuck to just designing and building the chassis alone.

While the goal of allowing consumers the flexibility of adding their own components is commendable, the implementation in SilverStone's latest venture into the mini-ITX segment, the SG05 is less than inspired. Getting the slim optical drive required for the SG05 for example, may not be as easy as dishing out more cash. We believe that it's likely that retail outlets will end up bundling the optical drive along with the SG05 for convenience's sake.

The other major issue has been the cable management. SilverStone could probably improve this aspect, with shorter cables or even pre-routed cables. Since the orientation of the drive cage is fixed, there's no reason why this can't be done. It could have saved us quite a bit of time during installation, particularly since the SG05 is anything but tool-free.

Besides these issues, the ventilation aspect appears to be well-done, with a large and quiet 120mm fan to pull the air into the chassis. The small included power supply also looks efficient and capable enough to support a decent, mid-range system. Finally, priced at around US$99, it's not prohibitively expensive, considering you're getting a PSU along with the chassis. For those who have been mulling over the idea of a custom SFF PC, the Sugo SG05 will require some effort to make it work but once done, it should be humming along cool and quiet.

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