SilverStone Technology Ultra Compact Mini-ITX Computer Case with Mesh Front Panel Black (SST-SG13B-USA)

Very nice case. Paint is well done, and case is easy to take apart. Looks great in the living room as a mini gaming PC. Only RGB is 4 lights on the front panel and they are not distracting.Two things to keep in mind if you are looking at this case. If you are using a 3.5" HD, make sure you have a smaller ATX power supply or a SFX power supply. I have a full size ATX, and the 3.5" drive will not fix.Other is power supply also. The full size ATX power supply is making the PC over heat. I have tired flipping the power supply to face the fan up or down, and have a 140mm front fan, with no luck. I have a SFX power supply coming and will update my review once received.*Update* SFX power supply fixed overheating problem. Running 15c cooler.

Just want to say that I love this case. It seems that ultra small form factor cases in 2024 have lost a bit of actual small form factor. The SG13 has been around for a long time, but in my opinion is still awesome. It is truly hard to grasp how small this case is until you unbox it. I am by no means an expert PC builder, but built this to replace a 10yr old HT PC and also use for gaming. Silverstone engineered this case quite brilliantly. Many of the reviews I have read state that it takes quite a bit of planning for layout and cable management. I found that is was actually quite simple.This is what I quite easily placed ( I did not find this build to be like stuffing myself into jeans 2 sizes too small). Motherboard-Gigabyte B550I Auros Pro AX, CPU-AMD 7 5800X, Cooler-LiquidMaster AIO 120L Core, RAM-Corsair Vengance LPX 2x16GB 3200MHZ, Storage-Crucial P3 4TB M.2 SSD, Power Supply- SilverStone SX500, GPU-Gigabyte RTX 4060 Eagle OC 8GB. (These parts listed are the order in which they were installed. Tip-attach power supply cables to motherboard headers prior to mounting to case).Highly recommend to use an SFX modular power supply and an AIO cooler to reduce stuffing this with unnecesary cables. The top rails on this case actually perfectly accomodate width of ribbon power supply cables to keep them out of the way. Pictures I attached are prior to graphics card install showing there really is quite a bit of space in this case. After is with the graphics card installed. Eventhough the specs do not officially support this, the Gigabyte RTX 4060 Eagle version is 272mm long, and fits in the case perfectly without needing any modification whatsoever. I went with this GPU because it had 3 fans instead of going with a shorter 2 fan 4060. It was the only 3 fan gpu I found at 272mm. The GPU runs quite cool and most of the time at default settings the fans will not even run because it does not get to warm. I altered the fan profile to actually keep them running at lower temps simply to introduce more air into the case. CPU temps thus far have not exceeded 60c when testing OC settings. CPU is averaging about 35c.The only con I have to mention is really just a nit. The case does not ship with instructions, just a warranty card in the case. Highly recommend downloading the manual from SilverStone website as it tells you precisely the order in which to install the parts. I personally permanently removed the ATX support bracket and the topside drive mount tray that both simply unscrew from the frame. I did not want extra metal warming up the case and obstructing air flow.

For a long time, computers have not gotten much faster with newer-generation of CPU chips. CPU clocks have maxed-out around 3-4 GHz, and have got only slightly improved IPC (instructions per clock) efficiency and quad-core has been the norm since 1st generation Core ships. There was rarely any much reason to upgrade based solely on performance, and the only real improvements were in power efficiency with smaller and smaller lithography, although these days, it's proving difficult to shrink any smaller than 14nm.With the new 8th generation Intel chips, facing steep competition from Amd Ryzen, Intel has upped their game with the only thing left to improve, upping the core count. Now with 6-cores in a mainstream desktop chip, there is finally a pretty good reason to upgrade. There is also another trend in new system builds, the small-form-factor. More and more users are building systems that are small, low-power and lightweight, with today's Mini-ITX motherboards, that are without largely without compromise featuring high-end overclocked desktop CPU and high-end graphics.Today, there are some solid choices for tiny cases, from as small as 7 Litres to about 25 Litres in size. The smallest possible case has an STX power supply, and the graphics on a riser, making it parallel to the Mobo, and a low-profile CPU air cooler. The largest ones have full-size cooler, a 5.25" bay and room for 3-4 hard drives. At 11.5 Litres, the Silverstone SG13 allows a liquid CPU cooler, decent air-flow and room for a hard drive. It's about as small as you can go, without making heavy compromises on cooling and performance.Unfortunately, most tiny cases do not have room for an optical device, because the standard 5.25" bay is bigger than it needs to be for an optical device, and it takes up way more space than the drive itself, with wasted extra width, to fit the mounting hardware. Silverstone makes several cases that feature a slot for a "slim optical" device, found in laptops, and the SG08 is a great choice for this. But these tend to be for a "media center" style PC, which feature fancy front bezel, and not as good for air-flow and cooling. A better choice is a tiny USB external optical drive. So if you can live with that, you can get an awesome tiny case, without compromise.I finally decided onthe Silverstone Sugo SG13, after reading a lot of case reviews, and watching review videos. This case, is simply the best choice I could find. The SG13 incorporates design improvements over years of development of the SG series. It's suitably tiny at 11.5L, has all the right air-flow, allows liquid cooling, and a graphics card up to 10.5" fits a GTX 1080 if you want. The SG13 has either a solid front, which looks nice, or a grille for better air-flow. With a 120mm fan at front, this case can achieve excellent air-flow and cooling, surprisingly as good or better than the air-flow in a tower case.This layout seems to be the optimal one for tiny cases: graphics card right next to an external vent, pulling in fresh air, cools it better than most larger cases. The power supply pulls its own fresh air and exhausts it without involving warm case air, and the CPU and Mobo is cooled by relatively huge air-flow from the 120mm fan in front. It works amazingly well. For liquid cooling, the front 120mm radiator pulls warm case air and expels warmer air straight out the front.Finally, the price, at $44 is just amazing, leaving you extra cash to buy a better CPU than you normally would. I'm super-happy with my choice, and I know this case will last me for years, even surviving several upgrades -- until we can finally get rid of solicon chips, go optical, or bio-computing or whatever. Viva la tiny computer.