Installing a System Inside the SilverStone SG12

The last of our evaluations pertains to building a system inside the case.The SilverStone SG12 brings back the concept of small form factor cases that are compatible with Micro-ATX motherboards. That means that everything is compact, and in theory, hard to build in. However, with all the drive cages removed, there is a lot of space. Just note that the 5.25″ cage is held by rivets that are easily accessible if you wish to remove it. The rest is held together by very similar screws to the ones from your power supply.

Just to give you an idea of how much space there is inside the SG12, you can potentially fit an ATX motherboard by modding the chassis. As much space as there is, SilverStone has focused the SG12’s design in storage by allowing users to install up to 12 drives on the included brackets and cage. But there is still no cooling improvements, aside from upgrading the under-powered 80 mm fan found on the SG02 to a 120 mm fan. There is still no place to install a 120 mm radiator for an all in one water cooler, which would have been possible at the front. The fan mount located at the back only works with SilverStone’s own Cross Flow fan, which is out of stock in most retailers, and the two 80 mm fans located at the top only cool your expansion cards.

Something to take into consideration before installing the motherboard is that there is no motherboard tray hole to install back-plates once your motherboard is already installed. We decided to install our AMD Phenom X2 test system, which has a very low heat output, so low that we used a Cooler Master GeminII Ver. 2 without a fan. The only two fans in our system were the intake 120 mm fan located next to the drive cage and the 120 mm exhaust fan located inside our power supply.

The hardest task when building such a small system, aside from reaching into those small spaces when you have big hands, is cable managing. There is literally no form of cable managing inside the SilverStone SG12. The included cable management accessories are a nice touch, and there can be an argument made about not wasting time tucking cables away. But in a case were there is only a few airflow options every detail counts. You could easily take advantage of SilverStone’s own short cable kit if you own one of their power supplies. If you decide to populate all the drive options you might also consider SilverStone’s ultra thin SATA cables with low profile connectors. The task is certainly possible, but it will require more work than your usual full tower system.

Something to take consideration if you are going to use the included bracket to install seven 2.5″ drives right next to the 5.25″ drive bay is expansion card length. With no drives installed there is a 13.3″ length restriction which is more than enough for most graphics cards in the market, even the massive Asus Strix R9 Fury which measures 12″, almost 2″ more than the Reference GTX 980 ti. With all the drives installed you still have almost 10″ of length which should be more than enough to install an AMD reference R9 Fury X, that is if you mod the case to allow the installation of a 120 mm radiator.