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Today we are taking a look at a nifty little gaming case that can house some pretty amazing hardware. Despite its compact mATX design, the Silverstone SG04 has almost no limits when it comes to hardware configurations, making even the mighty GeForce GTX 295 a possibility... Over the past few years I have built a number of high-end gaming systems using a range of different processors, motherboards, graphics cards and even storage. Although each system has also been built using a different case, they have all had a few things in common. First and foremost they were all full-size ATX cases making them not only very roomy but also very heavy.  The advantages of a full-size ATX case are obvious, more room means better air-flow as there is generally more room to more cooling. Better air-flow means cooler hardware allowing for better overclocking results. Additionally it also means there is no limit to the kind of hardware users can run and sticking a pair of GeForce GTX 295 graphics cards in SLI mode is a real possibility. Unfortunately the down side to these mega cases is weight and I learnt this the hard way. The Antec Twelve Hundred for example weighs 15kg, the Cooler Master HAF 932 tips the scales at 13kg and Thermaltake’s Armor+ weighs in at an impressive 17kg while Silverstone’s new Raven hits 15kgs. These are just a few examples and there are countless more. However it is not just the physical weight of these cases that makes moving them back breaking work, it is also the large dimensions which attributes to their awkwardness, the very thing that makes the form factor popular to being with. Therefore gamers planning on moving their computer a lot really require something not only lighter but also more compact and less awkward to move. The MicroATX has been around since the dawn of time but gaming systems based on this form factor are non-existent or at least they were. There is one reason for this and that being the complete lack of gaming orientated MicroATX hardware. Recently motherboard manufacturers such as ASUS and DFI have started pushing MicroATX hardware which is great but one problem still remains and that is how to house it. Now that we have amazingly powerful MicroATX motherboards such as the ASUS Maximus II GENE, the problem is finding a case that can support high-end graphics cards. The vast majority of MicroATX motherboards will not support graphics cards longer than the motherboard limiting their length to 23-24cm. While this does sound like quite a lot it does rule out all high-end ATI and Nvidia graphics cards. Furthermore multi-GPU technologies such as SLI and Crossfire go right out the door. Silverstone has developed a case to complement the new high-end mATX motherboards called the SG04. They claim that this little case can support 26cm graphics cards such as the Radeon HD 4870 X2. Furthermore it is said that the SG04 can support not one but two of these massive graphics cards which is amazing given the case itself is just 34.7cm long. |
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