Log The SG13 in 2023: modern mid-range components in an old-school ITX case.

[Snerual]

The Silverstone SG13 is one of those all-time great SFF cases. For years it stood unrivaled as a very affordable and very compact ITX case, and even to this day you can't really find anything in its price range that is this compact.

To celebrate the SG13's 8th anniversary, I tried to cram as much modern hardware in it as possible. The case was designed with 120mm AIOs in mind, but nowadays I think you get more performance out of the case with a different setup.

- Corsair SF600 Platinum SFX PSU to drastically increase CPU cooler limit (the Silverstone bracket allows the PSU to sit as high as possible)
- Ryzen 5 5600 under a Noctua L12S with the fins parallel to the length of the case
- 140mm fan in the front as exhaust
- ASRock RX 6700XT Challenger, probably the largest card you can fit in this case without using a dremel.

The build started with a 6600XT Pulse, but my math told me the 6700XT Challenger would fit...

... and I was correct. I swear it feels like ASRock designed this card specifically for the SG13.

Not one mm to spare... because it is a true 2-slot GPU, there is also less turbulence from the fans against the side panel. The placement of the power connectors is also more or less perfect. I believe in theory a 6800 or 6800XT reference card would fit, but the rear fan would be completely blocked off.

View from the other side to show cooler clearance:

I have a few minor potential future improvements in mind:
- upgrade RAM from 3000 MHz to 3600 MHz
- Flip the CPU fan so it blows upwards. Currently it's kind of fighting with the PSU fan... though I don't know how I feel about blowing hot CPU air straight into my PSU...
- Remove this piece of metal that blocks part of the GPU vent:

And finally a picture of the fully assembled shoebox:

 

[rfarmer]

You could always flip the PSU so the fan is on top.

 

[Snerual]

Yeah I was thinking that it is probably best/safest to have the PSU fan pointing up while having the CPU Fan in "downdraft" configuration.

When I first had this case the L12S was in its default config, but that means it pushes hot air against the PSU casing, and this lead to overheating of the PSU... However I feel like the L12S was more designed to push the air "up"... The fan sits so low that the hot air that was pulled "down" doesn't have a lot of places to go and gets trapped between the ram sticks and VRM heatsinks and such...

I could either try to put the L12S fan on top of the heatsink but then there will be VERY little spaces between the fan and the PSU, or... I could try if the Scythe Big Shuriken 3 is a better fit for this specific layout... The BS3 looks like it has more mass as well which probably helps with the spiky behavior of Ryzen CPUs.