Optimal SFF case

In my opinion, the SilverStone SG13 case is the optimal mini-ITX case. I haven’t faced such a wide variety of options to build a system in a small body. The case itself is only 11.5L in volume. But you can use a water-cooling. If you don’t want to use AIO, then it could accommodate a low profile cooler up to 120mm with a 61mm height and 140mm intake fan. ATX power supply unit is not a problem for SG13. It supports a dual fan and dual-slot graphic cards up to 270mm in length. Mini-DTX motherboards are supported as well. Storage is not a problem at all, because the case has three places for SSDs, two of which could be replaced by a 3.5-inch drive.

Dimensions: 222mm (W) x 181mm (H) x 285mm (D). The best way to see the size is to compare it with the smaller PS4 and larger NZXT H200.

To test SG13 I decided to build a mid-tier gaming PC. CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600, RAM: Gskill DDR4 16GB 3200MHz, GPU: Nvidia GeForce 1660 Super and AIO: Asus ROG RYUO 120.

I was impressed with the thermal and noise results. Such a great thermal performance allowed to beat the same CPU from another system by almost 200 points in Cinebemch R23. Half an hour OCCT test couldn’t force CPU to hit more than 75 degrees C. The noise level was 43dB at peak.

These results left a big room for future overclocking. At this point, there is no reason to do it because the system handles all tasks easily.

As for gaming results, Cyberpunk 2077 is the best benchmark at this point. If a location wasn’t crowded and didn’t contain a lot of details, the framerate could hit 75 FPS at 1080p and high-quality settings. For a high demanding and intensive scenes, the framerate dropped to 50 FPS.

The overall gameplay experience was exceptional, so SilerStrone SG13 made its job on 5 stars out of 5.

Note: I tried to use a 92mm air CPU cooler Noctua NH-L9a with an additional 92mm side fan but it didn’t work well (temperature could hit max in a couple of minutes). So I couldn’t suggest using this combination for gaming.