SilverStone Sugo SG02-F

Installation:

Into the SST-SG02W-F we had installed a Lite-On SATA DVD burner, Seagate Serial ATA hard drive, ASRock A780FullDisplayPort motherboard, SilverStone Element ST50EF-Plus Short Cable power supply, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 2GB of A-DATA DDR2-800 memory, and an ATI Radeon HD 3650 512MB graphics card. Cooling the dual-core AMD processor was the stock heatsink.

Initially we had a difficult time installing the micro ATX motherboard into the SG02-F as it would collide with the hard drive cage, but while it was a snug fit, we eventually got it into place. After the motherboard was in place, the rest of the installation process was smooth. Below is the finished product.

Conclusion:

The Sugo SG02-F is a very interesting chassis. SilverStone has taken the award-winning SGO1 Evolution design and replaced much of the aluminum with steel, completely redesigned the front panel using plastic, and made some minor changes to the internal layout (such as with the hard drive cage to allow extended-length graphics cards), and are now offering this product in the sub-$80 (USD) price range. With the Sugo SG03 selling for $140 and the SG01 selling for about $120, the SG02-F is clearly the economical version. While it may be the cheapest of the batch, this is still another quality product by the talented engineers at SilverStone. If you are interested in the best looks and all of the top features, however, the Sugo SG03 (or the forthcoming SG04) will be the one to fit your fancy.

For those just interested in a micro ATX chassis and where price is the determining factor, the Sugo SG02-F is a superb chassis and does surpass every other SFF case we have seen in the $60~80 price range. The X-QPACK from Apevia (formerly known as Aspire) has been a popular Small Form Factor PC chassis that's been priced well and even that is more expensive than the SG02-F. The only complaints we have about the SG02-F is that initially we ran into some problems installing the ASRock motherboard -- but that issue was quickly worked out -- and we would prefer an aluminum front panel to the ABS/plastic design.