Build Components

As we mentioned earlier in the review as well as looking at the chassis itself we also wanted to see exactly what the system is capable of holding. The first step for us was to choose a suitable PSU to build a system around.


For this the component the decision was simple, SilverStone build the chassis and know exactly what is required to make a PSU which will function well in a relatively confined environment. We therefore opted for their 700W Decathlon model which is a modular PSU... an added bonus in terms of keeping wiring to a minimum.

NOTE: The case specifications say it will support PSU’s up to 1000W.

Next up was the CPU. The Intel Core-i7 920 D0 is priced very attractively at the moment and offers great performance which makes its selection a no-brainer for most systems. For our build as we were aiming to push the SG04 as hard as possible in terms of thermal performance we chose to use the 975 but have included the 920 thermal results for reference.


Due to the design of the SG04 and specifically the location of the PSU there is one main restriction when building a system, the height of the CPU cooler. The cooler can be no more than 82mm tall which makes a number of high performance coolers incompatible. Scythe offer a great little product though, the Shuriken Rev.B, which is compatible with every recent CPU available including the i7-975.


We recently reviewed the X58-T3H6 and we were very impressed by its features and performance, offering almost everything a full ATX board does. It was therefore an easy choice for this build.


Corsair offer a wide selection of DDR3 and it is always highly reliable and never gives us compatibility issues. That was the main reason we opted for a set of their Dominator 1600MHz sticks with timings of 8-8-8-24 on 3 x 2 GB Modules. Our secondary reason for choosing these sticks is their height; we wanted to see if the SG04 had any issues with larger memory sticks.


The UltraDrive ME is based on the impressive Indilinx Barefoot controller and recently scored very highly in our SSD roundup. The high performance and low power/heat characteristics of an SSD make it the ideal choice for an enthusiast system in a small chassis.

Sapphire 4870 2GB Vapor-X


For optimal performance in games which do not feature a Crossfire profile we opted for the Sapphire 4870 2GB Vapor-X as our primary graphics card. Multi-GPU testing was performed using this card with a standard 4870 1GB so that we could monitor the temperatures on a standard ATI Reference cooler compared to Sapphires enhanced model.


The final component in our build is a Sony Blu-Ray drive; this unit is one of the cheapest on the market and is ideal for those who want to build a media/HTPC in the SG04.