Silverstone SG09 mATX Small Form Factor Gaming Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
3,018 words · ~15 min read
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welcome to an unboxing that I've actually wanted to do for quite a while
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and I've received a number of requests to do now I know that I unboxed the F3
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mini a long time ago and I uh promised
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at the time of unboxing it that I would do an ITX build guide in that case and
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it took like months to get it done but I would like to remind you guys that I
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eventually did get it done so when I'm
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committing now to do a Micro ATX build guide in the
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sg9 I don't know how soon it'll get done
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but it uh will get done at some point so
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there you go I I am committing that to you Silverstone has to be one of the
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most underappreciated case manufacturers in a lot of ways so number one is you
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guys have no idea what it costs in terms
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of the tooling and design costs to bring
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a new case to Market it is a boatload of
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money and Silverstone releases new case
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designs all the time trying to constantly innovate and constantly do
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things differently they also do a lot of stuff that only has Niche appeal where
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they'll be like okay let's build like the craziest smallest ITX enclosure that
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can hold a Ballin graphics card like they did with the F3 mini and also cools
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exceptionally well like they did with the ft3 F3 mini or they'll take
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something they'll be like oh let's turn like the motherboard on its side 90 degrees and so they do like this crazy
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stuff and they take they take gambles because it costs them even if they never
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actually sell a case it still costs them hundreds of thousands of dollars to
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bring that case to Market which has nothing to do with even so so let's say
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even they sell a hundred case a 100 cases or a thousand cases like they they
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the margin doesn't justify the development cost in a lot of cases
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unless it really takes off so they they take gambles they bring things to Market
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and I think we have to appreciate that because they do unique stuff so there's
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your sort of History lesson on Silverstone and what they do and this
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folks is the sg9 which is intended to be
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a super small super awesome airf flow
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Micro ATX case so you can see airflow is
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the name of the game with this guy we've got huge vents on the front huge vents
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on the side all down the bottom here all up the top here huge vent on the top
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these look like very very large fan fan holes once we get it opened up we'll
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have a better idea what's going on and a 120 at the back so this is like an air
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cooling box so let's have a look at what Silverstone has to say for themselves
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and then we'll move on to the case itself so dual speed fan switch on the
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rear pane 120 mil fan included independent hard drive and SSD compartment behind the motherboard tray
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love it support supports full size CPU coolers up to 165 Ms air penetrator AP
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181 fan is included very nice very good fan slim optical drive bay is included
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right up at the top detachable front power supply fan filter so your power
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supply goes right in the front fullsize ATX power supply is supported dedicated
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triple GPU fan slots with removable filter and four expansion slots
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accommodate top end graphics cards up to 13.3 in Long which is about as long as
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they get these days guys full graphics card ample fence BL
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blah okay yeah let's move on all right the case itself so that is the front
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that is your power supply intake so I have a feeling we're going to find a
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very very unique internal layout here uh
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when I go get my screwdriver and I can take off the thumb screws on the back so
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exterior first the front is plastic so that is a plastic bezel however they're
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using that brushed plastic that I happen to really like so it's got kind of a
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like a brush feel to it the place where it's missing that finish
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is up here on that power supply intake as well as here where the slim slot
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loading optical drive goes so that's a
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little bit disappointing but it's not the end of the world it doesn't look too
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bad I'd love it if it was a metal front but this would be very expensive to do
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it a metal Silverstone logo here power and reset buttons on the left and the
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right two USB 3 front ports as well as front headphones and front microphone I
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already kind of showed this but it's okay so this is probably something to do
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with the uh the motherboard tray back mounted SSD Mount so you can see how
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much room there is behind the motherboard tray so I'm expecting to find pretty good Cable Management in
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there this up here looks like it has a
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little like uh handle here so you can yeah there you go you can get that uh
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get that whoopsy daisies get that out of there so it was an included 180 mm air
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penetrator if I recall correctly yeah that's a 180 mm air penetrator that's
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blowing air down onto the CPU area as well as down onto the back of the
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graphics card where it'll be exhausted this way so they're going for a little bit of a different airflow layout with
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this case go ahead and snap that back into place then on this side there's
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that triple fan thing that they set up so it looks like a 120 and dual 80s
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that's going to be dedicated to cooling the graphics card as well as more
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ventilation here so these were a little bit tight from the factory but loosening
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them with a screwdriver has got that taken care of and this is something that
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I haven't really seen before it looks like we can remove pretty much every
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panel except for a little bit down here to almost completely
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open up the case for for installations so you know what let's just see if
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there's any documentation I mean with the uh uh-oh I think it was the gd8 as
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well as the F3 mini a couple Silverstone cases I've looked at recently they
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specifically said in the instructions this is a unique case don't even bother
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trying to assemble your system in here without some help so yeah something
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something carefully prepared by yeah and they do such good manuals so they're
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like yep here here's all the different things here's a little addendum this is
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how you disassemble it blown up view of it how it goes back together so 80 or 92
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mil fans on the side there reset button 180 mil fan okay I'll be back in a
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moment baby's crying okay so I removed all the screws from the back but I
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realized there's actually one more that you have to remove here to get the top
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cover off so we were in the middle of figuring out how the whole thing comes
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apart so this is sort of one big
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u-shaped piece that all comes off and I see much like the F3 this case could
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present some challenges even for experienced Builders because of the
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unique way that it all fits together so
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this guy is done with two separate screws so you can either take it off or
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not take it off it's totally up to you and by two separate screws what I meant
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to say was three separate screws cuz there's
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one more on the bottom here there we go
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so let's take those off and then so we can either remove those or not remove
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them and we are going to do that just for the sake of getting this going here
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so you can do either a 120 and you can see there's an air penetrator included
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120 and 280s or 92s or you can do 380s
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or 3 92s it's totally up to you I hope
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that I'm correct about that and I'm totally wrong so it's a 120 and
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uh 110 blah blah blah blah backwards
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compatible with 92 and then 280 yeah it
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claims to be yeah okay oh there they are there there I see the holes but it doesn't do 80s so you can do 92 92 92 or
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120 92 92 120 80 80 and this case uses
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extremely fine fan filters so they're almost more like a nylon than an actual
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plastic you can see there's some like there's some shiftiness to them here so
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these should be doing a really good job
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of uh sorry just got to check the direction there these should do a really
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good job of filtering even very fine particles out of the air that goes into
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your case which is important for that con concept of positive air pressure so
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you can see the way they've configured these fans this guy's an intake this big
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guy up here the big 180 mm is also okay
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baby is also an intake and then the only exhaust is this 120 at the back as well
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as the power supply itself so that means you're going to have overall positive
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air flow combined with filtered intakes you should have a very dust-free
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internal environment very solid construction on this guy overall like
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you can see there's no there's no flex of the materials given that there's not
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a whole lot to speak of here so it's quite a thick steel all the corners are
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rounded like that so you're not going to risk cutting yourself or anything I
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remember when I used to work with cheap cases all the time I always used to have
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the cuts just all over my hands and uh you know people ask me what's going on
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and I'd be like no no I'm fine don't worry uh on the back we've got 2 by two
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so four total 2 1/2 in Drive mounts then
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we have some additional optional accessories which I'm just going to have
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to go ahead and cheat and look at the manual and I'll be back in a minute as I
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said before the guide included is so detailed it goes through and gives you I
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mean it gives you great little tips these are the kinds of things you never
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find in installation guides it has a dedicated step called we recommend
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deciding whether or not to install the right side fan now and then there's
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another one that's like awesome as well because it basically just says this is
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this is the point where you need to start thinking about cable routing
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before you before you keep going make sure you're doing things tily I don't
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remember where it is anyway on the back you mount two 3 and 1/2 in drives here
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and you can see they've given ample thought see right there little bit of
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air flows coming right over the hard drives so that they're going to be
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positioned in such a way that they're going to get Cooling and then the bottoms of the hard drives have a little
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bit of space down here where you can route the wires that you need around
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here these guys right here hold those 4 2 and 1/2 in and again it doesn't really
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matter that much whether you have that much air flow over here so I personally
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would I really like this design it's great so you can put that 80 mil fan
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here that is not a filtered intake however it's uh yeah is not so that's
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probably one that I wouldn't really recommend using let it be like a passive exhaust or install an exhaust fan there
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as another option so it gives you instructions for removing the power
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supply cage itself so you can see the way the power supply is going to be
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positioned we'll have this plug right
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here which is a right angle plug plugged into the back of the power supply it'll
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intake at the front of the case and then it'll exhaust out the side of the case
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right there so it'll come right out the side and none of that air is ever going
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to affect the cooling of the internal components your slot low DVD drive goes
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up here and guys remember we are going to be doing a build guide in this case
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so don't worry if you're if you're missing any of these steps now that it's
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down to the bare skeleton you can see our internal connectors so we've got an
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internal USB 3 as well as all your usual front panel connectors including front
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audio we've got fan connectors for the included fans and you can also see here
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just how much space there is they also give you fan fantastic tips like a lot
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of people ask me this um and the answer
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I usually give is well it depends on your case they say oh I have a I have a
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case fan over my graphics card area should I use it as an exhaust or as an
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intake Silverstone gives you examples of a variety of different fan
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configurations that you can find on graphics cards which hopefully I will
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component size limitations they cover all of that as well as here we go more
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component size limitations types of caes that are optimal so they recommend using
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Straight cables they show you types of CPU coolers that are recommended there you go so they say okay this this is how
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you do it this kind or this kind this is how you do it and they let you sort of
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make your own best judgment that way they also tell you you know don't use
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two cards in SLI or Crossfire that are sandwiched too close
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together so the way that they recommend is say for example you got a GTX 590
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which is going to exhaust some out the back and out here so you'd want to use a
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couple here as an intake and then this one as an exhaust and let the pass mive
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exhaust go out the back of the io for that side motherboard tray is fairly
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solid about what I'd expect from Silverstone and I think that pretty much
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covers it so the idea was for them to do a microatx case which is capable of an
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SL or Crossfire configuration within I
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think they set out a design spec for themselves of 23 L total internal
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capacity remember guys this case is probably smaller internally than a bit
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Phoenix Prodigy and actually accommodates a pretty high-end
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configuration now it doesn't have those same liquid cooling options available
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but you would still be able to get away with a thick 120 mm radiator here and
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with some more creativity you could probably do like an 80 mil rad there and
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who knows you could even maybe ceiling mount something if you put it sort of
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over here on the side and figured out a way to mount it so there's a lot of room
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in here for all kinds of cool stuff thank you for checking out my unboxing
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and first look at the sg9 from Silverstone don't forget to subscribe to
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lus Tech tips for more unboxings reviews and I'm going to have a hard time
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putting this back together and other computer videos I think there's one more
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thing I haven't showed you that I would like to show you before we do wrap
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things up here is at the back how do you actually connect your power supply via
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the outside it goes right there so that's that passer that I showed you
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that connects to the internal power supply which goes here and then you can
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see from the front so you better make sure you pick a power supply that's not
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you know like gray and I actually did end up forgetting a couple things guys
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so they even include things like a little duct if you want to use a 25 mm
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thick fan on the side um so yeah you can bridge the gap so
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that it gets a little bit closer to your GPU delivers the air rate to it includes
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uh rubber feet for the bottom so those are super super grippy which is good all
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your included screws can't believe I didn't cover this when I did the actual
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unboxing uh USB 3 to usb2 adapter if your motherboard doesn't have front USB
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3 some cable ties ah this is cool so single Mox to three three pins for those
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three fans right there as well as oh
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neat it's a bracket for converting from 180 to 140 mm and this is for the slim
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opticle okay now don't forget to subscribe oh yeah and
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these These are evidently for adhesive spacers for 9 and 1 12 in slim optical
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drive installation so you get four of them