For such a high quality chassis manufacturer, Silverstone also does a good job of making products that are affordable. One of the key personnel in driving the ‘affordable luxury' message is Tony Ou. We managed to catch up with him on the eve of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. He was very excited about the launch of the SG10.
It seems like only yesterday that the KitGuru film crew were munching noodles with Tony Ou in Chung Ho City. At the time, we had just toured Silverstone's head office and the focus was on MASSIVE chassis like the TJ12. For CES 2013, Silverstone is pushing in a different direction. We will get on to some of the other designs shortly, but we're going to start with the SG10.
Building on the success of the SG09, Silverstone wanted to evolve the look and feel – without compromising on engineering principals.
That meant keeping the price nice and low (possibly down under £90 like the SG09), while at the same time making the unit look/feel more expensive.
Overall, the process is very similar to that used by BMW or Mercedes when launching a new car. What you're really looking for is not to re-invent the wheel as much as ensure that the new wheel is much more desirable than the old one.
Internally, the SG10 can take pretty much any graphic card you care to throw at it. In fact, it can accommodate two of them! The PCI-Express regulations state that a graphic card cannot be longer than 13.2 inches, which is 33.5 cm. The SG10 can swallow two of these bad boys without as much as a burp!
That speaks volumes about the airflow that Tony Ou's people have designed into the new chassis design.
Overall, we love the new front panel. We only wish there was an SD slot – but it's easy enough to add an external USB hub that would also give you SD etc access.
KitGuru says: Yet another beautiful design from the chaps at Chung Ho City. And ‘Yes' it does take a micro ATX chassis.
Comment below or in the KitGuru forums.