Installation and Case Cooling
For the installation portion of our review of the SG07 case, we installed one of our LGA775 mini ITX test systems that features an Intel E7400 processor, Zotac 9300-ITX WiFi motherboard, 4GB 1066MHz memory, Gigabyte GTS 250 graphics card, slim Blu-ray drive, and a Western Digital 160GB SATA hard drive. After removing the top cover, we removed the 180mm fan so we would have better access to the interior of the case.
Next, we removed the front optical bay cage by unscrewing four screws that attach the cage to the chassis. Simple stuff.
Then we moved on to removing the hard drive cage. The cage is held on to the chassis with two screws.
We used four screws to install the mini ITX motherboard, CPU, memory, and heatsink. This was very easy after we removed the 180mm fan from the top of the case.
We used four of the included hard drive screws to install our 160GB SATA hard drive into the removable hard drive cage you see in the photo. Make sure not to tighten down the screws too much or it will reduce the effectiveness of the rubber grommets.
We used four tiny screws to install our slim Blu-ray drive into the removable optical drive cage. It’s helpful to have a magnetic screwdriver on hand to do this portion of the installation because the screws might not go in easily without one.
We installed the removable optical drive cage into the SG07 with four screws and then connected the power and data cables.
To install any PCI cards, you will first need to take off the bracket above the slots on the back of the case. This bracket is used to secure the cards to the chassis and ensure they don’t move during operation.
We installed a GTS 250 in this case , which had tons of room to attach one six-pin power connector. You can see there are several inches behind the graphics card still available which should be a good indication to consumers that this case can handle cards up to 12 inches in length.
I installed all the power and data cables to the motherboard, hard drive, optical drive, and graphics card. Cable management is a huge mess as you can see, but there aren’t many options for where they can be moved to. There is a little room behind the graphics card, but that involves moving a lot of the unused power connectors. It probably would have been a good idea to make the PSU modular, which is something I will suggest in my feedback to them after I complete this review.
I cleaned up the cables a bit more and reattached the 180mm exhaust fan over the motherboard. It attached easily and still left plenty of room behind the fan and Blu-ray drive.
After about 40 minutes, we did our best to clean up the cables, but you can still see a lot of messy cables around the motherboard. Thankfully we used a low-profile heatsink or we would have had a lot harder time getting any airflow around the CPU. The large PSU in the front of the case really takes up a large amount of real estate that could be used for extra hard drives or fans. Mini ITX systems usually don’t have a lot of heat issues, but cable management is still critical in keeping everything stable under long periods of times under load.
