We love small PCs. Specifically, we love small, powerful PCs that give us our high-end gaming fix while not taking up much space. One approach to this is to buy a relatively complete, barebones small PC. The champion of this approach is Shuttle, with their roughly cube-shaped PCs, such as the SN27P2 or the company's SD37P2.Shuttle's tiny PCs are great unless you want to add more expansion cards or bigger graphics cards. The next step up, if you want more slots, is to move to a microATX motherboard and case.

Because microATX motherboards are necessarily larger than the tiny, two-slot boards built into Shuttle's small-form-factor PCs, the cases are larger. Most microATX cases are compromises, trading off internal space for external footprint. This often means that microATX can't accept full-size cards. There are a number of exceptions to this. One of our favorite microATX cases to date has been the SilverStone SG01. Since the original SG01 shipped, SilverStone has made a number of small refinements, but the basic design has been the same.

The problem with the SG01 is that building a system in it is a relatively tedious exercise. Worse, once you've built a system using an SG01, trying to upgrade it is a royal pain. You have to remove screws, brackets and move fans and cables around. Trying to pull out the hard drive cage—and get it back in—can be seriously frustrating.

To answer some of those criticisms, as well as to reduce the footprint of a microATX system, SilverStone developed the SG03. The SG03 is a micro tower case, but slightly wider than most micro towers, and it can accommodate large cards. Can the SG01 make building and upgrading a small-form-factor system easier? Let's build one and find out, first taking a tour around the new case. — Continue reading on ExtremeTech.com

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