Silverstone MILO 12, review in Spanish

The first ITX tower that the Taiwanese brand launched on the market Silverstone It was the Sugo SG05 in 2009. This tower was characterized by its compact size and its elegant design, which allowed it to house high-end components in a small space. More than 20 years have passed and Silverstone continues to innovate in the ITX tower market, launching models such as the SG06, SG07, SG08 and SG13, among others.

Continuing with this long history, today we bring you one of the brand’s latest launches, the MILO 12. A compact model designed for users looking for a team small and powerfulwith a matte black finish that gives it a elegant and sophisticated aestheticin addition to a configuration designed to maximize the performance of our components thanks to its design in separate compartments for CPU and GPU.

Before we begin, we thank Silverstone for providing the chassis for the review.

The Silverstone MILO 12

As we have already advanced in the introduction, the MILO 12 is a tower of mini-ITX format, with a compact, minimalist and elegant design. Available matt black only, Silverstone wanted to play with different textures to add details to the design, especially on the front. With a total volume of 15.6Lthe MILO 12 appears to us as a fairly compact tower, with dimensions of 393 x 105 x 378mm and a weight of 4.89kg.

We start with the unboxing. Next to the tower (very well protected) comes a small box in which we will find the support to use it vertically. Also, once we remove the panel that gives access to the motherboard area, we will find a bag with a few flangesthe screws typical for installing the power supply, motherboard, and storage drives, as well as screws for a slim optical driveone of the highlights of this tower.

In addition, we will also find 4 adhesive feet of a good height, in case we want to use the tower in a horizontal position, and finally another of the great successes of this cabinet, the PCIe 4.0 riser.

Let’s continue with the tower. We start with a front with a very good design, made up of a steel grill area and another part in which it plays with different rough textures and with a brushed effect. Unfortunately, and this is one of the few buts that we found in the tower, said area is made of a very good quality plastic but, in the price range in which the tower moves, it falls a little short. compared to other options available on the market. Even so, we will have a more than correct assortment of I/O ports: USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C2 usb3.0, combo jack for audio and microphone and power button and a leds system status indicator. The front is fixed by a set of tabs, giving a good feeling of solidity.

The rest of the body of the tower is made of steel, as well as the upper, lower and side panels. All the panels have a good amount of perforated surface in a rather aesthetic pattern, as well as dust filters on both side panels. Once removed, we will find a very well thought-out chassis in which we highlight the differentiation in two areas, one for our set of power supply and CPU, and another exclusively for our graphics card.

And this is another of the strengths of the MILO 12, the GPU support: we can use graphics cards up to 3 slots, 160mm high and 345mm long.

All this area has been clearly designed to offer maximum performance to current graphics cards in which we find more and more a heatsink design. flow through, that is, in which the back of our graph reveals a good part of the dissipation block so that the air can flow through it. The MILO 12 goes even further in this respect by incorporate a hole for a 140mm fan that will help us to extract the air passing through the heatsink, something that will be very useful especially in high-end models such as the Nvidia Founders Edition. Also comment that the design chosen for the PCIe 4.0 riser built-in works perfectly, with a more than simple installation (it only uses a couple of screws and little else) and that in our tests it has not given any problem, running at all times in Gen 4 mode and without loss of performance.

Finally, in this area we will find a support for the adjustable graphics card, easy to use and very useful to keep our card in a correct position without forcing its connection with the riser due to its weight. Below this area we will find the opening for the motherboard tray for a comfortable installation or maintenance of the cooling of the CPU and the rear M.2 SSD of our motherboard, if it has one.

Let’s continue with the options for storage units. We will find space for four units: Two in the upper part of the motherboard area, another one in the front of the tower, behind its panel, and another one in the lower area, next to the connection cable to the power supply. The installation of the disks will be carried out by removing the trays pre-installed in the tower and, then, screwing each unit to one of these trays.

Another of the interesting points of the tower is the option to install a slim optical drive from up to 9.5mmwhich will sit in the available slot under the included SFX font adapter.

Speaking of the included adapter, this will allow us to install power supplies SFX and SFX-L format. If we do not want to use a font of this format, we can install one ATX power supply from up to 160mm of length. As installation advice, we recommend that you use custom cables if you plan to use a source of this format, since space for wiring, as in most mini-ITX towers, is scarce. Also keep in mind that using an ATX power supply will eliminate the possibility of installing the aforementioned optical bay.

Regarding the ventilation options of the MILO 12, we can install an 80mm fan on the front and another 140mm on the back of our graphics card, as we have previously discussed.

Lastly, for the air cooling of our CPU we can use heat sinks a maximum height of 77mm, measures that open up a fairly wide range of options, having used in our review the Thermalright AXP120-x67 heatsink together with an AMD Ryzen 7 7700x CPU. Due to space constraints and Silverstone’s focus on two separate chambers, we will not find options for liquid cooling.

At the time of finishing our assembly, we will be able to choose between two variations when it comes to orienting our tower: portrait or landscape. Switching between them is as simple as using either the base included or add the four rubber feet to the side cover, without the need to disassemble or screw anything at all. The included base is made up of two pieces of plastic and non-slip rubber, fitted in a cross pattern, while the rubber feet already include adhesive and are of a more than correct height so as not to obstruct the airflow from the bottom of the tower.

User experience and conclusions

As you can see, the installation process of our system It is not complex and quite intuitive.. Even so, before venturing out to assemble your equipment, we recommend that you review the assembly instructions that you will find at this link, since they are not included with the tower.

The segment of console-type mini-ITX towers continues to add options to choose from, each with its strengths and weaknesses, and the Silverstone MILO 12 is not exempt from them.

As strong points we have a very good design and concept of separate areas, something that it really works. In addition to this, the hardware support is excellentwith options such as the bay for optical drives that we will find in few towers today, along with a selection of ports of entry and more than good storage options.

Instead, we have before us a tower whose recommended price is $189 (without taxes) and that we can find on Amazon for €244. In this price range We expect something more in terms of the chosen materials, especially for the front of the tower and the base. And it is that despite it has a very good design (although this is somewhat more subjective), the game of textures fails to hide a feeling of plastic that is not commensurate with the price, something applicable to the included base despite the fact that it does its job perfectly. The other point to improve the tower are the filters included in the side panelsvery useful to keep our equipment free of dust but we would like to be given the option of disassembling them to further improve air flow or simply to clean them.

That being said, the final result is still excellent. Silverstone proposes a tower designed for get the most out of state-of-the-art components without losing performance along the way, with excellent support that knows how to offer a perfect balance between functionality and design. A excellent option for those users who are looking for a compact but powerful equipment for gaming or daily use in a reduced space.

For all this, we awarded the Game It Design and Recommended Product accolades to the Silverstone MILO 12.