THE BEST MINI-ITX CASES TO CREATE SMALL AND POWERFUL GAMING PCS

It is certainly not the news of the day that many companies are aiming to change their perspective in response to the ever-increasing need for living room PCs or at least small in size, without sacrificing performance for this. One of them, the gorgeous and powerful Corsair One has shown the world that bringing good, well-designed pre-assemblies to the market is not madness.

Today, however, we would like to focus on the most successful SFF mini-ITX cases of this 2020 . The market for pre-assembled products with such small dimensions is still far from being able to answer the question, so the do it yourself mantra still reigns supreme.  hollyhealthfitness

Waiting to find out what the protagonists of CES 2021 will reserve for us, we have chosen for you the best five SFF houses of the past year. We will not elect an absolute winner because our review wants to be above all a guide to the conscious choice , trying to show what one is better than the other and the reasons why it would be good to look elsewhere.

Razer Tomahawk ITX

We begin our review with the youngest of them all, quietly presented together with his mid-Tower brother, the Razer Tomahawk. It is a restyling of the Lian Li TU150 , with the same frame and some minor changes mainly aesthetic and in the cable management . A solid, elegant case that offers what it promises: a low volume for small configurations . Instead of a now traditional sandwich configuration with motherboard on one side and GPU on the other, here we prefer a more conservative mold, to the " Cougar QBX". This allows the company to save on the production of a riser for the GPU. The air intakes are located on the upper and lower areas, also allowing to accommodate a 240 mm AIO.

Supported SFX and GPU power supplies up to at 320 mm . The RGB LEDs placed on the bottom are beautiful, but let's move on to the sore points. To get the new Tomahawk you have to spend just under 200 Euros. Not that it is not worth them, from many points of view, but it is a price range with a fierce competition to say the least.

CoolerMaster NR200

The real surprise of this 2020. Nobody expected it, yet Cooler Master has made his "little" big hit by presenting a stupendous SFF mini-ITX, with a capacity not of the smallest (18 liters), but let's talk about a product from less than 100 Euros . An exceptional price point given the build quality, the type of solution but also the price positioning of its direct opponents.

Aesthetically it marries the communicative line of the Cooler Master Master Case SL600Mand we are on a traditional type design, without riser cable, but with a decidedly more generous airflow than you might expect, offering 120 mm double slot intake on the top and bottom, as well as a side window if you choose the economic version with aluminum panel. The only flaw: it cannot accommodate heatsinks higher than 155 mm per CPU.

NZXT H1

Without doubt the most interesting solution of the group, from more than one point of view.

This is a mini-ITX case that promises to revolutionize the world of Small Form Factors and we really have to say that it does it excellently. The dimension are very similar to those of Corsair One , allowing you to house full-size GPUs inside. The airflow is really great and the "Series X" look really suits any environment. If it is true that its list price of 400 Euro is not among the most accessible, it should be considered overall as a real barebones with a tempered glass front panel and inside a 650W NZXT power supply in SFX format 80 Plus certified. Gold, an AM4 / LGA1151 liquid AIO cooler with a 140mm radiator and GPU displacement riser, all included in the price.

It is therefore, after all, a much higher quality / price ratio than the average in the SFF sector, considering the costs of the first of the class, which fluctuate around 200-300 Euros for the casing alone.

Cooler Master NC100

Now let's move on to an outsider , being a NUC type mini pc case. We are talking about a case of just 7.9 liters with an internal structure completely designed around the NUC Compute Element H and able to host, alongside the main unit, even discrete GPUs with a thickness of 2.5 slots and a length of up to 320 mm. It supports SFX power supplies and comes with two pre-installed 92mm fans.

The price is 200 euros for the case alone and here the obligatory considerations start. While it is true that inserting a NUC in such a case solves the dissipation problem, as there will be no puzzling to find a sufficiently low but at the same time performing heatsink, no other reason comes to mind to prefer this type of configuration over a more flexible SFF mini-ITX with similar capacity, such as the Thor-Zone's highly anticipated Mjolnir or the award-winning Louqe Ghost S1, or even better Dan-Cases' Dan A4.

Fractal Era ITX

Certainly could not miss the beauty of the party, the Fractal Era ITX. We are talking about a case of about 16 liters, not among the most compact and above all with a traditional type form factor, certainly more bulky than a NZXT H1. The undisputed quality of this brand is known to all, Node 202 has definitely made school among the SFF, but with Era ITX Fractal Design aims to be the protagonist in the living room rather than to blend in.

We have five color combinations available and the top lid to choose between tempered glass and a beautiful wooden top. The assembly is taken care of in every aspect and you will not find a single visible screw . There are dust filters on each intakefor air and a fairly good internal clearance.

You can mount tower heatsinks up to 120mm high, supports ATX power supplies in combination with 120mm radiators and up to 210mm GPUs or SFX-type PSUs with 240mm radiators and GPUs up to 295mm. The real sore point is the airflow, as with the top mounted the performance will be sufficient. The situation changes by removing the top panel and leaving the dust-proof mesh layer as the only obstacle.

In conclusion, we are talking about a one-of-a-kind piece of design , something different and of extreme quality, but for just under 170 euros in terms of performance there are certainly better choices.

 technologyify          worldbeautytips          technologyford        techiesin    blog4techies

 

Popular posts from this blog

Webinar marketing how to earn authority and trust using webinars

FRITZ! BOX 7590 AND FRITZ! REPEATER 2: HOW TO SET UP A MESH NETWORK

How to build a digital marketing strategy