A Mini-ITX case that holds full size everything else? A budget case for well... people on a budget!
Here's the spec: Material Dimension (W / H / D) Weight M/B Type 5.25" Drive Bay 3.5" Drive Bay 2.5" SATA HDD Drive Bay I/O Panel Expansion Slots Cooling System Power Supply Maximum Compatibility | Appearance: Aluminium & Polymer, Case body: Steel Alloy 240 x 207.4 x 401.4mm 3.3 kg / 7.3 lb Mini-ITX 1 3 (internal) 4 (internal, converted from two 3.5" bays) USB 3.0 x 1 (internal), USB 2.0 x 2, Mic x 1, Audio x 1 2 Front 120x25mm, HDD 120x25mm (optional), side 80x15mm Standard ATX PS2 VGA card length: 343.0 mm, CPU cooler height: 65.0 mm |
Design:
Starting on the front fascia, we find I/O on both sides and a big aluminium plate in the middle with the Cooler Master logo embedded into it. The I/O on the left is the 2 USB 2.0 ports surrounding the microphone and headphone jacks. This in itself is good in the sense that we have a nice distance between the USB ports for those big chunky connectors that might otherwise limit you to just one of the ports.
| As you can see on the right we have 1 USB 3.0 ports along with the reset button, power button and the power & activity LED's. For many people the buttons are a big deal, me being one of them. They can either have too much or too little travel before clicking or be too wobbly or something. These buttons have a good amount of travel, maybe not enough for it too be perfect but overall I couldn't complain. As shown in both the photo's on the right, the intakes for the front 120mm fan are all around the aluminium face plate. You will also notice that the front fascia is removable without the hassle of attached cables. I can't fault the front panel in any way really but remember aluminium stains easily(top right). |   |
Moving around the side panels and the back we find lots of ventilation on both the sides, enough to supply fresh air to any sort of graphics card or cpu you decide to put in the system. We also find a large essentially double meshed cut out on the top for if you want to mount your power supply fan up. I will go further into detail on this as we go inside the case.
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Being an ITX based case, the small form factor makes it near impossible to fit a full size ATX power supply in but they have, sort of. The power supply will bulge out at the back by about an inch. Personally I do understand that they have done this to lower the overall volume of the case however I am not a big fan of this AT ALL. With the power supply sticking further out than the rest of the case, not only do you have that to think about, but the huge power cable as well, meaning that it will look exceptionally odd and be horrible for cabling. I would have much rather they lengthen the already somewhat long in comparison case and used the rest of the space to make it more water cooling friendly. That or create some sort of section at the back to hide all the actual I/O connections with a cable management style rubber cover.
Moving back to the front and taking off the front fascia we find the 120mm fan and the I/O panels along with the 5.25" drive bay. Notice that the fan does not come with a dust filter and so you will need to by your own, unless you love dust that is.
| A few things I like about the front section are: starting with the 5.25" bay cover, the aluminium isn't just a plate but it is actually curved around the edges for a smoother finish on the front. This is essentially much harder to do than just punch out a rectangle and stick it to a plastic bay cover but it gives that final touch that compliments the rest of the front fascia nicely.  Finally we have the fact that the audio jacks and USB 2.0 jacks are modular. This is not a special feature by any stretch of the imagination but in an ITX build, one unnecessary cable could be the difference between perfection and disaster. If the system is going to be for a HTPC and doesn't need front panel audio, this is a great way to remove unwanted extra cables. |  The next thing I liked was the fact that it was so easy to remove the I/O sections from the rest of the chassis. Granted the right side was a little hard than the left but they were both still relatively easy to remove with just a single clip on the inside of the case. Why is this important to me? well when building your system, nothing is more annoying than cables all over the place. Especially in an ITX.  |
As you can see from the photo above we have moved onto the inside of the case. Here we find the tool-less 5.25" drive bay and the 3x 3.5" HDD rails. The hard drive mounting system also comes with 2 converters that allow 2x 2.5" drives onto each drive bay giving you a good amount of choice for storage. Part of me feels as if a lot of space is wasted here though for example there is no mounting system on the floor underneath the bottom bay that could be perfect for your boot SSD or something. What we do find on the floor however is a good range of cable tie loops to manage the mess of you cables you will have to deal with in whatever build you do with this case.
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| The internal cooling designs for us were both love and hate at the same time. While we loved the simplicity of adding the second 120mm fan, the 80mm part was disastrous. Say goodbye to any 25mm standard thickness 80mm fan, this only fits around 22/23mm thick fans. Heart-wrenchingly close. Would 3mm extra thickness have hurt anything? not to mention the s**t fan. |  |
For anyone who cant think of the right fans for this particular case I would recommend a high static pressure fan such as the Noctua NF-F12 due to how densely packed everything will be once you fill it up with hardware.
| The last few Points I want to make is that the case will fit 34.3cm GPU's and so if you were to fit a powerful graphics card, SFX PSU's just don't cut it. Making the ATX power supply a welcomed feature for this case. To add to this if you were to put your power supply fan down, you could do what many other cases have done and use a top down cooler without a fan, using the PSU fan to exhaust the hot air. |  |
Performance:
Most of this I have actually covered in the design section however I will go back over the main points. The case comes with 2 fans, the front 120mm and the side 80mm. I would replace the 80mm or take it out all together as it is one of the worst sounding fans I have used in years, the 120 on the other hand is bearable. It also has spacing to place another 120mm fan which is placed in a good location for airflow.
Ventilation is actually quite good in this system and ties in quite nicely with the graphics card size capabilities and the full size PSU mount. I could see a pretty powerful system being put in here and running somewhat cool, maybe...
It does however not feature any form of filtering so stock up on compressed air.
The system fits 65mm high cpu coolers, the Noctua NH-L12 is 66.
I will leave it up to you to decide whether you want to take the risk to fit a high performing heatsink in here that can be fanless using just the fan from the power supply when mounted fan down.
Storage is also on the good side with 3 bays and 2 adaptors for 2.5" drives. The full 5.25" bay also gives you a number of options you wouldn't have been able to have with a slimline or slot loading drive bay. My only gripe with this section is I really do feel that the storage good have actually been improved to fit more in, even if they were to put some sort of extra mounting options in the 5.25" section.
Ventilation is actually quite good in this system and ties in quite nicely with the graphics card size capabilities and the full size PSU mount. I could see a pretty powerful system being put in here and running somewhat cool, maybe...
It does however not feature any form of filtering so stock up on compressed air.
The system fits 65mm high cpu coolers, the Noctua NH-L12 is 66.
I will leave it up to you to decide whether you want to take the risk to fit a high performing heatsink in here that can be fanless using just the fan from the power supply when mounted fan down.
Storage is also on the good side with 3 bays and 2 adaptors for 2.5" drives. The full 5.25" bay also gives you a number of options you wouldn't have been able to have with a slimline or slot loading drive bay. My only gripe with this section is I really do feel that the storage good have actually been improved to fit more in, even if they were to put some sort of extra mounting options in the 5.25" section.
Conclusion:
The Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced case is in my opinion quite a nice looking case. It has many features that could lead up to it being used in quite a powerful system. The integration of a full size ATX PSU mount to go along with the extremely large graphics card compatibility team up very nicely, but many other parts of it, just don't.
The limitation with the side fan, the overall low-ish cooler height and the next to no water cooling potential lead me to feel like it was almost like 2 completely different people designed different parts of the system. One the one half the case features exactly what the customer wants, but on the other half it falls just short from the finish line to put it simply.
I think, had the case been almost exactly 2mm bigger in every dimension, I think I could have happily seen myself using this as my personal case for in it I see huge potential, It's just not ready yet.
But then I look at the price. While price does not change anything about the case itself, it does change the way you look at things. You see most the faults you find in this case, you find in other ITX cases that are 3 to 4 times the price. What this means for the verdict is that although it wont change the rating we give this case, the value of it far exceeds what we would have given it with a single glance. All in all, this case has its good points and it has its bad points, but for the price you cant go wrong and so this case just wins the Bronze award for its 15/20 total.
The limitation with the side fan, the overall low-ish cooler height and the next to no water cooling potential lead me to feel like it was almost like 2 completely different people designed different parts of the system. One the one half the case features exactly what the customer wants, but on the other half it falls just short from the finish line to put it simply.
I think, had the case been almost exactly 2mm bigger in every dimension, I think I could have happily seen myself using this as my personal case for in it I see huge potential, It's just not ready yet.
But then I look at the price. While price does not change anything about the case itself, it does change the way you look at things. You see most the faults you find in this case, you find in other ITX cases that are 3 to 4 times the price. What this means for the verdict is that although it wont change the rating we give this case, the value of it far exceeds what we would have given it with a single glance. All in all, this case has its good points and it has its bad points, but for the price you cant go wrong and so this case just wins the Bronze award for its 15/20 total.
Verdict:
Rating: 6/10
Value: 9/10
Value: 9/10
