**Case Review: A Surprisingly Exceptional ITX Enclosure**

The ITX case I'm reviewing today is an interesting one, with several unique features that set it apart from other cases on the market. One of the most notable features is its PCI Express mode switchability. In this case, I noticed that there are at least three or four instances where users reported intermittent crashes and black screens when using a PCIe 4 GPU in PCIe 3 mode. However, these issues seemed to disappear when they stopped using their PCIe 3 riser cable in PCIe 3 mode. This has led me to advise against using the PCIe riser and instead recommending that the GPU be plugged directly into the motherboard, unless one is savvy enough to navigate this complexity.

Another notable feature of this case is its M.2 connectivity options. The ITX enclosure comes with a generous amount of M.2 slots, which can accommodate various storage devices such as SATA drives or PCIe NVMe SSDs. This is particularly useful for users who require high-speed storage solutions without the need for traditional SATA drives. Additionally, the case's front panel connections are somewhat unusual, featuring two USB 3 ports and a reset button, but it's worth noting that the power button doesn't have the Cooler Master logo emblazoned on it, which is an understated touch.

The case also features two and a half inch drive bays, although I was surprised to find that these drives are not as tall as I expected. The clearance in the top of the case between the radiator and power supply bracket appears to be just enough for two or three 2.5-inch drives to fit, although it may require some creativity to accommodate multiple drives at once.

The airflow design of this case is also noteworthy. With a single 120mm fan configured as an exhaust at the top, the system was surprisingly quiet and well-cooled. The addition of two 140mm fans on either side brought in fresh air from the sides, while the GPU drew in air from the bottom and exhausted it out both sides. This airflow design helped to keep the CPU cool relative to what one would expect from a traditional ATX desktop system.

In terms of noise levels, this case is remarkably quiet, barely above a whisper even when running demanding tasks such as game benchmarks. The only potential issue that might arise in the future is some vibration from the top 120mm fan, which can be mitigated with a little poster putty.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the build quality and features of this ITX case at its price point. Cooler Master has done an impressive job engineering this enclosure, which will undoubtedly appeal to users looking for a well-designed, feature-rich case without breaking the bank.

**Test Results**

During testing, the noise and thermals were surprisingly good. The single 120mm fan configured as an exhaust at the top was barely audible, even when running demanding tasks such as game benchmarks. The addition of two 140mm fans on either side brought in fresh air from the sides, while the GPU drew in air from the bottom and exhausted it out both sides. This airflow design helped to keep the CPU cool relative to what one would expect from a traditional ATX desktop system.

The GPU operated within the thermal envelope that I've seen from regular more enclosed ATX desktop systems, which is no small feat considering the compact nature of this case. The CPU, however, ran at an ice-cold temperature relative to what one would expect for a 5900X with a 280mm cooler on it.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, this ITX case is an excellent choice for users looking for a well-designed, feature-rich enclosure without breaking the bank. While some may find the unique features and engineering to be slightly confusing at first, the payoff in terms of build quality and performance makes it well worth the investment.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm back i'm back for the rest of our cooler master itx build and no sleeping's not allowed around here so for a motherboard i'm going to be using aorus x570 itx this is the same one that i bought at micro center like forever ago this is literally the only x570 or b550 itx motherboard that i have really wish that it had more usb ports and better audio but it's a solid board i've overclocked the bejesus out of it to the point that i've got a little bit of heat discoloration on the back because i didn't maybe have as much cooling as i as i probably should have but this thing is a champ i can run i can do insane things with overclocks assuming you have a ryzen chip that has it i've put a 5900x in here so this is a 5900x build the power supply of course is the cooler master v850 that you guys probably saw a video or two ago now the gpu that i've ultimately settled on is the asrock tai chi 6800 xt and one funny thing about this gpu is because it's going to be the very bottom of the case facing down it's going to give me led ground effects i am going to do test fits with the rtx 3090 so you can get an idea of how this would work if you were going to go team green you know i i ain't hating you know we're all equal opportunity builders here and of course it's in the nr200 from cooler master which is a genuinely impressive itx case there's almost enough room for micro atx in fact there are some you know quote unquote short micro atx motherboards that will actually fit in here if you rotate and mount your power supply a different way but for cpu cooling i'm going to try to do something a little insane this is ridiculous i don't really actually recommend a 280 millimeter cooler for an itx build but i'm gonna try it and it's for science at least i don't currently recommend it maybe that'll change i mean look how enormous these fans are it's going to move a lot of air one thing i really like about the cooler master coolers a lot of them most of them have a retention bracket for am4 which doesn't involve changing anything with the motherboard or replacing the socket for somebody like me that's constantly swapping devices and components this works really well because i can just pop it off pop it on i don't have to worry about losing the accessories that go with the motherboard or anything like that it's pretty nice solution the other thing is the thumb screws are captured so i like that as well because you know it's like hey i'm using an am4 you know something today and then maybe i'm going to switch it's like can i even find the thumb screws no it's just all built into once one solution even though he's got his own separate am4 baggy you gotta dive into the other baggy to get the screws to mount the am4 brackets in the accessory box it also includes a four pin fan splitter which is usually pretty handy on an itx build because itx motherboards never have enough and we've also got a breakout cable which provides power and rgb connections there's also a separate included micro rgb controller that's just got a button so you can hit the button and get your rgb controls now this thing comes with good thermal paste you don't have to use special thermal paste you get a little syringe of it right there it is more than enough but i'm using something different and special for this build now the question is i gotta mount these fans to this bracket with that radiator they should know there's only a couple of ways to install this the only real way that you're going to be able to do it is to sandwich the fans and the outside of the case with the radiator in the middle will we clear the side we do now remember whenever you're installing this kind of a cooler you always want to be sure that you tighten each thumb screw down equally so that you're applying even pressure on the cpu because you don't want it to be sitting at an angle you want the thermal paste and the cpu and the uh you know the cooler to basically be as one next up i'll connect the fan header and the digital rgb header and that should be it that we need for this pump other than you know the fan connection now because this is an itx system and i've got a limited number of fan headers i'm going to use the y cable that came with the cooler master to uh better control my fans perfect fit like a glove now one mounting trick that i learned with this is because the tolerances on this case are so tight instead of taking your pcie power cables out here making a really rough connection bring them in out the front down and around through here so you end up having a connection like that the cables are much less likely to bind and you've got a little bit more room to play and here if we were mounting the 30-90 you can see that our tolerances would actually be a little bit better than it is with the tai chi because the tai chi is a longer card but even mounting the 30 90 exactly the same way coming in at the edge here with the cables is going to be the way to go alright so the other thing that this cooler master case gets right is the gpu plugs directly into the motherboard as we move into higher and higher speed peripherals we still don't have a properly working pci express 4 riser cable that we can count on heck most of the pci express 3 riser cables will lead to occasional black screens or crashes or anything else like that a lot of the problems that we had on the level one forum uh were with people that were trying to use a pci express 4 graphics card they had set pci express 3 mode but just for giggles there's at least three or four cases where their intermittent crashes and black screens with pci express 4 gpus went away when they stopped using their pci express 3 riser cable in pc express 3 mode so just avoid the headache and have your gpu plugged directly into the motherboard unless you're savvy and can put up with a headache look at this easy accessibility the m.2 it's another feature of this case that's somewhat unique is how much breathability you have right here now the front panel connections on this case are a little odd got two usb 3 ports reset power the power button is sort of lit up it's cooler master logo but it doesn't say cooler master which is pretty cool it's understated it's a nice touch and then we have the combo 4-pin headphone microphone connector now some people like that kind of connector some people don't but it is a combination connector so keep that in mind if you're going to use a separate cable you need a splitter cable doesn't come with one some other features i noticed when i was building in this case it's got kind of a lot of two and a half inch base okay so there's two in the front and i did check that's an octane and a four terabyte nand flash that is more storage than you'll ever really need in an itx famous last words although i mean you could get an eight terabyte m.2 and still have the cache but those are u.2 drives you can get m.2 breakouts you know i do that with the x570 all the time they work fine in the front the clearance is really close it is a little bit of a stretch to cram in both the pcie power and those really tall two and a half inch drives but that means you'll have no problem if you're using a regular you know a sata drive two and a half inch these are much less tall those drives are about twice as tall but they still fit they still work cooler master has given plenty of room for that to work in this configuration in the top here between the radiator and the power supply in a pinch you probably could get another one or two two and a half inch drives right on that power supply bracket it comes with standoff screws to be able to do that taking it in and out is a little bit more problematic than the front because you know obviously just popping off the front but the airflow is much better those drives in the front they run a little warm so i may need to relocate them to the back here because there's not really a lot going on in the front in terms of airflow that would definitely be a complaint so overall testing this thing the noise and thermals were surprising but in the best possible way it seems like this thing does really well with the single 120 millimeter fan configured as an exhaust here at the top i've got two 140 millimeter fans on the side bringing fresh air in from the side and then the gpu is drawing fresh air in from the bottom and exhausting it out both sides the gpu operated within the thermal envelope that i've seen from regular more enclosed atx desktop systems the cpu was running ice cold relative to you know what you would expect for a 5900x with a 280 millimeter cooler on it so i can't really tell that this case has any deleterious effects on overall system cooling and system performance it's about equivalent to a tower case that has more fans which is kind of mind-blowing in terms of noise levels it's barely above a whisper i mean it's been on for the the whole time doing this video admittedly not doing anything but i do have some b-roll of it with game benchmarks running it definitely ramps up and you can definitely hear it but it's not annoyingly loud one thing i was worried about because all of the panels are made out of metal was you know eventually you get a little bit of a hum in there definitely the top 120 millimeter fan that's included you know it's a good thing that it's on those anti-vibration pads because you can put your hand here and definitely feel a little bit of vibration from the fan you can feel it but you can't hear it eventually if that becomes a problem a little bit of poster putty would probably take care of that i was expecting to have that with this case because a lot of places like with the side panels it's metal on metal but that wasn't the case so cooler master has done an incredible job engineering this case i would not have expected this level of build quality and this level of features at this price point well done cooler master cheerio pip-pip see cause it's eyes with a handlebar mustachei'm back i'm back for the rest of our cooler master itx build and no sleeping's not allowed around here so for a motherboard i'm going to be using aorus x570 itx this is the same one that i bought at micro center like forever ago this is literally the only x570 or b550 itx motherboard that i have really wish that it had more usb ports and better audio but it's a solid board i've overclocked the bejesus out of it to the point that i've got a little bit of heat discoloration on the back because i didn't maybe have as much cooling as i as i probably should have but this thing is a champ i can run i can do insane things with overclocks assuming you have a ryzen chip that has it i've put a 5900x in here so this is a 5900x build the power supply of course is the cooler master v850 that you guys probably saw a video or two ago now the gpu that i've ultimately settled on is the asrock tai chi 6800 xt and one funny thing about this gpu is because it's going to be the very bottom of the case facing down it's going to give me led ground effects i am going to do test fits with the rtx 3090 so you can get an idea of how this would work if you were going to go team green you know i i ain't hating you know we're all equal opportunity builders here and of course it's in the nr200 from cooler master which is a genuinely impressive itx case there's almost enough room for micro atx in fact there are some you know quote unquote short micro atx motherboards that will actually fit in here if you rotate and mount your power supply a different way but for cpu cooling i'm going to try to do something a little insane this is ridiculous i don't really actually recommend a 280 millimeter cooler for an itx build but i'm gonna try it and it's for science at least i don't currently recommend it maybe that'll change i mean look how enormous these fans are it's going to move a lot of air one thing i really like about the cooler master coolers a lot of them most of them have a retention bracket for am4 which doesn't involve changing anything with the motherboard or replacing the socket for somebody like me that's constantly swapping devices and components this works really well because i can just pop it off pop it on i don't have to worry about losing the accessories that go with the motherboard or anything like that it's pretty nice solution the other thing is the thumb screws are captured so i like that as well because you know it's like hey i'm using an am4 you know something today and then maybe i'm going to switch it's like can i even find the thumb screws no it's just all built into once one solution even though he's got his own separate am4 baggy you gotta dive into the other baggy to get the screws to mount the am4 brackets in the accessory box it also includes a four pin fan splitter which is usually pretty handy on an itx build because itx motherboards never have enough and we've also got a breakout cable which provides power and rgb connections there's also a separate included micro rgb controller that's just got a button so you can hit the button and get your rgb controls now this thing comes with good thermal paste you don't have to use special thermal paste you get a little syringe of it right there it is more than enough but i'm using something different and special for this build now the question is i gotta mount these fans to this bracket with that radiator they should know there's only a couple of ways to install this the only real way that you're going to be able to do it is to sandwich the fans and the outside of the case with the radiator in the middle will we clear the side we do now remember whenever you're installing this kind of a cooler you always want to be sure that you tighten each thumb screw down equally so that you're applying even pressure on the cpu because you don't want it to be sitting at an angle you want the thermal paste and the cpu and the uh you know the cooler to basically be as one next up i'll connect the fan header and the digital rgb header and that should be it that we need for this pump other than you know the fan connection now because this is an itx system and i've got a limited number of fan headers i'm going to use the y cable that came with the cooler master to uh better control my fans perfect fit like a glove now one mounting trick that i learned with this is because the tolerances on this case are so tight instead of taking your pcie power cables out here making a really rough connection bring them in out the front down and around through here so you end up having a connection like that the cables are much less likely to bind and you've got a little bit more room to play and here if we were mounting the 30-90 you can see that our tolerances would actually be a little bit better than it is with the tai chi because the tai chi is a longer card but even mounting the 30 90 exactly the same way coming in at the edge here with the cables is going to be the way to go alright so the other thing that this cooler master case gets right is the gpu plugs directly into the motherboard as we move into higher and higher speed peripherals we still don't have a properly working pci express 4 riser cable that we can count on heck most of the pci express 3 riser cables will lead to occasional black screens or crashes or anything else like that a lot of the problems that we had on the level one forum uh were with people that were trying to use a pci express 4 graphics card they had set pci express 3 mode but just for giggles there's at least three or four cases where their intermittent crashes and black screens with pci express 4 gpus went away when they stopped using their pci express 3 riser cable in pc express 3 mode so just avoid the headache and have your gpu plugged directly into the motherboard unless you're savvy and can put up with a headache look at this easy accessibility the m.2 it's another feature of this case that's somewhat unique is how much breathability you have right here now the front panel connections on this case are a little odd got two usb 3 ports reset power the power button is sort of lit up it's cooler master logo but it doesn't say cooler master which is pretty cool it's understated it's a nice touch and then we have the combo 4-pin headphone microphone connector now some people like that kind of connector some people don't but it is a combination connector so keep that in mind if you're going to use a separate cable you need a splitter cable doesn't come with one some other features i noticed when i was building in this case it's got kind of a lot of two and a half inch base okay so there's two in the front and i did check that's an octane and a four terabyte nand flash that is more storage than you'll ever really need in an itx famous last words although i mean you could get an eight terabyte m.2 and still have the cache but those are u.2 drives you can get m.2 breakouts you know i do that with the x570 all the time they work fine in the front the clearance is really close it is a little bit of a stretch to cram in both the pcie power and those really tall two and a half inch drives but that means you'll have no problem if you're using a regular you know a sata drive two and a half inch these are much less tall those drives are about twice as tall but they still fit they still work cooler master has given plenty of room for that to work in this configuration in the top here between the radiator and the power supply in a pinch you probably could get another one or two two and a half inch drives right on that power supply bracket it comes with standoff screws to be able to do that taking it in and out is a little bit more problematic than the front because you know obviously just popping off the front but the airflow is much better those drives in the front they run a little warm so i may need to relocate them to the back here because there's not really a lot going on in the front in terms of airflow that would definitely be a complaint so overall testing this thing the noise and thermals were surprising but in the best possible way it seems like this thing does really well with the single 120 millimeter fan configured as an exhaust here at the top i've got two 140 millimeter fans on the side bringing fresh air in from the side and then the gpu is drawing fresh air in from the bottom and exhausting it out both sides the gpu operated within the thermal envelope that i've seen from regular more enclosed atx desktop systems the cpu was running ice cold relative to you know what you would expect for a 5900x with a 280 millimeter cooler on it so i can't really tell that this case has any deleterious effects on overall system cooling and system performance it's about equivalent to a tower case that has more fans which is kind of mind-blowing in terms of noise levels it's barely above a whisper i mean it's been on for the the whole time doing this video admittedly not doing anything but i do have some b-roll of it with game benchmarks running it definitely ramps up and you can definitely hear it but it's not annoyingly loud one thing i was worried about because all of the panels are made out of metal was you know eventually you get a little bit of a hum in there definitely the top 120 millimeter fan that's included you know it's a good thing that it's on those anti-vibration pads because you can put your hand here and definitely feel a little bit of vibration from the fan you can feel it but you can't hear it eventually if that becomes a problem a little bit of poster putty would probably take care of that i was expecting to have that with this case because a lot of places like with the side panels it's metal on metal but that wasn't the case so cooler master has done an incredible job engineering this case i would not have expected this level of build quality and this level of features at this price point well done cooler master cheerio pip-pip see cause it's eyes with a handlebar mustache\n"