**Standardized Mini ITX Case Testing: A Challenge**

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to testing mini ITX cases is finding a standardized configuration that can be replicated across different products. Most mini ITX cases come with varying degrees of customization options, making it difficult to create a fair and comparable test setup. As a result, we often find ourselves relying on anecdotal evidence or comparing products based on their overall design and feature set rather than their specific performance.

**A Case Like This One**

In this review, we're testing a particular mini ITX case that presents some interesting challenges due to its unique design. The case is designed to be compact and efficient, with a focus on airflow management. However, this also means that it can be quite restrictive in terms of component placement and cooling options. Our goal is to test the case's performance and see if it meets our expectations despite these limitations.

**Mini ITX Case Testing: What We Do**

While we don't currently have standardized mini ITX case testing protocols in place, we can still perform some basic tests to get an idea of a product's overall performance. One approach we take is to standardize for a particular configuration or case type, such as this one. We then remove any components that may not be relevant to the test and focus on the case itself. This allows us to compare different products based on their inherent design and features rather than external factors.

**Other Mini ITX Cases: Alternatives to Consider**

If you're in the market for a mini ITX case, there are several alternatives worth considering. One such product is the Cooler Master NR200P, which shares some similarities with our test case but has a slightly different design. Another option is the NZXT H1, although its reputation has been somewhat tainted due to past issues. Our review of this case will provide a more in-depth look at its performance and features.

**Building with the NDXT H1: A Challenging Experience**

One of the challenges of building with mini ITX cases is the limited space available for components. The NDXT H1, in particular, has a reputation for being difficult to work with due to its design. However, our experience with this case suggests that it's not necessarily more challenging than other mini ITX cases of similar size. With careful planning and attention to airflow management, even the most finicky builds can be successful.

**Airflow Management: A Key Consideration**

One of the biggest challenges when building with a mini ITX case like this one is managing airflow. The case's design makes it difficult to cool components effectively, particularly if you're relying on air cooling rather than liquid cooling. To mitigate this issue, we recommend planning your airflow paths carefully and using charts and diagrams to help guide your decisions.

**CPU Cooling: A Special Consideration**

In terms of CPU cooling, our test case has a few specific requirements that must be met in order to function properly. We've found that liquid cooling is often the best option for mini ITX cases due to their limited space constraints. However, we also recommend using a high-quality air cooler and carefully managing airflow to ensure optimal performance.

**The Case: A Mixed Bag**

Overall, our experience with this mini ITX case has been mixed. While it's certainly not the worst case we've ever tested, it's also not particularly impressive. The design is somewhat restrictive, and the price tag gets steep quickly, particularly when you factor in the cost of a power supply. However, if you're looking for a compact and efficient case with good airflow management, this product may be worth considering.

**The Price: A Steep Cost**

One of the biggest downsides of this mini ITX case is its price. The base model comes in at around $130, which already includes a power supply. However, as you add more components to your build, the cost can quickly exceed $250. While we understand that this is a necessary trade-off for compact and efficient design, it's still something to consider when making purchasing decisions.

**Conclusion**

In conclusion, our review of this mini ITX case has provided some valuable insights into its strengths and weaknesses. While it may not be the best option for everyone, it's certainly worth considering if you're looking for a compact and efficient case with good airflow management. Just be aware of the potential drawbacks, including limited space for components and a steep price tag.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enuh don't break the glasses but this mini itx case is the revolt 3. it is conveniently timed to drop right into the slot that the nzxt h1 once occupied as a mini itx taller tower we're not sure why they would time it that way to land precisely now in the nzxt h1's life but alas here's the revolt 3. so this is technically made by ibuypower they've spun off a new brand known as height hyte and the purpose for creating this new brand is for it to not be called high by power not that there's any particular stigma attached to thigh by power but ivy power is a pre-built company they make and sell pre-built you can buy this case the revolt 3 with people options from ibuypower but it's also being sold standalone that's the different part and so that makes it kind of interesting we're gonna be reviewing this we'll look at the thermals the assembly all that stuff and talk about if it's worth it especially as an alternative or replacement for the h1 before that this video is brought to you by arctic and the liquid freezer 2 line of liquid coolers which tested among the best in our thermal charts for cpu coolers the arctic liquid freezer series has had continual advancement since our original review with updates in the mounting kit including an amd offset bracket for better thermals and a longer warranty arctic also has its mx-5 thermal compound available on the market now if you need some thermal paste for your regular maintenance learn more at the links in the description below so the big difference with this and the h1 there are many differences obviously but it will be compared to it because they look very similar they've got the same punch a bunch of holes in a steel box and stand it up tall look to them and that's fine but the big difference here is it's a little bit larger and that's because it doesn't have a riser cable so there's no pcie riser they're still doing a pass-through for power but no riser means that the primary fire hazard from the original h1 is gone nzxt's as far as we can tell at least from the few units we've received fixed the fire hazard issue on the riser so that's good but the case is kind of its reputation is a bit tainted at this point and uh people have been looking for alternatives and replacements and that's what this ends up being whether intentional or by accident so this case can be bought in black or in white it has an option of a 700 watt power supply the pricing is 130 to the base model or 250 for the model that includes a power supply this is getting a little bit on the steep side 250 bucks pretty expensive for a case even with the power supply but that's the small form factor market you get charged a lot more maybe some of it's justifiable as being lower volume and so it's more difficult to advertise the cost of tooling because there aren't as many units being sold and maybe some of it is because they can't because there aren't many people buying small form factor compared to mid towers and whatever else where you can potentially sell to every si under the sun and get a lot of a higher volume manufacturing run so whether or not the price is justified from a cost perspective is one thing but it's expensive period as a consumer at 250 whether or not uh it actually is derived from from some base cost that makes sense now our review sample was a tier above just the black case with 700 watt power supply and that's because it was the limited quote special edition with flight case this edition which is not available anymore it came with a free it's always weird to say free with products because it's included in the cost almost certainly but it came with a pelican style travel case and an alternative rust colored mesh so if you want the front of your computer case to look like uh it was in a thunderstorm then you can get the one with the rust they call it bronze colored front mesh the color choice doesn't really make a lot of sense to us whatever it's aesthetics you can make your own decision but either way it looks like it's only being sold with black right now which is this one here and they are swappable for what that's worth the rest of the case externally it's got some interesting elements so it has these headphone holders we'll talk about those later uh maybe a little on the silly side but it is different and then at the top there's a handle which doesn't sound particularly convincing sounds like something maybe something from like a motel 6 or something so that could use a little bit of work but it's a handle nonetheless supposed to be a little bit portable that's all the angle of a small form factor case and they're leaning into it i my power somewhat oddly and maybe lacking of any self-awareness says on its marketing page quote bye bye bulky laptops yes i right power nothing about this looks bulky it this is definitely smaller than a laptop and it's lighter and it's easier to carry and travel with uh and it also you'd have to carry a monitor with it a keyboard and a mouse probably headphones like power cable and anyway this is clearly smaller than a laptop so that's excellent marketing great choice of words enough of that let's get into the build notes we'll look at some of the good aspects of this some of the bad aspects and we'll talk about the power supply a little bit as well then get into the thermal testing as usual with conclusions at the end the height revolt 3 is tricky to build in but that's the rule for small form factor cases rather than the exception we don't really hold it against three volt three too much smaller cases are just naturally harder to work with but it's sometimes more annoying than it should be especially with the power supply cables and we'll get to that the side panels in the very least snap off easily and the top panel can be removed as well so this makes accessing the interior of the case about as convenient as it can be given the size of the case all panels except for the front consist of an outer steel grille and an inner magnetic filter which slides into place i buy power has put some effort into locking the filters in place with metal rails rather than just slapping a filter on and open for the best so it's good to see some attention to detail here now as for the power supply we mentioned that's where some of the issues start to pop up depending on the motherboard used the pre-installed sfxl power supply and its cables might not be sufficient to reach where they need to go small form factor power supplies have to keep cables as short as possible to avoid wasting space and sometimes the small form factor cases include a power supply so they can force certain cable lengths on you but it's a fine line to walk the 8-pin cpu cable for eps 12 volts wasn't long enough for our system we had to get an extension for it so the eps 12 volt cable should be longer in this one by at least a little bit as for slack cables every bit of slack in the revolt 3 is another opportunity to get a case fan tangled up there's about 1.2 centimeters of clearance between the motherboard tray and the side panel enough for mounting two and a half inch drives and routing sata cables but really not much else the side panels are prone to bowing out and leaving wide panel gaps if the cables aren't tied down carefully sfxl power supplies have to be jammed in tightly against the cable cover to fit as is natural with a small case like this we're glad that either power has one that has pre-installed power supplies it does limit your power supply choices it's got other problems like the cable length but it at least makes it so you don't have to install it yourself a smaller sfx unit would fit more easily if you're going to buy one on your own and install it because the revolt 3 doesn't use a riser cable for gpu mounting it's unavoidably larger than the h1 that's the benefit of those riser cables as a benefit of not having a riser cable three volt three is less engulfed in flames but it's a little bit larger too so you can pick the one you think is less bad we guess ibm power's case is 253 by 178 by 409 millimeters for a total of 18.4 liters while the h1 is 187 by 188 by 388 for a total of 13.6 liters for comparison cooler nr 200p takes up approximately the same amount of space as the revolt 3 at 20.3 liters and that includes the feet and the other protrusions that make the measurements a little bit weird cases that forego large gpu and radiator support can be significantly smaller though like the older silverstone sg13 that we liked the revolt 3 adds about 2 centimeters at the top of the case to house the handle assembly and a further 6.7 centimeters at the bottom throughout i o cables without mashing them so it is larger than strictly necessary if it were horizontal the cables could just dangle off the back as we mentioned earlier the revolt 3 technically has a single three and a half inch drive based support in addition to its two 2.5 inch mounting locations this is something of a luxury for small form factor cases but again we found it more useful for stashing loose cables than anything else installing a 3-fan gpu a 2-fan clc and a 3.5 inch hard drive in this case simultaneously would require exceptional organization you can technically do all those things but it's probably better to just pick maybe two of them in between setting systems on fire another positive aspect of the nzxt h1 that we noted is that it includes a clc this isn't meant to be a fire suppression design by the way nzxt has as much control as possible over clearances and compatibility in the h1 with short tubes and optimally placed barbs to make it slightly less of a pain in the ass to wedge that motherboard into the revolt 3 doesn't come with a clc giving the user more freedom to choose their own cooling solution but also it opens the door to compatibility problems a chunk of the reviewer guide is taken up with warnings and advice about which coolers will fit in the case and how to install them the section begins with a quote about radiators saying that radiators should always be mounted to the radiator door with the tubes at the bottom the radiator door in question is hinged initially we saw this as a gimmick but it's nice to be able to work inside of the case without holding the radiator or letting it dangle by the tubes the case officially supports up to 280 ml radiators but we would suggest sticking to 240 millimeters for the maximum size just to avoid clearance issues and besides some radiators are made a little bit differently so that gives you more leeway for something being off space is at a premium and that extra headroom is enough to make a difference in cable management and just working in the system in general either power's guide states that quote mounting fans to the outside and the radiator inside is not possible with most coolers due to tubes impacting the motherboard putting the fans on the inside presses them though into the tubes and wires so we would still suggest mounting the radiator on the inside if possible or at least investing in some protective fan grills any clc used in the revolt 3 absolutely requires swivel fittings the liquid freezer ii for example won't work here the shorter the tubes the better as well and so we ended up choosing the liam lee galahad 240 clc for our testing it just barely squeezed in without crushing the tubes and again it's really important that the fittings or the tubes really secure to the pump block housing are able to rotate because you're going to need that there are two 80 millimeter fan mounts at the top of the case positioned to help with gpu exhaust 80 millimeter fans were once extremely common and can still be found on newegg or amazon but even pre-builts tend to use 120s these days as with most case fans 80 millimeter fans are typically 25 millimeters thick the 80 millimeter fans in the revolt 3 however only have enough clearance to fit slim 80 millimeter fans like the ones found on some low profile cpu coolers such as those made by silverstone in addition the two mounts overlap so that only one can be used at a time we appreciate iowa power sticking fan mounts wherever they can fit but don't count on being able to actually install a top exhaust vent it can be done but there are limitations again like only one at a time gpu compatibility is good for a small form factor case but rest assured there are plenty of gpus that won't fit like the phantom gpus that don't exist those won't fit in here but the 320 millimeter length max listed by iowa power is a hard limit you cannot do more than that ideally the cards should be 315 millimeters or less just to give yourself some extra room so they can be slotted in from the side of the case this is because longer cards have to be dropped in from the top and therefore they must also be thin enough to fit through the hole at the top of the case we'd recommend installing the gpu last as it partially blocks access to the interior and makes routing sata cables extremely difficult or impossible on some other boards as with some other small form factor enclosures 30 series founders edition cards aren't recommended and this is per iowa power's review guide as well as they exhaust heat in an atypical direction and it's going to create a lot of heat buildup where you don't want it just because it's kind of an unplanned for flow path the top of the case contains a spring-loaded handle and two spring-loaded bars for handing headphones or other accessories the handle seems fairly sturdy thus far ivy power says it will lift 30 pounds or 14 kilograms half of which is the case and the power supply at 14 pounds or 6.3 kilograms built-in headphone holders are completely unnecessary and not particularly useful they talk inside of the handles hinge however when not in use so at least they're not taking up any space that wasn't already used by the handle we do genuinely question the strength of the handle especially over a longer period so we would still support the case from the bottom and the top if carrying it front i o is more important than usual in the revolt 3 since rear i o is hidden and inaccessible under the bottom of the case with that in mind it's usable but sparse two type a ports 3.2 meet our minimum preference and there's a type c port as well this is simply a type c it's a type c passthrough and it's intended to be plugged into rear i o not an internal header so make note of that normally we'd criticize this but because rear i o is inaccessible anyway it makes good sense to get some use out of the port either power leaves some room for change it notes that an internal connector a normal one will be added if there's demand finally there's a single 4-pole combined audio jack with a splitter included in the accessory kit and that wraps up the i o options time to start with testing so this one is a one-off test we're free to diverge from our normal case testing hardware we obviously can't use it in a smaller box because it doesn't fit and so we decided to test with an r75800x and an asus rog strix b550i gaming we also used an evj rtx 3060 ti ftw 3 and then we installed the lian lee galahad 240 mil clc for the cpu and the rest is all pretty standard the revolt 3's marketing testing and pre-built options from iowa power all use closed-loop liquid coolers hence our choice to go with one as well the case comes with no stock fans and maximum clearance for coolers is 140 millimeters so air cooling isn't a natural fit a downdraft cooler would require side intake and side intake isn't optimal as we'll discuss in a moment so if we were to recommend this case at all and we'll get there at the end uh it would be with a liquid cooler and that's how they're marketing it so that's how we're going to test it for our testing we installed radiator fans as exhaust with the fans mounted against the side panel and the radiator inside as a baseline we don't often use pole configurations for radiators but sandwiching the fans between the case and the radiator keeps them safe from both tubes and wires we then did some additional tests we did one without side panels we did one with the radiator fans flipped to intake we did one without any filters over the exhaust fans and we did one with an 80 millimeter exhaust fan installed over the gpu and finally we isolated the gpu and the cpu load test for additional testing gpu fans were set to 2450 rpm during all tests the maximum speed we observed during the default fan curve is 2450 so that's why that was chosen radiator fans were set to 1260 rpm during all tests and this was the necessary speed to achieve a 40 dba noise threshold we used our usual full system torture workload for cpu and gpu thermals simultaneously some of them might be one component or the other and we'll note those as we go here's the cpu thermal chart at baseline the cpu averaged 70 degrees celsius above ambience removing all the side panels gave us another baseline result which allows us to understand the total blockage of airflow created by the case so that dropped us down to 62 degrees above ambient from 70 revealing some definite headroom for improvement and showing us the level of obstruction we're dealing with flipping the radiator fans around as intake didn't meaningfully change the result allowing the radiator to pull cool air from directly outside the case rather than through the inside of the case is normally better for cp temperature so the result makes sense here and ivory power's own testing showed this as well it's just not a huge change the reason we didn't choose this configuration as our default is that it mixes intake and exhaust across the same panel pulling hot air in from the gpu exhaust that's potentially a problem the mixed up airflow makes it harder to remove a filter as well intake filters are good and useful but exhaust filters aren't particularly useful because you're trying to keep dust out and air is coming out of them anyway switching to a positive pressure configuration like this also has some serious effects on gpu thermals but we'll get to that in a moment back to the filters with our original configuration the top and one side of the case are pure exhaust and can have their filters removed doing so dropped cpu temperatures even more than flipping the fans around did down now to 67 degrees above ambient and so we highly recommend picking a predictable airflow path for the revolt 3 that you'll understand and then removing any filters that stand in the way of the exhaust adding the 80 millimeter exhaust fan above the gpu had no measurable effect on the cpu temperature as the gpu is mostly isolated from the rest of the case and is sort of in its own independent chamber cpu temperature is within test variance here finally the cpu only blender test meaning there's no gpu load in addition to the cpu load resulted in an average of 61 degrees above ambient that's better than the results without the side panels and this is what you can expect if you're using something like blender or something cpu about with the components in such close proximity having a triple axial gpu dumping heat through its back plate and actively circulating hot air into the case has obviously a significant effect on the temperature of the neighboring components baseline for the gpu looking at the gb temperature chart was 44 degrees above ambient and we did pick a relatively high fan speed it was fixed and at the same speed the whole time but it was at the high end of the curve removing the side panels brought that down to 39 degrees the gpu is oriented so that its fans have access to an entire side panel for intake with hot air directed out of a side panel on one side back into the case against the motherboard tray on the other side and to a lesser degree up and out the top of the case at least as far as the intake goes there's good accessibility to air flipping the radiator fans around was awful for gpu thermals with our hardware it's actually really interesting result though the average here jumped to 59 degrees above ambient so that's a 15 degree increase which is one of the largest increases we've seen in case testing from a single change that doesn't involve side panel removal flipping the fans creates a positive pressure setup making it harder for the gpu to draw air in through the side panel and suppressing its only source of cool air the degree to which this happens depends on a lot of factors so the results will vary like gpu size and fan speed of course but iowa power's results showed the same trends just with different numbers radiator intake is bad for gpu thermals and good for the cpu and vice versa we chose radiator exhaust because it made it easier to balance the thermals of the system as a whole but if you were building your own system we would say to prioritize gpu thermals given these two choices since it's the more sensitive components and the cpu did fine anyway removing the filters over exhaust fans was beneficial to gpu temperatures as well although not as dramatically as with the cpu average temperature drops from 44 down to 40 degrees as hot air was allowed to flow out of the case unobstructed now for those 80 ml fans we talked about this test was primarily intended to benefit the gpu so we were disappointed to see that it only lowered the average temperature down to 42 degrees the top exhaust slot is a bust the fan singularly here must be 80 millimeters and slim and to have a significant benefit you would have to run it at a noisy whiny high speed ignore the 80 millimeter mounts and focus your attention on buying higher quality other components like radiator fans with the isolated firmware test gpu temperatures actually climbed slightly up to 46 degrees average over ambient without any resources being borrowed by blender render gpu temperatures have a large impact on cb temperature in the revolt 3 but the reverse wasn't true with our particular system and our airflow configuration the cpu's heat is all shunted to the radiator which then exhausts out the side of the case without a chance to interact with the gpu all of that said the revolt 3 certainly positions itself in a way where it's easy to make fun of with some of the marketing and with some of the choices but we don't have a wide array of small form factor cases to compare against we don't do as a matter of course standardized reviews of many itx cases we do them for atx and that's just because many itx gets too fully customized to where it's not as easy to transplant parts one to the next and keep it fair in a way that makes sense for each case test that's hard enough to do when it's atx and it's basically impossible in itx because if we chose as we did a 240 or a 280 or whatever clc for one small form factor case then we go to the next one and it doesn't support that size radiator you're not left with a lot of options so you have to choose something that has the widest compatibility with the most cases like a short tower cooler or a short downdraft cooler and those instances you run into a box like this where that wouldn't be fair for the revolt 3. so doing standardized mini itx case testing is very difficult and we just generally don't do it right now but what we can do is we can standardize for a particular configuration or a box like this one and then we can pull panels move fans all the stuff we did in this review you get a good idea for the performance anyway even though it's not comparative so there are other cases you could look at the cooler master nr200p isn't too far off in size it is also fairly large as a mini itx case but it seems to be very well liked we have one here we've liked working with it relatively as well so that's one to look at the ndxt h1 at this point has again its reputations a bit tainted from its past and so whether or not they've fixed it it's not going to change the fact that people feel a little uneasy about it at this point and so this stands as probably the closest in visual style replacement to the nzxt h1 that doesn't involve a riser overall this one is moderately less annoying to build in than the ndxch1 so that's good it's it's really not any more obnoxious to build in than any other mini itx case especially of about this size they're all a little challenging to work with but not in a way which is necessarily something that can be fixed because it's small and that's the whole point of it this does have support for large gpus it has a small handle that we did actually make use of where still we'd have to do some serious actual load testing on it to feel full confidence in it but most of this stuff is steel so as long as you stay within the load limit it should be okay and then 130 to base model 250 including the power supply that's where it gets steep the power supply costs you don't want to spend too little on a power supply but 250 bucks for not even a third of your computer feels kind of bad it all depends on what you're buying of course and there are cases that we would think are worth spending 200 or maybe even 250 on in a certain use case but it's more difficult to mentally rationalize that as a consumer even if maybe the cost metrics as a business makes sense because you're looking at something that is smaller it's simpler and this is almost entirely steel which is not particularly expensive compared to something like aluminum really though ultimately the biggest downside is just managing the airflow and that's something the word managing being in there something that you can control or at least mostly control so if you buy this just plan out your airflow paths we've given you some charts to point you in the right direction every build's gonna be a little different but most of them will follow the same basic principles so we've given you that data airflow takes some special management to keep thermals under control the case is not friendly towards cpu air cooling you'll probably want to go with a liquid cooler almost certainly and it has to be a certain type we talked about that earlier and so overall then we don't hate the case we don't particularly like the case it's not something we're going to go out of our way to recommend like we did with the fractal torrent where we really strongly recommend it completely different category of case but that would be the contrast in terms of our opinions where that's a that's at the strong recommendation area not many cases are there um and then you have something like maybe the h1 or maybe the app concord ramses that we really really hated at the other end and this isn't in either of those those ranges it's just kind of if you like it and it fits the looks that you want and it fits the components that you want it seems fine we don't hate it and so that's that's really not a bad place to be because our reviews are pretty hard for cases to pass with flying colors and that's what that's what makes them interesting so anyway that's where we are on it it's kind of meh it doesn't really offend us uh price with the power supply gets steep but what are you gonna do with mini itx is a lot of them are steep uh the nr200p would probably be the first one we'd point you to as an alternative to this one if you'd like to research another option that may be better for you otherwise that's it for this one thanks for watching as always subscribe for more go to store.gamersnexus.net or patreon.comgamersnexus helps out directly and we'll see you all next time\n"