Review of cheap Chinese small form factor case

[Sat1600]

I have been wanting to do a budget small form factor build for a little while. Problem is that AM4 ITX boards are a fortune. And budget micro atx cases are really boring. So I came across this tiny micro atx case on aliexpress:

 

https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/OtGH0SUu

 

I ordered it from a different seller for $38 after some coupon, but they are out of stock now.

 

So the parts are:

 

Cheap Chinese case $38

Ryzen 5 1600 $80 (microcenter)

Asrock b450m pro4 $33 (open box microcenter)

G. Skill ram 16gb 3000mhz $50 (newegg)

Lenovo(Samsung) oem 256gb m.2 nvme ssd $20 (Ebay)

EVGA 450br psu $30 (Newegg)

 

The original plan was to use a RX 480 8gb refrence card. I specifically wanted a refrence card because I did not have high hopes for the cooling in this case. I picked one up on ebay for $92. However the RX 480 was giving me problems so I switched to a small gtx 1060 6gb that cost $90 locally.

 

The case took about 3 weeks to arrive. First impressions were that it looked cool but the actual frame was pretty flimsy. Think cheap DIYPC. Also as you can see in the pictures below a micro atx board just fits. I had to remove the psu bracket and all the front cables in order to get the motherboard in.

 

The power supply went in next. There is a little room in the back if the case for cables. But it's completely useless because of the way the power supply sits. The power supply is also right over the motherboard. There is about 3cm of space between the wraith spire cooler and the power supply. The PSU has to go fan down because there is no ventilation in the side panel for it.

 

I had to do the front panel headers before the GPU there is just no space once you put the gpu in. I also decided to add a fan on top for exhaust. When I changed the gpu for the  1060 though i turned the fan around in order to bring more air into the case. The 1060 was hitting 82c during benchmarking with the fan as exhaust. Turning it around brought it down to 76c.

 

The RX 480 did just fit. But I was having unrelated problems with it.

 

There are definitely compromises with this case. The front 140mm fan looks cool, but I don't think it does much. The frame is made of very thin metal, and the PCI covers are the breakaway kind.

 

On the other hand, it does look pretty cool. And it's really tiny for a micro atx case. It's definitely not a dan case. But for $340 total cost I can live with that. I live in New York so I don't think it will be hard to flip it to someone who is short on space. 

 

 

[Sat1600]

More pics

[GDRRiley]

thermaltake has a case that is a lot like this. v21

looks like a rotated board but otherwise near clone.