Meshify C Mini/Define Nano musings?

Grabhanem · April 27, 2020

I've been looking at a case/motherboard upgrade recently, and possibly adding a second 240mm rad to my water loop just for overkill's sake. I'm currently running a Ryzen 5 2600 on a B350M DS3H, and a reference GTX 1070, all watercooled with an EK A240G aluminum kit.

I've mostly settled on one of the ASRock "6" phase (3x2) B450 boards to give me an extra little bit of VRM oomph as well as (more importantly to me) more fan headers. I'd like to be able to have at least 3 fan speed "zones"-- CPU, case, and VRM (I have a no name 30mm fan on the VRM to help keep temperatures a little more reasonable.) From that I've narrowed my board options down to the B450M Pro4 or B450 Fatality itx/ac-- the MSI B450I board is tempting for its excellent VRM but only has 2 fan headers.

As the title would suggest, I'm looking at either the Meshify C Mini or Define Nano as a case, obviously with their appropriate motherboard form factors. To that end I have a couple questions about these cases:

- My RAM is a bit on the tall side (Vengeance RGB non-Pro) and I've heard the Define Nano has clearance issues with top radiators and tall RAM, but I've seen a few other builds using Trident Z and other similar-sized DIMMs without issues. Should I be worried about that?

- The Meshify C Mini has a bottom "door" for bottom fans/front rads/reservoirs. Would it be realistic to fit a short SPC res and a front radiator in there together?

- I also have a 3.5" hard drive that needs to go somewhere-- the Meshify C has a removable drive cage and regular old bottom mount. Would the drive mount go far back enough to realistically fit all of the above stuff? Alternatively, can I mount the drive on the floor in such a way that it doesn't interfere with the pump mount? My power supply is pretty short (CX550M 2017) if that figures into the answer.

Thanks in advance! If people have other case suggestions I'm open, but I'd prefer 2x240 rad support in a standard layout, and Fractal seems to be the way to go for that.