Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced.
This is an ITX case that exists within a very small form
factor compared to some of its competition which is ITX but actually
has a much sort of bigger form factor. I think hopefully we know. Okay, you know
what? I'm just going to say it. So, the Bit Fenix Prodigy is sort of that hot ITX case that lots of people are talking
about, but my observation about the Bit Phoenix Prodigy is that it's really cool
and everything, but it's actually not that small. I mean, you could you could
easily, if you look at the internal layout of the Prodigy, you could actually fit an MATX board in there
without making the case really any bigger. So, what if you wanted a truly
small ITX system that can still accept a fair amount of hardware, has great
cooling, and is very inexpensive? So,
the Elite 12 might be the case for you. Let's take a quick look at what Cooler
Master has to say for themselves. So, we're not going to worry too much about this. We'll get to that later. And
nothing. And aha, supports up to three fans for
extreme cooling. If I have a pen in my pocket, I'm going to circle that because
that's obviously extreme. Okay. MiniITX
with ATX power supply support for easy upgrades. This is really important.
Aluminum finish on the front panel. Okay, cool. So, let's uh get this going
here. I'm going to put that pen away because nothing else could be extreme
enough to justify that pen ever
again. I'm not teasing anybody here. I just really did think it was that
extreme. Um, okay. I I didn't I was
teasing. So guys, to be clear, there's
nothing extreme cooling about an ITX enclosure. If you can get things running
cool enough to, you know, overclock a little bit, then like that's fantastic.
But don't uh don't be too don't be too worried if you don't get like the
maximum overclock that you would have seen on a regular ATX or larger
enclosure. Um, you know, there's awesome cases from the likes of Cooler Master
that will be more appropriate for extreme cooling like the half XM. All
right, so the front of the case, this is quite nice, actually. So, they've got an aluminum finish here. Two USB 2.0 ports,
as well as a microphone and headphone jack, one USB 3 port, reset switch, and
power switch. And then you've got one 5 and 1/4 in bay, which will look quite
nice with kind of a black frame around it once you put a black uh optical drive
in there. On the bottom of the case, you find some
feet and some black paint. Okay. On the
other side of the case, you find some air ventilation. So, that is kind of
extreme. Okay. So, you've got vents that run all across both sides and the top of
the case. And this one looks kind of cool cuz it seems to have a bit of a
filter thing going on. Now, this is how they achieved the full ATX power supply
compatibility. Now, I actually don't mind this. I built myself um a miniIT or
rather microATX system and a Silverstone
S01. And in order to get a triple rad going in that system, I had to put both
the radiator and the fans and as kind of
like an external sort of protrusion out of the case, I had cut open the top of
the case and then I put that there and I ran the tubes down the back and then into the case. And I don't mind that
sort of a little bit of bulge thing in order to achieve an overall cleaner,
tighter, tighter form factor. So, some people might not like it. I'm I'm a fan.
Um, okay. Got some more ventilation holes. got your two two expansion slots.
However, this ITX will only have one actual expansion card you can fit.
Cooler Master seems to be assuming that you're going to be using that slot for a
graphics card. So, these are really tight. I'm going to need to grab my screwdriver. And we're back. And while I
was removing the screws, I noticed that the case has water cooling holes, or
more specifically, it has one, which means that if you actually
did have an external water cooling setup, you would be able to get the tube
there, but not back. or back but not there. So, that's a very strange strange
thing to do, but uh you know, hey, Cooler Master works in mysterious ways.
Um and realistically, you don't really need water cooling for your ITX system
anyway. Most ITX boards with the exception of ASUS's Z77 board with like
the beefy huge PWM on it aren't really capable of extreme overclocks anyway.
So, there we go. We can have a closer look at all the ventilation that's going
on in the uh in the enclosure here. And
let's get the case open. So, what do we have in terms of
expandability? So, we've got three 3 and 1/2 in drive bays, which we will have to
try to find. Uh, there we are. And are we
missing a sled? Hold on. I'll be back. Yeah, I derped. So, um, these are 2 and
1/2 in adapters for the 3 and 1/2 in drive sleds that are attached to them.
So, you can natively mount. Here we go. So, let's show you guys how quick it is
to mount a hard drive in here. Although, I actually don't know which way they go.
So, we're just going to guess. And we're going to guess that the uh connectors go
at the
back. There it is. So, this will go back
in there because that's where it belongs. Go back. It's like that happy
Gilmore scene. It's your home. Too good
for your home. has to go in the hole like the ball. Okay. Anyway, um so we'll
put that in there. And that is how you mount hard drives in the Elite 120
Advanced. Um alternately, you can use these adapters then to mount 2 and 1/2
in drives. So it natively supports three 3 and 1/2 in or up to four 2 and 1/2 in
drives. So two of those drives are with these adapters here and two of them are
somewhere else. And we are going to go on a voyage of discovery to find out
where those other 2 and 1/2 in hard drives go. And we're going to do that
voyage of discovery off camera because I really can't tell. And it was actually
Slick who figured this out, which just boggled my mind. Um, so you actually
mount one 2 and 1/2 in drive up here. Then you flip it over and you screw in
another 2 and 1/2 in drive from the bottom. So, using these two adapters,
you can screw four 2 and 1/2 in drives into here. And then, I guess potentially
you could do another uh you could do another three and a half inch. That's cool. That's that's actually
outstanding. And then the 5 and 1/4 in drive is pretty self-explanatory. So,
there's just a bay here and then you screw it in from either side. None of
that fancy toolless stuff. I mean, this is a fairly inexpensive case considering
all the cooling that you got going on here and all the features it has included. So, uh, let's have a look at
cooling since they talk so much about the extreme cooling. So, there's one 120
mm fan at the front and this gets air from, uh, who only knows where? Oh,
yeah, there we go. Gets air from these vents here, here, and here. Okay. Blows
air through the drive cages. Then you can mount an additional 120 mm fan here
on the other side of this. Uh, assuming you don't have any components on your
motherboard that are going to that are going to interfere with that in any way.
Then you can have an additional 80 mm fan right here blowing right across the
PWM on your motherboard as well as the
CPU socket area. So that is an incredibly smart placement for that. And
finally, you'll have your power supply fan built in. So you'll have up to four
fans in the system that are actually actively working on exhaust and and
intake. All your cables inside are black. Love to see this. They've also
got all the power plugs are black right up to the connectors. So, it looks
really, really, really sharp. You've got adapters for these fans as well. So, you
can plug them into three pin connectors. There you go. There's adapter. Or you
can use the Molex pass through internal USB 3, which is good to see again,
especially on a more budgetoriented case. Uh HD audio USB 2. And I think
that pretty much covers it. So, this I know guys, I've been promising my builds
in the Prodigy and the FTO3 Mini for a
while, but this is going to be part of our roundup because the FTO3 is our
super small one, and I'd love to see how that one does in terms of cooling and
performance. The Bitfenix Prodigy is sort of like a big miniITX case, so the
cooling should be great, but it's kind of big. You know, it's not that like
ITX, it's not that small. And then this is going to be like our more traditional
ITX case, like our compromised one. and it's looking like it's going to be
really really strong contender just based on the cooling options that it
has. In terms of included accessories, you got some zip ties, you got some
screws, and you got one more set of those drive rails. So, you'll have enough uh because two of them came
pre-mounted on these adapters. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
look at the Elite 120 Advanced. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips
for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.