Cubitek Mini Ice mITX Small Form Factor Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,863 words · ~9 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the cubc mini ice you can see that it
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was sent from new Taipei City in Taiwan
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okay there's some sort of yeah sort of
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okay box art going on here but I think
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where we're really going to enjoy this unboxing is once the box is actually
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open because this is a case that I think
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looks incredibly cool this is a mini ITX
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chassis with okay as you might imagine based on
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their mini ice name and the fact that the tagline for it is frozen solid with
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fair this is a mini ITX case with fairly Advanced cooling features that can also
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support some pretty Advanced Hardware so the first thing we see when we open it
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up is an accessory box but we'll get to that later we also see the packaging now
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they're using a hard foam I would prefer to see a soft foam however due to the
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aluminum construction of this case it really doesn't weigh a whole lot so it's
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a lot less likely to damage its packing materials during the shipping process
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and uh I mean honestly if it managed to survive an air shipment from Taiwan to
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here then it's that's probably about as much of a of a stress test as you're
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going to need for it however once it's loaded up with components we might be
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having a different conversation because it does support some pretty high-end
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internal components including a full-sized ATX power supply as well as a
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graphics card up to 340 mm so let's go ahead and open this
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bad boy
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up all right so actually give me a second to get acquainted here guys so
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I'm just kind of checking things out here um it arrived a little bit dusty
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but it's nothing that doesn't come off with the old sleeve wipe so to speak so
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let's have a look at the outside of the case before we go too much further here
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so on the top you're going to see a 140
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mm fan that is set up as an exhaust fan
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so this is only compatible with 140 mil you can see the holes are hard drilled
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around the outside of the grill in terms of IO we have front USB 2 two of those
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two front usb3 as well as front headphones and microphone the overall
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look of the case actually reminds me a little bit of my tj07 and that it has
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this single piece aluminum thing going on on the front sorry I guys I'm trying
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to be really careful without whoops touching it too much because uh once you
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touch brushed aluminum basically the Finish is ruined forever so you can see
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it's a solid piece going all the way up the front and then it's another solid
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piece going all the way up the back and then meeting right here so it's two
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pieces going around the whole outside of the case which I think is really cool
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you've got an optional VGA cooling intake here as well as feet on the
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bottom of the case giving it a little bit of space to breathe on the front of
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the chassis uh let's just lift it back up
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we've got a 5 and 1/4 inch optical drive bay as well as our uh Power and IDE or I
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shouldn't call it IDE like so hard drive activity indicator we've got power and
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reset buttons as well as a stylish cubc
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logo going on here all right let's move
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around to the back of the case where we find our standard ATX power supply Mount
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so you can see that's done with just a couple thumb screws you screw your power
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supply into the plate and then slide the whole thing into place this is much like
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the PC Q7 that I have for my media PC
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downstairs water cooling holes if you wanted to externally water cool it I
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hope you're not going to do that with a configuration like this though because
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you do have a fair amount of room included for an air cooler so you can see the motherboard is going to be right
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above here so any air cooler that'll fit within here actually I think the
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dimensions hold on maximum of 90 mm or 9
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cm from the uh from the motherboard itself so we've got two expansion slots
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yes this is Mini ITX and we also have a very unique system for attaching the
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side panels so these are little thumb
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screws that uh have Allen key spots in
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them so if you wanted to use an allen key to wonder if it comes with an allen
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key doesn't surprise me that much if you're going to go ahead and you know
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make your case open up with an allen key I guess you better include one there it
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is haa Allen key SL buzzer so it does
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come with a a speaker which is what I think they mean by
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buzzer all right there we go then we got
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another one here four of these oh this isn't so bad
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I could I can dig it oh
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okay and there we go so solid
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aluminum ha I'm totally going to do
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it and he whipped out the iPhone thickness comparison bam now you know
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how thick the panel is it's fairly thick actually it has a very rigid feel to it
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so this is in theory to reduce the overall vibration of the case so the
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overall noise level of the case they also have anti vibration rubber
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dampeners here on the side panels this can be a real problem for aluminum cases
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if you don't have some way to to isolate
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the vibration because they're much lighter weight than their steel
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counterparts which has the advantage of being well light weight attractive
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easier to work with you can make more beautiful aluminum cases than you often
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can out of uh steel and uh and plastic
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but the drawback is that well it's not as strong so you have
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to use thicker material which can be more expensive and then also that it's
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uh not as not as um not as
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heavy all right let's just get both of these side panels off here all right
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here you can see the other one if you want basically looks the same like the
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same thing and also has the uh rubber
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noise dampening solution implemented on
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the other side as well you can see that you can also see the motherboard tray as
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well as the interior cables look at that all black cables very nice touch like to
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see that all right so inside here we got
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a few things we have oh this is kind of neat
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hold on I'm going to have to go find a hard drive so I can install this and show you guys this all right so here are
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the uh rubber noise isolation Fasteners
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as well as some included hard drive screws and of course once you've
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installed them you have a nice little trap to play
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with see how the wheels realistically turn just like a real vehicle
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would V uh no so here's how you actually install your hard drive you go ahead and
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you slide this bad boy into whoops no ah
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first you need to take this off there we
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are and then this slides out of the way
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pretty cool I guess you don't have to take it all the way off either look at
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that you slide those guys in there and then
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you oh hold on slide it in the right way if you want
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to have an optimal user
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experience and then you put this over
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here which will prevent the Wheel from
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moving and continue to isolate the uh
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vibration from your hard drive so that's pretty cool hey I certainly think so
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they also include and for a lot of companies this is sort of optional stuff
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but they see how this one already has uh the sliders installed and uh it has a 2
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and 1/2 in SSD Mount included so you can
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do up to 3 3 and 1/2 in hard drives and
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two 2 and2 in hard drives in spite of the fact that this is an ITX enclosure
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check that out there's your 140 mm internal cooling fan with an included
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black three Pin cable uh what else we got in terms of interial ah yes so let's
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show just what kind of space there is for installing graphics cards this is
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cool so I'm going to grab the longest graphics card that I have happen to have
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handy which also happens to be the longest graphics card that anyone
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happens to have handy probably this is a Radeon HD
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6990 so if you wanted to build yourself an extreme little gaming box with
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emphasis on extremely little you could throw even a radon 6990 in here with
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room to spare and you can throw a 120 mm
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fan down here which you can use either as an exhaust or as an intake depending
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on the configuration of your card so if you're using using a blower fan like this guy right here I would probably use
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it as an intake so that's really cool
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with the 5 and a/4 in Bay is pretty self-explanatory in fact I think the
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rest of this case is mostly pretty self-explanatory very cool little
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enclosure so for a size comparison I mean here it is next to a
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fairly bog standard mini tower also next
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to the uh mangoes that I was eating that
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I'm no longer eating and we'll take down stair shortly so you you can see it's
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quite wide for an ITX enclosure and the reason for that would be so that they'll
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have all the space that they allocated for things like coolers as well as the
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fulls sizee power supply but it is very very short compared to Mid Tower so
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it'll look right at home on your desk
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without uh without that looking weird ah yes the
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internal connectors so
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uhhuh pretty standard stuff here too so
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we've got our front panel connectors you know your LEDs your reset switch power
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switch you got your front HD audio as well as your front USB one uh USB 2 and
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your front usb3 so thank you for checking out my
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unboxing and first look at the Cub
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Tech wow I just completely drew a blank what is it even called mini ice don't
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forget to subscribe to lus Tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer
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