Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced ITX Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,802 words · ~9 min read
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Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced.
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This is an ITX case that exists within a very small form
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factor compared to some of its competition which is ITX but actually
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has a much sort of bigger form factor. I think hopefully we know. Okay, you know
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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
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about, but my observation about the Bit Phoenix Prodigy is that it's really cool
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and everything, but it's actually not that small. I mean, you could you could
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easily, if you look at the internal layout of the Prodigy, you could actually fit an MATX board in there
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without making the case really any bigger. So, what if you wanted a truly
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small ITX system that can still accept a fair amount of hardware, has great
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cooling, and is very inexpensive? So,
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the Elite 12 might be the case for you. Let's take a quick look at what Cooler
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Master has to say for themselves. So, we're not going to worry too much about this. We'll get to that later. And
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nothing. And aha, supports up to three fans for
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extreme cooling. If I have a pen in my pocket, I'm going to circle that because
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that's obviously extreme. Okay. MiniITX
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with ATX power supply support for easy upgrades. This is really important.
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Aluminum finish on the front panel. Okay, cool. So, let's uh get this going
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here. I'm going to put that pen away because nothing else could be extreme
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enough to justify that pen ever
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again. I'm not teasing anybody here. I just really did think it was that
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extreme. Um, okay. I I didn't I was
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teasing. So guys, to be clear, there's
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nothing extreme cooling about an ITX enclosure. If you can get things running
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cool enough to, you know, overclock a little bit, then like that's fantastic.
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But don't uh don't be too don't be too worried if you don't get like the
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maximum overclock that you would have seen on a regular ATX or larger
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enclosure. Um, you know, there's awesome cases from the likes of Cooler Master
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that will be more appropriate for extreme cooling like the half XM. All
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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,
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as well as a microphone and headphone jack, one USB 3 port, reset switch, and
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power switch. And then you've got one 5 and 1/4 in bay, which will look quite
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nice with kind of a black frame around it once you put a black uh optical drive
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in there. On the bottom of the case, you find some
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feet and some black paint. Okay. On the
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other side of the case, you find some air ventilation. So, that is kind of
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extreme. Okay. So, you've got vents that run all across both sides and the top of
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the case. And this one looks kind of cool cuz it seems to have a bit of a
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filter thing going on. Now, this is how they achieved the full ATX power supply
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compatibility. Now, I actually don't mind this. I built myself um a miniIT or
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rather microATX system and a Silverstone
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S01. And in order to get a triple rad going in that system, I had to put both
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the radiator and the fans and as kind of
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like an external sort of protrusion out of the case, I had cut open the top of
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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
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sort of a little bit of bulge thing in order to achieve an overall cleaner,
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tighter, tighter form factor. So, some people might not like it. I'm I'm a fan.
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Um, okay. Got some more ventilation holes. got your two two expansion slots.
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However, this ITX will only have one actual expansion card you can fit.
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Cooler Master seems to be assuming that you're going to be using that slot for a
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graphics card. So, these are really tight. I'm going to need to grab my screwdriver. And we're back. And while I
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was removing the screws, I noticed that the case has water cooling holes, or
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more specifically, it has one, which means that if you actually
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did have an external water cooling setup, you would be able to get the tube
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there, but not back. or back but not there. So, that's a very strange strange
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thing to do, but uh you know, hey, Cooler Master works in mysterious ways.
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Um and realistically, you don't really need water cooling for your ITX system
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anyway. Most ITX boards with the exception of ASUS's Z77 board with like
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the beefy huge PWM on it aren't really capable of extreme overclocks anyway.
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So, there we go. We can have a closer look at all the ventilation that's going
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on in the uh in the enclosure here. And
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let's get the case open. So, what do we have in terms of
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expandability? So, we've got three 3 and 1/2 in drive bays, which we will have to
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try to find. Uh, there we are. And are we
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missing a sled? Hold on. I'll be back. Yeah, I derped. So, um, these are 2 and
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1/2 in adapters for the 3 and 1/2 in drive sleds that are attached to them.
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So, you can natively mount. Here we go. So, let's show you guys how quick it is
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to mount a hard drive in here. Although, I actually don't know which way they go.
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So, we're just going to guess. And we're going to guess that the uh connectors go
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at the
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back. There it is. So, this will go back
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in there because that's where it belongs. Go back. It's like that happy
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Gilmore scene. It's your home. Too good
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for your home. has to go in the hole like the ball. Okay. Anyway, um so we'll
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put that in there. And that is how you mount hard drives in the Elite 120
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Advanced. Um alternately, you can use these adapters then to mount 2 and 1/2
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in drives. So it natively supports three 3 and 1/2 in or up to four 2 and 1/2 in
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drives. So two of those drives are with these adapters here and two of them are
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somewhere else. And we are going to go on a voyage of discovery to find out
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where those other 2 and 1/2 in hard drives go. And we're going to do that
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voyage of discovery off camera because I really can't tell. And it was actually
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Slick who figured this out, which just boggled my mind. Um, so you actually
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mount one 2 and 1/2 in drive up here. Then you flip it over and you screw in
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another 2 and 1/2 in drive from the bottom. So, using these two adapters,
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you can screw four 2 and 1/2 in drives into here. And then, I guess potentially
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you could do another uh you could do another three and a half inch. That's cool. That's that's actually
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outstanding. And then the 5 and 1/4 in drive is pretty self-explanatory. So,
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there's just a bay here and then you screw it in from either side. None of
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that fancy toolless stuff. I mean, this is a fairly inexpensive case considering
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all the cooling that you got going on here and all the features it has included. So, uh, let's have a look at
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cooling since they talk so much about the extreme cooling. So, there's one 120
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mm fan at the front and this gets air from, uh, who only knows where? Oh,
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yeah, there we go. Gets air from these vents here, here, and here. Okay. Blows
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air through the drive cages. Then you can mount an additional 120 mm fan here
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on the other side of this. Uh, assuming you don't have any components on your
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motherboard that are going to that are going to interfere with that in any way.
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Then you can have an additional 80 mm fan right here blowing right across the
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PWM on your motherboard as well as the
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CPU socket area. So that is an incredibly smart placement for that. And
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finally, you'll have your power supply fan built in. So you'll have up to four
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fans in the system that are actually actively working on exhaust and and
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intake. All your cables inside are black. Love to see this. They've also
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got all the power plugs are black right up to the connectors. So, it looks
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really, really, really sharp. You've got adapters for these fans as well. So, you
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can plug them into three pin connectors. There you go. There's adapter. Or you
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can use the Molex pass through internal USB 3, which is good to see again,
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especially on a more budgetoriented case. Uh HD audio USB 2. And I think
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that pretty much covers it. So, this I know guys, I've been promising my builds
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in the Prodigy and the FTO3 Mini for a
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while, but this is going to be part of our roundup because the FTO3 is our
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super small one, and I'd love to see how that one does in terms of cooling and
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performance. The Bitfenix Prodigy is sort of like a big miniITX case, so the
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cooling should be great, but it's kind of big. You know, it's not that like
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ITX, it's not that small. And then this is going to be like our more traditional
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ITX case, like our compromised one. and it's looking like it's going to be
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really really strong contender just based on the cooling options that it
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has. In terms of included accessories, you got some zip ties, you got some
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screws, and you got one more set of those drive rails. So, you'll have enough uh because two of them came
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pre-mounted on these adapters. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first
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look at the Elite 120 Advanced. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips
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