Cooler Master Elite 110 Mini ITX Case
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
2,077 words · ~10 min read
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Welcome to my Cooler Master Elite 110 video. This is a tiny tiny little PC
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case that holds a tiny tiny little well
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piece. I mean, I guess you could put anything in it, but it it's specifically
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designed to hold a PC.
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Hotspot Shield service makes your internet browsing safer, more secure,
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and fully private. Click now to learn more. Let's start with the packaging.
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fairly straightforward, fairly thin, fairly lightweight hard foam. But
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because it is such a small case and you can't really build a computer that's
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heavy enough for it to be a problem, I'm okay with that this time around. We'll
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go with an external tour for the start here. At the front you find mesh. On the
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side you find mesh. On the top you find mesh. On the other side you find mesh.
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And at the back you find well mesh on the power supply, I guess. And then more
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ventilation. When you're trying to cram an entire PC with discrete graphics and
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up to a 4770K CPU into something this
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small, you'll need all the ventilation you can get, and the Elite 110 delivers
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here. In terms of front IO, it's pretty standard fair. We've got two USB 3.0
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ports, headphone and microphone jacks, a hard drive activity LED, a reset switch,
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and then the front Cooler Master logo is actually a power switch. There's no five
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and a quarter inch bay, but most people aren't using those these days, so I'm
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not too worried about it. And uh there wouldn't really be room for it anyway,
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which you'll see once we open it up. At the back, you can see that even though
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the Elite 110 is a small package, that doesn't prevent it from having a pretty
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decent sized bulge on it. Sorry, it's a the power supply does stick out the back
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a little bit. What this does is it gives you about an extra um 20 mm of clearance
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internally so that you can fit a fairly normalsiz power supply on the inside.
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Again, even though the case is so small, the top casing comes off with four thumb
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screws that I'm just going to go ahead and remove here.
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We'll pull this baby off so you can see it fits on a little something like that.
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And then once we get on the inside, we can see it supports two 80 mm fans here
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on the side. However, that's only if you
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don't need a dual slot graphics card, which we opted to install. This is
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Lionus tech tips, guys, not Lionus and Nambi Pami tips. We're hardcore. We
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won't settle for onboard or single slot graphics cards if we don't absolutely
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have to. Now, with that said, on Cooler Master's site, they don't really show it
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being used the way that we're using it. And the case seems optimized for onboard
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graphics or a smaller graphics card with more storage as opposed to being
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designed for people who are trying to put a full-on gaming rig inside. But I
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guess the only way to find out if this works is to check our temperatures at
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the end and see how it went. In the front, it supports either a 140 mm or
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120 mm fan that takes advantage of that mesh. And you have the option to install
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a 120 mm radiator. The manual and
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product page don't specify the thickness that's supported, but I went with a
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Siden 120 XL. So, given that that went
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in there just fine with actual actually a fair bit more clearance to go, I would
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say pretty much anything should fit. Okay. In terms of CPU cooler support, it
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can handle a 76 mm or 3in CPU cooler.
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Not much space between the socket and the power supply up here. So, using a
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stock cooler is an option, but not many aftermarket CPU air coolers will fit in
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there, which to me made that liquid cooler in the front a no-brainer for our
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Core i7 processor. I was easily able to cram the tubing in here between the
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power supply and the motherboard, even though there wouldn't have been much space for air flow otherwise. You can it
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can handle up to a 180 mm power supply.
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That's in terms of length. Other than that, it's a standard PS2 form factor,
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but shorter is much better. I used a 160
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mm power supply and this is a modular one which gives me a little bit more
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flexibility in terms of using less cables and not having to cable manage as
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much and this was about right for me. I think trying to do a 180 mm power supply
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in there would be quite a bit more challenging in terms of cable
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management. Now it's a miniITX case which means that even though there are
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two expansion slots back here, there's only one internally. So, this is just
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for if you have something like a dual slot card. Cooler Master does support
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dual slot graphics cards than as you know, but not as long as you might
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normally see in a case that's a little bit bigger. So, it supports up to a 210
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mm graphics card, but there are a couple of things that you'll have to consider
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if you want to get a 21 cm card in there. Number one is that you're going
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to want a card that has a top-mounted PCI Express connector or you're going to
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have to factor that in when you're taking your measurements because if it
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has a rear one, you're going to need a little bit of extra space for that cable
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at the back of the card. Number two is you're going to want to make sure you have a strategy for what to do with all
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of the cables and wires that you're going to have to hide in the front from
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the front panel connectors like the front USB 3. So, what I did was I kind
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of crammed them into this corner, but I found that that ate up a little bit of the space that I would have had for a
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graphics card that took up the entire length inside. And a big part of the
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reason for that is because I'm using a radiator. If it wasn't for the radiator,
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I could put a fan grill on that front fan and then not have to worry as much
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about the uh the space available in the front. So, I squeezed the graphics card
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in at the end. I didn't have too much trouble with it. I mean, it all it all worked just fine. Just make sure as
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you're building you're managing your cables correctly to ensure that you're
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able to get everything in there. Um either way, what whatever you're doing,
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I recommend leaving the front bezel actually detached. You can just pull it
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off at the front right here until the very end because that'll give you a
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little bit more room to work with and install all those cards as you're
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building the system. Now, in terms of hard drive support, I wanted a challenge
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when it came to hard drive installation. So, I well, okay. I I guess I actually
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just kind of did it wrong. And to go back and do it over, I might turn the
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drives around. So, you can see I have the mounted connectors towards the back,
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and they're supposed to be mounted connectors towards the front. So, I
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would I would turn the drives around and put the cables on the other side. And I
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would definitely install drives in the top slots before populating the side,
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especially if I have a mid-range graphics card in here. It's a 260x in
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there. the way that I do because that's putting a lot of that graphics card heat
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next to my drives which is going to be bad for them in the longer term. In the
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end, it worked. And the fact that this case supports up to two 3 and 1/2 in
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drives and two 2 and 1/2 in drives or three 3 and 1/2 in drives or four 2 and
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1/2 in drives is pretty darn impressive given the size. And when we see our
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temperature tests, you're going to see that even with the hard drives in sort of their worstc case scenario locations,
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it actually performs all right. After finishing my build, I did have one piece
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of criticism. I wish the manual was a little bit better. I've already brought
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this up with Cooler Master, but step-by-step build instructions and some
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useful guidance in terms of part selection would go a long way towards
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making the build process more enjoyable. The manual is well written and
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professionally made, but I would just like to see it go a little bit deeper.
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But to be frank, if that's what I have to complain about rather than things
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like, you know, what was the overall build quality like? Then I guess they're
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doing pretty well. There were no rough edges, no things that could have cut me,
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no things that that really bothered me or I looked at and I went, really, what
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were they thinking when they did that? But I've come to expect this from Cooler
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Master, so it's hard to remember to mention that kind of stuff. And in fact,
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it's not even in my script. So there you go. I just remembered now. So, with all
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that out of the way, let's talk results. Playing Far Cry 3 with the GPU usage
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pinned at 100% yielded 90 degree temps
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on the R seven260X that I have tucked away in that little corner in there.
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That might sound high, but remember guys, these modern GPUs are actually
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designed to ramp their fan speeds to target a specific temperature. And that
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card was reaching about 72% fan speed to
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maintain that 90°. Yeah, it's a little bit on the loudish side, but it's not
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unreasonable by any means. And when you consider the stupid way my drives were
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installed, such that my graphics card really doesn't have much access to fresh
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air, it's obvious it could do a little bit better with more forethought. CPU
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temperatures of course were much better at an impressive 55 degrees max, but
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that makes sense because it's liquid cooled and access to fresh outside air
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for the radiator does wonders here. It's drawing that fresh air right in from the
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outside. So overall, the system is extremely small, extremely compact, runs
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quiet at idle, but of course gets a little bit louder under gaming load. And
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I'd say the Elite 110 if you're trying to build a tiny little system with good
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ventilation gets a definite thumbs up from me. Guys, thank you for watching
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this video. Like it if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a
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comment and let me know. Do you prefer small cases like this or would you
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rather we do more coverage of things like the half stacker for example? Like
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large, more maybe more versatile, but certainly less uh spaceconscious
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solutions. I guess there's a couple more things to mention, guys. Uh, we do have
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a link to support us in the video description. You can do anything from
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think WAN Stealth will already be sold out. You can click the support link to
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see the uh the t-shirt store, by the way, as well.
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Heat.