The Best Chassis for Steambox/HTPC Style Gaming Systems
Peter Donnell / 10 years ago
Cooler Master Elite 130
The Cooler Master Elite 130 is one of my favourite mini-ITX chassis, it’s cheap, durable and perfect for lugging around to LAN gaming events. It’s also small enough to fit under you average TV stand, without making a compromise on important components such as the GPU size. It’s also a rather nice looking chassis too, the front panel is understated enough to not be distracting while you’re watching TV, but still packs USB 3.0 support and a full 5.25″ drive bay to make it practical.
There’s room for a full-size ATX PSU, a 5.25″ drive, plenty of hard drives and a mini-ITX motherboard. There’s a single 120mm and an 80mm fan pre-installed.
The Elite 130 is a very easy chassis to work with and fitting our massive R9 270X graphics card was a piece of cake; there’s even room to spare! Cable routing on the interior is a little chaotic, but nothing a few well-placed cable ties can’t manage.
The final product is a neat and tidy gaming rig with plenty of airflow on all sides; this shows promise for low temperatures, but the Elite 130 may be a little on the noisy side.
