The Best Chassis for Steambox/HTPC Style Gaming Systems
Peter Donnell / 10 years ago
Corsair 250D
This is one of the best-looking mini-ITX chassis on the market, it’s perfect for the kind of system we’re building as it sits alongside your home entertainment center in a similar fashion to a subwoofer. The black brushed aluminium front panel looks great and you’ve got easy access to the USB ports, audio jacks and a flip-out front panel with washable dust filters.
On the interior you’ll find room for a mini-ITX motherboard, ATX PSU, tool-free hard drive rays, a full 5.25″ drive bay and a pair of 120mm fans.
Cable routing looks a little cluttered, but that’s why we have cable ties. Fortunately, this is an aesthetics issue and airflow from the front fan to the motherboard is unobstructed. One thing you will notice, the GPU is missing! A minor oversight on my own part, but the Sapphire R9 270X doesn’t fit in this GPU as it’s about 8mm to long, oh no! I still love this chassis though, so I’m going to push on and test what I can.
The finished product looks great, giving you a nice view of the motherboard, ram and CPU cooler and there is plenty of ventilation to help keep the system cool.
