Cooler Master Elite 130 Mini-ITX Chassis Review

Introduction

Coolermaster have long been one of my favourite chassis manufacturers, we loved their HAF range and we loved their Elite 120 when we reviewed it earlier last year. Their latest model the Elite 130 looks to take the Elite 120 to new levels and while in many ways this is just a refresh, it’s always great to see a manufacturer revisit their popular products and bring them up to date for a new audience, rather than throw away something great and forget about it. With some of the best chassis on the market, Coolermaster are proving a popular choice with system builders, they’ve often been praised by us here at eTeknix for their durable build quality, great feature sets and affordable prices, so we hope to see more of the same with this product today.

The Elite 130 is a smaller chassis designed to be the perfect choice for LAN gaming, or any compact gaming build that needs to be portable, small enough to fit in with a home entertainment centre as a HTPC / SteamBox style build or even just for those that want a small and affordable chassis for their office. It supports mini-ITX motherboards, has room for a few hard drives, it’s compatible with full size ATX power supplies and long graphics cards, and even a 5.25″ drive. So while we do stress this is a small form factor chassis, it is one of the bigger options in the mini-ITX category.

The packaging isn’t anything especially exciting, but given that it costs just £40 I’m hardly going to fuss about the one part I’ll be throwing in the bin should I buy this case. Around the sides of the box you’ll find a quick run down of the main specifications, as well as a tick box showing which model you have purchased.

In the box I found the usual assortment of fixtures and fittings, including cable ties, motherboard stand-offs, screws and a collection of vibration free rubber washers used to mount hard drives.