Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Case Review: Little in Almost Every Way
by Dustin Sklavos on July 26, 2012 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Mini ITX
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
- Cooler Master
Noise and Thermal Testing, Dedicated GPU
Cooler Master advertises the Elite 120 Advanced as being able to support the biggest, most powerful video cards on the market, and on one point that's true: there's certainly space inside the enclosure for them. The problem lies in keeping them cool; given how small a Mini-ITX case is, a large video card will essentially create its own thermal zone by virtue of its sheer size in relation to the rest of the chassis, so video cards are going to depend almost entirely on the side ventilation of the Elite 120 to feed their fans.
To test Cooler Master's claims, though, I ran the Elite 120 with both our usual Mini-ITX card, the Zotac GeForce GTS 450 Eco, and with our bigger ASUS GeForce GTX 560 Ti from our ATX/Micro-ATX testbed.
In the most technical sense, the Elite 120 certainly supports higher performance graphics cards, but I'd really hesitate to put anything faster than the GTX 560 Ti in this case. The sheer length of it seems to trap heat inside the drive cage, ramping up the temperature of our SSD. Our CPU also has a harder time staying cool due to the heat radiating off of the back of the video card.
This is the first time I've seen the Mini-ITX testbed's cooler pushed to its limit. You can fit a GTX 560 Ti in the case, but it will overwhelm the cooling system. If you want a card like that in a Mini-ITX build you're going to have to move up to a BitFenix Prodigy.
With all the fans cranking away as hard as they can the Elite 120's noise profile doesn't improve, either. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, anything more than a PCIe-slot powered video card is probably going to push this case too hard.
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nakabaka - Tuesday, July 16, 2013 - link
Oh, and in addition to that comment I just posted, MY favorite mATX case of all time was that sweet little Elite 341. True it doesn't have much room in liu of hard drive bays, but I really only use 1 SDD these days, used to only use 1 HDD for my needs. The four 120mm fans without a drive cage to block intake flow from the front was beastly, and I still have two of those cases around.jimbob343 - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
I have recently bought this case as I wanted a good looking small system to put on my desk that could take a full size GPU... and.... I've managed it...The photo taken with the ugly blu-ray drive doesn't do it justice.. and cooling...well...
Change the fan on the side so it pulls in air into the case, the front fan removed for the water cooling FAN to the CPU which creates a lot more space in the case. Also add an extra fan on the side to pull more cool air in
PSU is pulling the warmer air out of the case and circulating!
A10 -7850k CPU
Coolermaster seidon 120v
GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN motherboard
EVGA GTX 780
G-Skill Ripjaws X 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3 PC3-14900 1866MHz
Crucial CT240M500SSD1 SSD Hard drive
Seagate 1TB Hard drive
Case temp is 30, CPU is 30 on idle, 51 on full load! I'm no expect but I can live with these temps for what I have in it!
MaromG - Wednesday, September 3, 2014 - link
Hi! Could I install 3 HDDs inside?I only want to install 3.5 inch drives.
Can I use the default 2x3.5 inch bays and instead of the CD-ROM drive, install a 3.5 inch HDD using an adapter? It's a crucial point for me in deciding if I want to buy this product of not.
Thanks!
jimbob343 - Monday, July 14, 2014 - link
Update.. Had Windows Update running so wasn't idle... Idle temp is 20c.Full load playing Titanfall on Insane quality.. 50c
wintermute000 - Saturday, August 9, 2014 - link
Yes I completely believe you that you can chuck a 100W card and a 95W CPU in there and get better performance than the reviewer in a tiny shoebox case with no clearance or airflow or ability to install a 'real' cooler. sure.