2014-03-28 Corsair Obsidian 250D Small but spacious - Silent - mITX Chassis: Motherboard: CPU: CPU cooler: PSU: Memory: Hard Drive: GPU: OS: 2015-10-06 Corsair Obsidian 250D Asus Z87I-PRO WiFi Socket 1150 miniITX Intel Core I5-4570S TDP 65W Noctua NH-L9i LP Seasonic Platinum 660W Modular Corsair Vengeance low profile DDR3 2x4GB Sandisk Ultra Plus 2 x 250GB XFX Radeon R7 250 GDDR5 Passive Windows 8.1 64bit New GPU - Msi GTX 950 Gaming Asus Z87I-PRO WiFi MiniITX Compact only 17x17 cm. Yet, it offers everything except a number of PCI and memory connectors that you still don't use. But there is WiFi, six SATA and four fan connectors that anyone can control both PWM and standard 3-pin fans. Noctua NH-L9i LP XFX Radeon R7 250 GDDR5 Passive Intel Core I5-4770S TDP 65W CPU cooler can probably be mounted in any direction, but it is a bit irregular in thickness so you might try out the best orientation. This way around fan connectors on the right are easily accessible and there is more air above the southbridge than the picture suggests. The capacitor bottom left survived with 1 mm margin. Could have used a larger CPU coolers (but the biggest tower models doesn't fit in the case). However, this superb little Noctua is more than enough and helps to make it spacious and easily accessible inside the box. A total of 12 USB ports (4x2.0 + 6x3.0 + 2x3.0 in the front panel) Seasonic Platinum 660W Modular Of course it's overkill with 660W and it was expensive. But I choose it for quality, felexibility and efficiency. For now it's mounted with fan down toward case bottom vent. Started running it in Normal mode (fan spinning all the time). But it was quite clearly audible so I switched to Hybrid mode which probably means that the fan will never spin on this computer. Hope it does not get too hot, upside down, without any extra airflow, but Seasonic sets no restrictions on the installation of this unit. Besides, this computer will probably pull less than 100W so with 90% efficiency there is only 10W of heat to dissipate. I can't hear any of the notorious Coil whine ... Supplied fans replaced. These two suck air out of the box. Vents in the front and on the hard drive cage will be blocked. Fresh air will flow in through the upper rear vent to the CPU area and through the left side vent passing over the graphics card. Note the opening in the PSU cage. It gives you several options for choise and orientation of powersupply. There is support for two 2.5-inch and two 3.5-inch disks. You can also mount the small ones on the big trays which i did later on with one of mine in order to get more space between them. It was easier to connect cables that way. With fan away the front opening comes in very handy then routing and connecting cables. As you can se there is decent passage for airflow to/from PSU underneath the motherboard. With negative airpressure in the case one of Seasonics passive models is a perfect alternative, even for rather powerfull systems. 2015-10-06 - New videocard - MSI Geforce GTX 950 Gaming To manage a new 2560x1440 monitor. Great card, plenty of FPS in WoW with fans running at low rpm (they even stops sometimes). Not more noticeable than the old passive one and no impact on overall temps or case fans rpm. But it was kind of big, tight fit for that 6-pin power connector. Upper vent is intake for CPU area. Opening to drives will be sealed -no need to let dust in. Don't know who to blame, Asus or Corsair, but it was impossible to get the motherboard in place with the back panel mounted as intended -at least without using excessive force. It have to hang loose on the outside instead. Temperatures and noise Can be summarized very simple. It is virtually silent and almost unnecessary cool. I like Asus utility Fan Expert2 with wich you can use ready-made fan profiles or set up your own. I have set it up so fans stops then not needed. Even if they are inaudible at low speed they still suck in unnecessary dust. Idle -only CPU fan is spinntng (436 rpm) Desktop work, Photo editing -one of the side fans has started (655 rpm) Load (World of Warcraft) -the other side fan is also spinning (765 rpm) This computer will probably never have to cope with more load than this, bur as you can see there is a lot of headroom. The video card is 20 degrees cooler than one with the same performance in my previous computer. I could easily put in something more powerfull if needed.