Gadgetory

enter the GN ITX case reviews we've completely revisited and overhauled our ATX testing methodology and applied it to I TX cases and small form-factor cases this includes a new test approaches and charts and new data including thermocouple Long's BRM temperatures our ITX reviews start with a mini roundup of just three cases and this is meant just to kick-start the charts and will soon add more cases to the list including a few that are under NDA presently today we're benchmarking and many reviewing the cryo rig Taku and RT $300 box the Box he Thermaltake Kor v1 and the true to form silverstone SG 13 before that this video is brought to you by Thermal Grizzlies high end thermal paste and liquid metal Thermal Grizzlies cryo knot is an affordable high quality thermal compound that doesn't face some of the aging limitations of other pastes on the market cryo knot has a thermal conductivity of 12.5 watts per meter Kelvin focuses on endurance is easy to spread and isn't electrically conductive making it safe to use on GPU dies thermal grizzly also makes conductor not liquid metal which we've used to drop 20 degrees off some temperatures than our dee-lighted tests by a tube at the link in the description below these are the three cases we're working with today the interesting thing with ITX reviews is that actually from a review standpoint they're harder to work with than ATX cases with ITX cases you're looking at things that are partially subjective like what's your cutoff for how big it is in terms of volume the SG 13 is the smallest of these three but the v1 isn't that much worse although it is 2 times the volume roughly so you kind of have a cut-off that's a personal thing where this might be acceptable for someone it might be way too big for someone else but it's still kind of a smallish box that would go in a home theater environment so those definitions notwithstanding other things to consider with these small form-factor PC cases is stuff like full-length video cards support all of these support full-length video cards to most extent at least to the extent of reference full-length cards they also support in varying capacities air cooler is liquid cool tower cooler and so forth the Taku clearly not a fan of a tower cooler or a taller cooler but you can fit a small 50 millimeter cooler in there or something like that that's g13 you can easily fit a liquid cooler in it just like a 120 levy one could actually fit some of these smaller mini tower coolers so when you're looking at all those things it makes ITX case reviews the least possible scientific review although we can still control for as many variables as possible the fact of the matter is if we test with the same standardized hardware with everything which we always do you run into issues we're on a case that can clearly fit more hardware like that one which can fit a larger cooler you'll see the worst results if constrained to the coolers that were selected for smaller cases so keep that in mind but we can still do a standardized test which well at least give us a baseline for the hardware rehab which is a downdraft cooler and we'll have the full test bench and methodology linked in the article in description below you want to learn more about that but things we've added this time that are pretty important one of them is we're now mounting it we have a fixed thermocouple on one of the MOSFETs so this is really just to see does a hot spot get generated in a particular ITX case where the MOSFET sits that we've probes and then we also have new testing where we're just showing the frequency over time so we can look at these three cases for GPU frequency over time and look at what's the actual frequency degradation not just is it throttling yes or no but how much is it throttling and we'll have a couple new charts for that as well and we're trying to get into noise normalize testing that still kind of being refined right now we've done it for our CPU coolers it's a lot harder to deal with ITX cases for reasons that will be listed in the article so anyway today these are the three cases we're adding more rapidly check back soon for those the talk is $300 the HG 13s we added an extra fan to it because it comes with none so that puts it's effective price at fifty five and a quarter v1 is a forty eight dollar case comes with a two hundred millimeter front fan and that's it for that one although it does have a space for more so we can go through all these but first off case dimensions are probably the most important for ITX cases when you're selecting one for our three cases today the I already talked you matters that 25.1 meters or 14.8 if you don't count the legs the core v1 at twenty two point seven liters and the SG thirteen at an impressive eleven point five liters just volume you can fit two SG 13s in the other cases if you're able to strip it down to bare components basically and let it sit there so that's certainly a put Silverstone an interesting place where they're the smallest by significant margin so they're thermals could be worse but also it's got a mesh front makes it really interesting to find out and we can also go through the cases one by one before getting to the thermal results we'll start with the talking for that the first case we tested was also the most different from the rest of the group the cryo rec tofu is a flat horizontal mini ITX monitor stand as they call it the talkers quality can be neatly divided into two aspects outside and inside externally the Taku is artsy and presentable constructed of thick unpainted aluminum with sturdy wooden legs that seem to make a statement and the statement is I'm rich because it's $300 the faceplate is blank white plastic with only a large circular power button backed by a soft white power LED and a less pleasant harddrive led but that can be unplugged it's red the ventilation holes are symmetrical and mostly invisible from the front and that's also the angle from which you're most likely to see it so from a visual standpoint they're going for a very specific home theater look for an MIT X case the Taku is large including the empty air between the legs the volume of the space taken up is approximately equal to a normal tower laid on its slide an ATX tower at that that could help with GPU air flow we'll test this later but it also means that despite being shaped like a VHS player the Taku probably won't fit in an entertainment center without removing those legs and when used as a monitor stand it might lift the display uncomfortably high depending on what you're going for and your home theater setup cryo rigs website does specifically advertise the Taku as quote an ITX monitor stand and the outer construction is definitely solid enough to support a modern display there are important ventilation holes on top of the case however so covering them up with the stand of a monitor is a bad idea just be careful about that if you could go with a wall-mount it might be better as we're internal is the most striking feature of the talk was the sliding drawer which allows the entire system to be slid out a few inches on the tray for easy access sort of like the BitFenix portal the drawer solution does allow for opening the case without moving the monitor off the top but the mechanism is elaborate and seems delicate compared to regular lashes and thumb screws draw our ideas cool it just we need to see a more robust system that doesn't waste precious space like a removable panel or a hinged lid space is limited by nesting everything inside of the drawer rather than just attaching components directly to the outer shell which is another potential downside of that design the wide flat layout of the taco isn't naturally suited to PC components everything is cramped despite the size of the case our CPU cooler only measures 47 millimeters tall from the cold plate to the top of the fan but it was still uncomfortably close for airflow purposes - touching the case filters the power supply is positioned as far as possible from the 24 pin ATX connector on our motherboard and although cry rig did include an extension cable there's no logical path for routing it the intended path is under a metal bar at the bottom of the case but there's no space around the edges of the board and crossing cables over the top of the board would interfere with CPU fat we threaded it through the SSD cage instead which limited us to a single SSD the single 90 millimeter fan included with the case and there's only one for it is mounted on top of the SSD cage SSDs don't need direct cooling certainly not like that and there's more support needed in the GP or the CPU the error that flows off the SSD isn't directed at the motherboard either it would be blocked by RAM if it were and the fan placement seems to be more of a matter of where can we fit a fan rather than where would it help to have a fan we have a lot more thoughts on this case but check the written review linked in the description below for more reading on those thoughts moving on to thermal takes core v1 this is one of the older ITX cases that's still sold the v1 takes a relaxed approach the space-saving that's almost exactly twice the volume of SG 13 and that offers a few advantages it's also bigger which is counterintuitive to the point of ITX whether or not the size increase is accessible though will depend on where you plan to place the system the interior of the v1 is divided into two sections by the horizontal motherboard tray and this gives room for the PSU chamber below cable management is excellent and trivially done and none of the power supply cables have to stretch too far they can be routed over the two edges of the motherboard for easy access to everything except for our CPU power socket because it's a cube the four side panels of the case are interchangeable one is acrylic to are vents and one is clearly intended as a bottom panel with for plastic legs and a PSU filter since every panel is interchangeable any side of the case could be made the new bottom so you could actually change any of these the top panel currently has acrylic in it we found there were some interesting thermal implications with our downdraft cooler obviously we move that to the side and put mesh on the top you could also do that and just move where the feet are so now we can move the feet to the bottom one and suddenly you have a very interesting and unique inverted PC so that's something to note it's it's probably the most it's the simplest possible design element where it seems like they went with the square interchangeable panels out of ease and cost and then later could have gone wait a minute that's a really good marketing point so the v1 is interesting for that reason material quality is fine for the price it's certainly not impressive the taco is far and away the best material in build quality it's also $300 it's a big difference there let's get into the SG 13 for the last one the SG 13 is a low cost bare-bones silverstone case from the good old days when they put mesh front panels on everything it launched in 2015 but we hadn't actually worked on it until now the SG 13b has all the features we liked from the RL 0-6 a focus on air flow primarily a functional design and nothing extra to raise the price not even a fan there's not much to look at on the outside just a metal box to put a computer in there's some indentations on the front mesh that probably helps to prevent flexing and there are two intentional larger indentations in the top mesh that don't prevent flexing at all and make the case look like it's warped the outer shell is made a very thin steel that hooks into the chassis with metal tabs that don't seem to want to line up correctly at the same time on the bottom of the case there are four very nice grippy rubber feet that make the case charmingly bouncy we actually really like the selection of the rubber feet on this case by Silverstone it's got a good overall feel to it and it does actually kind of bounce in an interesting way but the case itself there's no bottom intake or anything so that elevation does nothing for you it's a very plain case - flat metal bottom so it's really just to get it off the ground a bit doesn't help with ventilation or cooling cooling intake exhaust are very interesting on this one because what you're left with is a front-end take clearly this side has a mesh and that's where your video card will pull air from outside the case in so that's an intake for our set up the top is an intake because we have a downdraft cooler and then this side is slightly obstructive so you end up with a lot of the exhaust going out through the i/o of the case and we don't put an IO shield on so that actually pobably helps a bit in this scenario it's basically when you're planning a build in a case like this one this is an instance we're testing with a standardized bench although perfect for what we're doing is not something you'd want to do and really use case scenario you'd probably want to go with something like a 120 or 140 CLC just because then you can direct your airflow a bit better even though we've still got really good results on this one as you'll see momentarily so there's not much to look at on the outside with it kill management is unfortunately non-existent even the reference photos and Silverstone zone manual show a big wad of cables that barely avoids snagging on the fans in the front that's the nature though of having a case that's half the volume of anything else on this table it's the smallest by far there's a sacrifice and it's cables so we're still gets full credit for nap not sacrificing on GPU lengths you can put basically a full length card in here you can put a CLC in here and that's pretty damn good for a case of this size for 40 bucks then you buy a fan obviously if you don't have a CLC and call it a day so get into thermals and noise here Silverstone's case basically took the approach of trying to be true to form to SFF thermal tanks is the next closest it is a small issue ox you can hide it in a media centre if you want to but it's significantly larger and then the taku is an artsy approach I and it's gonna soften thermally for that but also nothing else looks quite like it or functions quite like it you pay for that as previously results for these tests are not comparable to our other case tests our ITX test bench is 100% different components including new components from gigabyte and enter Mac's were the sponsors of this particular test bench where animatics provided the sfx power supply gigabyte provided the video card and motherboard and you can learn more about the methodology in the article below we're starting with our 3d mark firestrike test which is a gaming stand in benchmarks that generates a realistic load above the CV of the GPU remember we're just starting on ITX review so these charts are sparse CVA temperatures across the board are acceptable for this configuration the silverstone actually 13 is the lead before right now keeping the GPU at 50 point one degrees over ambient this is well below throttle territory and is actually good even when compared to ATX cases in some instances the front intake fan on the HD 13 helps tremendously here and the Thermaltake core v1 operates about four degrees warmer at 54 point one degrees over ambient which is also acceptable the cryo rec Taku is pushing it it's running a 61-degree delta T over a mids after accounting for ambient temperature that puts us right against a major thermal limitation with a GPU boost 3.0 and our actual diode temperatures closer to 83 with throttled territory at 84 so we're actually dropping clocks here in fact this frequency over time chart shows that you'll see that the SP 13 maintains an average clock of about 1780 to 1800 megahertz whereas the talk is closer to 1740 to 70 and 60 megahertz with some dips down to 1670 megahertz that's not a lot you're talking about single-digit fps differences but it's certainly a demonstration of how thermals impact performance next up blender performance with CB rendering is also helpful for looking at vrm thermals which will look at momentarily for CPU thermals first both SP 13 and core v1 operated at equivalents within error margins both cases are at about 48 degrees over ambient for the CPU the GPU which is unused here is also within the error margins for the differences the cryo reg taku isn't throttling or performing in a way that drastically affects performance but it certainly could be better the GPU which is idle during this test is still operating at 16 degrees above ambient that's impressively lacking in cooling and performance because again it's not even being used it's not hurting anything but it speaks of the design of chassis the CB operates about five degrees warmer than the thermal taken and silver some cases performance isn't great but it's fine considering this test is relatively lightweight on total system thermal strain doing okay overall theorem thermals during blender gives us another metric to consider but doesn't reveal any serious design flaws the SG 13 and v1 are both operating at about 34 degrees over ambient for the hotspot MOSFET or about 35 with SOC VRM taku there's about 40 over ambient for perspective in order for even the takis measurement to really matter you'd have to have a room ambient temperature of something like 60 or 70 degrees and basically the water in your body would start boiling before you even had catastrophic failure with these MOSFETs although interesting this load is an intensive enough to matter for this measurement GPU rendering with blender produces a lineup with SD 13 and the lead have 32 degrees over at the core v1 position two degrees warmer it's hockey nearing 40 degrees torture testing there's a little abusive on these small boxes we run power viruses on both components simultaneously in an absolute worst case thermal testing scenario the Taku has its drawer opened for basically an open-air test bench baseline and we see that it performs best naturally this gives us an idea for the kind of impedance that these cases are causing resulting in obstructed airflow in a few instances like the Taku the taco establishes a baseline of fifty four point seven degrees over ambient for unobstructed air flow an improvement of 13 degrees over the stock Taku sixty seven point five degree result the Silverstone actually 13 tested at sixty five point six degrees with removal of its filter improving performance by about three degrees the fact that Silverstone's filter only impacts performance to this minimal level is noteworthy as well worth keeping the filter in place the thermal take core b1 tested with the acrylic window in the top position already at 69 degrees this was the worst performer technically but is only in this configuration where the top panel is completely blocked off given that we're using a downdraft cooler that result makes sense shifting the acrylic to the other side and putting mesh on the top we dropped down to sixty six point seven degrees comfortably between the SG 13 and the taku theorem thermals under this torture test are a bit higher than previous tortures but still uneventful overall that's a good thing to be fair it's just not very exciting open air in the talk of the drawer open a beak or vrm thermals loaded to about 30 degrees over ambient with SOC thermals at 40 degrees the stock Taku ran significantly warmer about 12 degrees warmer at 50 degrees Celsius over ambient vcore or 56 for vsoc but they're gonna take core v1 ran warmest of all thanks to the top mounted acrylic but we're still fine the mesh top v1 dropped thermals by 2 to 3 degrees under the acrylic top 2 v1 and the Silverstone's SG 13 was the most impressive with a baseline V core load temperature of 46 degrees just eight degrees above the open air test GPA torture thermals are a bit more varied and established the SG 13 and a minor lead over the core v1 and a dominating lead over the Taku the Taku holds a lead at one left open which isn't really much of a taki to test it's more of an open air test bench noise normalize testing establishes the SP 13 and core v1 as near each other in performance with a CPU cooler configured to 80% we actually had to run the Taku with a CV cooler at 90% and decrease the intake fan because it was so thermally choked on both CPU and GPU components that it restricted the test conditions so that one sort of failed this test and that's the start of our ITX case reviews we have a lot more coming we're probably gonna try and focus on some of the more performance focused ITX cases to start with stuff like this or this one because they're the most comparable across charts the Taku although it looks bad in some of those thermal tests it's also not really meant to be a performance case it's basically a rich media centre case where you kind of want something that fits your high-end living room with your high-end TV and your high-end friends you have a lot of money and drive fancy Audi's and BMWs that's who the talk was meant for so although we could criticize its design in a lot of ways and clearly have it's also hard to really fault it super hard for the thermal conditions because it's just not trying to do that and if you don't use a system that was you know 1070 TI something like that 1070 1080 something that class of GPU and maybe a lower power CPU you'd be ok but if you're planning to get the Taku and a high-end graphics card which you could afford clearly because you're spending $300 on the case you might have a problem and we'd suggest with the talk you that you may want to consider going with replacing the small fan they have here with something higher rpm if you can find it and absolutely do not put a TV stand on top of any ventilation on the top that'll be a problem that's the biggest design flaw the drawers are okay it's just I mean it's it's kind of neat but really how many times you need to do that takes a lot of space it definitely costs a lot of money so that seems like something that could go in favor of just I don't know maybe lifting up the top and building in the system normally be able to reduce the size overall reduce the cost and maybe even improve thermals in some instances the v1 is the most versatile it's the ease of use winter it was the easiest to build in this one it's got the most cable management space but it's not that small it is small ish but it's not as small as the actually 13 depending on what you're looking for if that size is acceptable for you we've liked it more or less since the case came out it's a fine case it's one of the better ones that thermal takes made in recent years the SG 13 is also a fine gaze but it's a lot harder to work in it has way less cable management space it potentially has some thermally constrained scenarios but performed exceptionally well better than that one and most of our tests so even though it can be constrained depending on how you configure the system you can figure it in a way that is mindful of what you're working with and you do keep those cables out of way then you'll be fine and yes Cal management in cases like these actually can impact airflow for once pretty much inconsequential on ATX cases but Isaac's has way less volume to work with so that's our start here's what we want from you we want to know what ITX cases do you specifically want to see tested leave a comment below we'll try and buy them or acquire them or get samples well you know how it goes but that's it for now as always subscribe for more links in the description below for more information go to patreon.com/scishow stop us out directly or go to store that gamers Nexus dotnet pick up one of these mod mats or one of our rotating crystals back here with the 3d teardown logo in it thanks for watching I'll see you all next time 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