Best Mini ITX case for around £60

Sirrel Squirrel

Sirrel Squirrel

Sirrel Squirrel

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I'm building a small PC for a friend so I'm going to go down the Mini ITX route but I'm struggling to pick a good case. It needs to be able to take an ODD, 3.5" HDD and 2.5" SSD. Budget is around £60.

So far I've picked out the BitFenix Prodigy, which is slightly over budget. Anything else I should look at?
 
Prodigy is a bit of a let down tbh. I have one and whilst it's spacious and has relatively good temps it is large, not particularly well laid out and has odd airflow. If you want small definitely try and see one in the flesh before you commit to it.

Have you got a PSU already? If not consider the EVGA Hadron Air. Nice looking and substantially smaller than the Prodigy. Require an odd ODD if I remember rightly. Tbh I think Stulid has it sorted.
 
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Silverstone Sugo SG05. Comes with a 300W Bronze PSU. Or the SG05-450 version is a 450W Bronze PSU that will run any modern GPU (that will fit in the case of course, so no 295 X2 or Titan Z lol - 9.5 inch length is your limit, unless you chop a hole in the case for an extra inch).
 
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People say the Prodigy is larger but it really isn't if you do the measurements without the handles and compare it to the other small form or shoe box style cases it ends up being only larger height wise but the rest it's smaller (shoe box type ones tend to be add depth and others are very wide)
 
edGfaCTor said:
People say the Prodigy is larger but it really isn't if you do the measurements without the handles and compare it to the other small form or shoe box style cases it ends up being only larger height wise but the rest it's smaller (shoe box type ones tend to be add depth and others are very wide)
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And that's where I have to disagree with you. The Prodigy, and pretty much most Mini ITX cases out there, are just far too big. Intelligent use of space is much more important, and frankly the Prodigy is very poor.

If you're not using a lot of hard drives then the entire front of the Prodigy is just wasted space. If you're using an AIO water unit then there's cavernous amounts of space above the motherboard and the roof. Yes it's great to see a full customer water loop in a Prodigy filling up the space, but that's not really what it was designed for.

Other cases are just as bad - full ATX power supplies in cases that aren't quite long enough to fit GPUs that would need that much power, cases that support full-length GPUs and PSUs to match but are double the volume to compensate for non-blower coolers and 240mm AIOs, it's all silly.

Think logically and space things intelligently. The Silverstone Sugo SG05 just needs to 2 inches length and 1 inch height added to it to be perfect, and is smaller than a shoebox. Digital Storm Bolt and Falcon Northwest Tiki, albeit bespoke cases, are perfect examples of how to lay a full-power Mini ITX rig out. Silverstone Raven RVZ01 and NCase also do it right.


So yeah, maybe the Prodigy is smaller than other Mini ITX cases on the market, but given the point of comparison is ridiculously oversized to begin with, it kinda makes the whole point moot.
 
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LePhuronn said:
And that's where I have to disagree with you. The Prodigy, and pretty much most Mini ITX cases out there, are just far too big. Intelligent use of space is much more important, and frankly the Prodigy is very poor.

If you're not using a lot of hard drives then the entire front of the Prodigy is just wasted space. If you're using an AIO water unit then there's cavernous amounts of space above the motherboard and the roof. Yes it's great to see a full customer water loop in a Prodigy filling up the space, but that's not really what it was designed for.

Other cases are just as bad - full ATX power supplies in cases that aren't quite long enough to fit GPUs that would need that much power, cases that support full-length GPUs and PSUs to match but are double the volume to compensate for non-blower coolers and 240mm AIOs, it's all silly.

Think logically and space things intelligently. The Silverstone Sugo SG05 is literally 2 inches length and 1 inch height away from perfection, and is smaller than a showbox. Digital Storm Bolt and Falcon Northwest Tiki, albeit bespoke cases, are perfect examples of how to lay a full-power Mini ITX rig out. Silverstone Raven RVZ01 and NCase also do it right.


So yeah, maybe the Prodigy is smaller than other Mini ITX cases on the market, but given the point of comparison is ridiculously oversized to begin with, it kinda makes the whole point moot.
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I always thought mitx is for people who want low power units and use onboard graphics but this doesn't appear to be the appeal other wise I would agree with you that they are too large.

People appear to want gaming systems inside these cases which means they do have to be fairly large to tailor to that with the graphics cards plus the extra cpu cooler and I have build systems and serviced most of the cases you listed minus the ncase and got to say your measurements for the Sugo S05 reduction are well off if you take the inches you state it wont fit all graphics cards it's already a tight fit.

Prodigy - 250mm (W) x 310mm (H)x 340mm (D)
Sugo SG05 - 222mm (W) x 176mm (H) x 276mm (D)
Raven RVZ01 - 382mm (W) x 105mm (H) x 350mm (D)
NCase - 160mm (W) x 240mm (H) x 328mm (D)
Digi Storm Bolt - 112mm (W) x 417mm (H) x 359mm (D)
 
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edGfaCTor said:
your measurements for the Sugo S05 reduction are well off if you take the inches you state it wont fit all graphics cards it's already a tight fit.
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I didn't make my point clear. I was talking about expanding the Sugo by a couple of inches, not reducing it. 2 inches extra in length and it'll fit pretty much every dual-slot GPU out there. An extra inch in height and it'll fit a lot more CPU coolers, as well as a vertically-oriented 120mm AIO water unit without having to sacrifice the optical tray.
 
LePhuronn said:
I didn't make my point clear. I was talking about expanding the Sugo by a couple of inches, not reducing it. 2 inches extra in length and it'll fit pretty much every dual-slot GPU out there. An extra inch in height and it'll fit a lot more CPU coolers, as well as a vertically-oriented 120mm AIO water unit without having to sacrifice the optical tray.
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Now I get you.

I disliked the Sugo SG05 it felt poorly thought out which a lot of Silverstones cases are like that especially when it comes to the way they position/layout the optical drive.

Silverstone ones I like working on SG09/SG10 had some good ideas but are bit larger with supporting matx which if they knocked bit of the size for mitx only it could work (looks are not great)
 
I love my SG05, I guess it's all personal preference. It was a bit of a fiddle to sit back, work out what limitations I had and how to go about fitting my hardware, but once I decided I was dropping the optical drive and 3.5" HDD everything came together well.

Basically if you take out the optical tray (with the 2 HDD mounts as a result) you actually have acres of space to start cramming AIO water coolers, tall RAM and quite a few 2.5" drives (and chopping a hole in the case to fit 10.5" cards :P).

Although I do agree the optical tray with the HDD mounts are pretty dumb since it blocks 3/4 of the front fan!
 
Sirrel Squirrel said:
I'm building a small PC for a friend so I'm going to go down the Mini ITX route but I'm struggling to pick a good case. It needs to be able to take an ODD, 3.5" HDD and 2.5" SSD. Budget is around £60.
Click to expand...

Just a thought, but is an internal ODD really necessary? Or would an external USB ODD suffice?
 
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