ITX builds have intrigued me for a while but found cases either using atx power supplies making them far too big or if I could find a chassis I liked the pico PSU set up was very pricey. However I was aware of a cheap line of cases from China that looked ok and they came with the power supply and power brick. Super. http://www.minicase.net/product_E-Q6.html And it can be picked up currently from eBuyer for the grand total of £30. I had a Zotac H61 board with a Ivybridge G1610 Celeron sitting about and knew it may be a little chunky (get the impression the case is meant for passive atom rubbish) but thought I would give it a whirl anyway. Excuse the pictures just took a few snaps as I built it up. First attempt to power it up was met with no power, the coupling from the 12v line to the psu board was loose, quick fix with a screwdriver on the socket contacts and it now sat snug and booted right up. You can also see that my low profile cooler was still too high to use the HDD mount, so a bit of double sided tape sorted that problem. I would rather keep the bigger cooler anyway, also a super low profile cooler is about as much as I paid for the case itself. Other than that it works great and looks really smart. I stressed the little Celeron with IBT and get load temps of 60 degrees, fan can be heard but that's to be expected with lack of airflow. Hope that helps people if they want to build a tiny pc on the super cheap.
Awesome! I wonder how Apple does it with it's Mac Mini, to have it quiet. I found this case, which cough my eyes: http://www.streacom.com/products/f1c-chassis/
Simple answer - they use mobile parts. It is a difference to try to cool a 25W TDP CPU or a 65W TDP CPU.
I have sorted the fan noise issue, I just reduced the fan to 30% and it still doesn't go over 70 under full load. Not sure if this H61 supports undervolting, bios is a bit confusing.
As above doesn't go over 70 running IBT with fans on 30%. That's fine with me as a htpc will rarely see that usage.
