Review on 🖥️ Fractal Design Core 500 Mini Tower Computer Case - Mini ITX - Enhanced High Airflow and Cooling - Includes 1x 140mm Silent Fan - Brushed Aluminium - Water-Cooling Compatible - Black by Drew Cage

I just bought this baby because I need a tower cooler and my normal case (Master Elite 130 cooler or similar) doesn't have any overhead space Has. The body layout is excellent. The power supply is mounted on the side of the front, not above the processor. Make sure your ATX power supply isn't too deep, or use an SFX power supply. But if you can drive a full ATX power supply, it's less dense and therefore less noisy. This is to accommodate a long GPU without the power cables getting in the way. It has a large rear exhaust fan, no front intake fan (bottom, side and top ventilation, but not front). This still fits perfectly with the flow-through tower cooler design. It also houses a heatsink vent on the top, but that bracket is removable and I don't use it, so I removed it. I recommend something like the Seasonic Focus Gold series for full ATX or the SilverStone SX500-LG (500W, "longer" SFX is still much shorter than typical ATX). However, the SX500's fan is loud when it revs up. Therefore, always orient it so that it draws air in from the underside (grid) and not the other way around to help vent the case. Another option is a full ATX power supply. Seasonic is my favorite brand as they are OEM and not rebranded. Make sure it's a shallow depth power supply like the Focus Gold series. It's better to go the same way. Draw air from below instead of drawing air from inside the case. Definitely back to the body. I like flexible layouts. I like multiple storage options inside, as well as a 5.25" bay and an internal 3.5" bay. That means I could add a small dual- or quad-core 2.5-inch hot-swap module to the external bay, which I prefer to mounting internally. I loaded it with an AMD RX 570 and Ryzen 3600 GPU and a tower cooler with an ASRock B450. Mini-ITX mobo. The result is a very quiet yet powerful Mini-ITX PC. Two more remarks on case cooling. The minimum fan setting in the BIOS to ensure it starts is 55%, so it's just not possible to start it slowly. Luckily I just removed it completely and used a dual fan solution on a tower cooler instead. Or buy a better case fan like the Noctua 120mm 4-pin fan. The second option to improve case airflow is to rotate the tower fans (or a tower fan + case fan) to pull air in from the rear instead of exhausting it from the back. For minimal fan noise, I have a dual-fan configuration uses the tower cooler, rotate it to suck air from the back, then completely remove the fan housing. With higher loads, however, you should definitely stick to the dual-fan solution. Note that if you are using a 4-pin PWM case fan, you can program the BIOS to actually turn it off when the system is idle or under light loads to further reduce noise. -- Addendum (much later). I now have several of these cases and have found that the best PSU for them is actually a full ATX but with a bit of depth so the cables don't get in the way of the GPU. The Seasonic Focus Gold series (which *is* modular) fits perfectly. The SilverStone SFX power supply works well but is quite noisy in a variety of environments, while a full ATX power supply like the Seasonic is completely silent. I still recommend replacing the exhaust fan included in the case with a better one. The result is a quiet system (no GPU-related noise, which is another issue). There are many cooling options here. It's big enough to hold a CPU tower cooler AND a heatsink, for example (mind your clearances), so an enterprising DIYer can use a CLC on their GPU and a tower or mini-tower on their CPU. I prefer to just cap the frame rate on the GPU so the fans never go over 50%. — Matt.