 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Cubitec Mini Ice. You can see that it was sent from Taipei City in Taiwan. Okay, there's some sort of, yeah, sort of okay box art going on here. But I think where we're really going to enjoy this unboxing is once the box is actually open because this is a case that I think looks incredibly cool. This is a mini ITX chassis with, okay, as you might imagine based on their mini ice name and the fact that the tagline for it is frozen solid, this is a mini ITX case with fairly advanced cooling features that can also support some pretty advanced hardware. So the first thing we see when we open it up is an accessory box, but we'll get to that later. We also see the packaging. Now they're using a hard foam. I would prefer to see a soft foam. However, due to the aluminum construction of this case, it really doesn't weigh a whole lot, so it's a lot less likely to damage its packing materials during the shipping process. And I mean, honestly, if it managed to survive an air shipment from Taiwan to here, then that's probably about as much of a stress test as you're going to need for it. However, once it's loaded up with components, we might be having a different conversation because it does support some pretty high-end internal components, including a full-sized ATX power supply as well as a graphics card up to 340 millimeters. So let's go ahead and open this bad boy up. All right. So actually give me a second to get acquainted here, guys. So I'm just kind of checking things out here. It arrived a little bit dusty, but it's nothing that doesn't come off with the old sleeve wipe, so to speak. So let's have a look at the outside of the case before we go too much further here. So on the top, you're going to see a 140 millimeter fan that is set up as an exhaust fan. So this is only compatible with 140 mil. You can see the holes are hard drilled around the outside of the grill. In terms of I.O., we have front USB 2, two of those, two front USB 3 as well as front headphones and microphone. The overall look of the case actually reminds me a little bit of my TJ07 in that it has this single piece aluminum thing going on on the front. Sorry, I guess. I'm trying to be really careful with touching it too much because once you touch brushed aluminum, basically the finishes rain forever. So you can see it's a solid piece going all the way up the front, and then it's another solid piece going all the way up the back and then meeting right here. So it's two pieces going around the whole outside of the case, which I think is really cool. You've got an optional VGA cooling intake here as well as feet on the bottom of the case giving it a little bit of space to breathe. On the front of the chassis, let's just lift it back up. We've got a five and a quarter inch optical drive bay as well as our power and IDE, or I shouldn't call it IDE, so hard drive activity indicator. We've got power and reset buttons as well as a stylish Cubitec logo going on here. All right, let's move around to the back of the case where we find our standard ATX power supply mount. So you can see that's done with just a couple of thumb screws. You screw your power supply into the plate and then slide the whole thing into place. This is much like the PCQ07 that I have for my media PC downstairs. Water cooling holes if you wanted to externally water cool it. I hope you're not going to do that with a configuration like this though because you do have a fair amount of room included for an air cooler. So you can see the motherboard is going to be right about here, so any air cooler that'll fit within here. Actually I think the dimensions, hold on, maximum of 90 millimeters or nine centimeters from the motherboard itself. So we've got two expansion slots. Yes, this is mini ITX and we also have a very unique system for attaching the side panel. So these are little thumb screws that have Allen key spots in them. So if you wanted to use an Allen key to, I wonder if it comes with an Allen key. It doesn't surprise me that much. If you're going to go ahead and make your case open up with an Allen key, I guess you better include one. There it is. Aha, Allen key slash buzzer. So it does come with a speaker, which is what I think they mean by buzzer. All right, there we go. Then we got another one here for these. This isn't so bad. I can dig it. And there we go. So solid aluminum. I'm totally going to do it. And he whipped out the iPhone thickness comparison. Now you know how thick the panel is. It's fairly thick actually. It has a very rigid feel to it. So this is in theory to reduce the overall vibration of the case. So the overall noise level of the case. They also have anti-vibration rubber dampeners here on the side panels. This can be a real problem for aluminum cases if you don't have some way to isolate the vibration because they're much lighter weight than their steel counterparts, which has the advantage of being, well, lightweight, attractive, easier to work with. You can make more beautiful aluminum cases than you often can out of steel and plastic. But the drawback is that, well, it's not as strong. So you have to use thicker material, which can be more expensive. And then also that it's not as heavy. All right, let's just get both of these side panels off here. All right, here you can see the other one if you want. Basically looks the same thing and also has the rubber noise dampening solution implemented on the other side as well. You can see that. You can also see the motherboard tray as well as the interior cables. Look at that, all black cables. Very nice touch. I'd like to see that. All right, so inside here we got a few things. We have, oh, this is kind of neat. Hold on. I'm going to have to go find a hard drive so I can install this and show you guys this. Right, so here are the rubber noise isolation fasteners as well as some included hard drive screws. And of course, once you've installed them, you have a nice little truck to play with. See how the wheels realistically turn just like a real vehicle would. No, so here's how you actually install your hard drive. You go ahead and you slide this bad boy into, whoops, no. Ah, first you need to take this off. There we are. And then this slides out of the way. Pretty cool. I guess you don't have to take it all the way off either. Look at that. You slide those guys in there and then you, hold on, slide it in the right way if you want to have an optimal user experience. And then you put this over here, which will prevent the wheel from moving and continue to isolate the vibration from your hard drive. So that's pretty cool, hey? I certainly think so. They also include, and for a lot of companies this is sort of optional stuff, but they see how this one already has the sliders installed. And it has a dual 2.5 inch SSD mount included. So you can do up to three 3.5 inch hard drives and two 2.5 inch hard drives in spite of the fact that this is an ITX enclosure. Check that out. There's your 140 millimeter internal cooling fan with an included black three pin cable. What else we got in terms of interior? Ah, yes. So let's show just what kind of space there is for installing graphics cards. This is cool. So I'm going to grab the longest graphics card that I happen to have handy, which also happens to be the longest graphics card that anyone happens to have handy probably. This is a Radeon HD 6990. So if you wanted to build yourself an extreme little gaming box with emphasis on extremely little, you could throw even a Radeon 6990 in here with room to spare. And you can throw a 120 millimeter fan down here, which you can use either as an exhaust or as an intake depending on the configuration of your card. So if you're using a blower fan like this guy right here, I would probably use it as an intake. So that's really cool. And with a five and a quarter inch bay is pretty self explanatory. In fact, I think the rest of this case is mostly pretty self explanatory. Very cool little enclosure. So for a size comparison, I mean, here it is next to a fairly bog standard mini tower, also next to the mangoes that I was eating that I'm no longer eating and we'll take downstairs shortly. So you can see it's quite wide for an ITX enclosure. And the reason for that would be so that they'll have all the space that they allocated for things like coolers as well as the full size power supply. But it is very, very short compared to a mid tower. So it'll look right at home on your desk without that looking weird. Ah, yes, the internal connectors. So pretty standard stuff here too. So we've got our front panel connectors, your LEDs, your reset switch, power switch, you got your front HD audio as well as your front USB 2 and your front USB 3. So thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Cubitech. Wow, I just completely drew a blank. What is it even called? Mini ice. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews and other computer videos.