 Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced. This is an ITX case that exists within a very small form factor compared to some of its competition which is ITX but actually has a much sort of bigger form factor. I think hopefully we know, okay you know what I'm just gonna say. So the BitFenix Prodigy is sort of that hot ITX case that lots of people are talking about but my observation about the BitFenix Prodigy is that it's really cool and everything but it's actually not that small. I mean you could easily, if you look at the internal layout of the Prodigy, you could actually fit an MATX board in there without making the case really any bigger. So what if you wanted a truly small ITX system that can still accept a fair amount of hardware, has great cooling and is very inexpensive. So the Elite 120 might be the case for you. Let's take a quick look at what Cooler Master has to say for themselves. So we're not gonna worry too much about this, we'll get to that later. And nothing and ah-ha! Supports up to three fans for extreme cooling. If I have a pen in my pocket I'm gonna circle that because that's obviously extreme. Mini ITX with ATX power supply support for easy upgrades, this is really important. Aluminum finish on the front panel, okay cool. So let's get this going here, I'm gonna put that pen away because nothing else could be extreme enough to justify that pen ever again. I'm not teasing anybody here, I just really did think it was that extreme. Okay I didn't, I was teasing. So guys, to be clear, there's nothing extreme cooling about an ITX enclosure. If you can get things running cool enough to overclock a little bit, then that's fantastic. But don't be too worried if you don't get the maximum overclock that you would have seen on a regular ATX or larger enclosure. There's awesome cases from the likes of Cooler Master that will be more appropriate for extreme cooling like the Half XM. Alright, so the front of the case, this is quite nice actually. So they've got an aluminum finish here, two USB 2.0 ports as well as a microphone and headphone jack, one USB 3.0 port, reset switch, and power switch. And then you've got one 5.25 inch bay which will look quite nice with kind of a black frame around it once you put a black optical drive in there. On the bottom of the case you find some feet and some black paint. On the other side of the case you find some air ventilation, so that is kind of extreme. So you've got vents that run all across both sides and the top of the case, and this one looks kind of cool because it seems to have a bit of a filter thing going on. Now this is how they achieved the full ATX power supply compatibility, and I actually don't mind this. I built myself a micro ATX system and a Silverstone SGO1, and in order to get a triple rad going in that system, I had to put both the radiator and the fans as kind of like an external sort of protrusion out of the case. I had cut open the top of the case and then I put that there, and I ran the tubes down the back and then into the case, and I don't mind that sort of a little bit of bulge thing in order to achieve an overall cleaner, tighter form factor. So some people might not like it, I'm a fan. Okay, got some more ventilation holes, got your two expansion slots, however, this ITX will only have one actual expansion card you can fit. Cooler Master seems to be assuming that you're going to be using that slot for a graphics card, so these are really tight. I'm going to need to grab my screwdriver. Then we're back, and while I was removing the screws, I noticed that the case has water cooling holes, or more specifically, it has one, which means that if you actually did have an external water cooling setup, you would be able to get the tube there, but not back or back, but not there. So that's a very strange, strange thing to do, but you know, hey, Cooler Master works in mysterious ways. And realistically, you don't really need water cooling for your ITX system anyway. Most ITX boards, with the exception of ASUS' Z77 board with the beefy huge PWM on it, aren't really capable of extreme overclocks anyway. So there we go, we can have a closer look at all the ventilation that's going on in the enclosure here. And let's get the case open. So what do we have in terms of expandability? So we've got three 3.5 inch drive bays, which we will have to try to find. There we are. And are we missing a sled? Hold on, I'll be back. Yeah, I derped. So these are 2.5 inch adapters for the 3.5 inch drive sleds that are attached to them. So you can natively mount, here we go, so let's show you guys how quick it is to mount a hard drive in here, although I actually don't know which way they go. So we're just going to guess, and we're going to guess that the connectors go at the back. There it is. So this will go back in there, because that's where it belongs. Go back. It's like that happy Gilmore scene. It's your home. Too good for your home? It has to go in the hole, like the ball. Okay, anyway, so we'll put that in there. And that is how you mount hard drives in the Elite 120 Advanced. Alternately, you can use these adapters then to mount 2.5 inch drives. So it natively supports 3 3.5 inch or up to 4 2.5 inch drives. So two of those drives are with these adapters here, and two of them are somewhere else. And we are going to go on a voyage of discovery to find out where those other 2.5 inch hard drives go. And we are going to do that voyage of discovery off camera, because I really can't tell. And it was actually Slick who figured this out, which just boggled my mind. So you actually mount one 2.5 inch drive up here, then you flip it over, and you screw in another 2.5 inch drive from the bottom. So using these two adapters, you can screw four 2.5 inch drives into here, and then I guess potentially you could do another 3.5 inch. That's cool. That's actually outstanding. And then the 5.25 inch drive is pretty self-explanatory. So there's just a bay here, and then you screw it in from either side. None of that fancy tool-less stuff. I mean, this is a fairly inexpensive case considering all the cooling that you got going on here and all the features it has included. So let's have a look at cooling, since they talk so much about the extreme cooling. So there's one 120 millimeter fan at the front, and this gets air from, who only knows where? Oh yeah, there we go. Gets air from these vents here, here, and here. Okay? Blows air through the drive cages, then you can mount an additional 120 millimeter fan here on the other side of this, assuming you don't have any components on your motherboard that are going to interfere with that in any way. Then you can have an additional 80 millimeter fan right here blowing right across the PWM on your motherboard, as well as the CPU socket area. So that is an incredibly smart placement for that. And finally, you'll have your power supply fan built in. So you'll have up to four fans in the system that are actually actively working on exhaust and intake. All your cables inside are black. Love to see this. They've also got all the power plugs are black, right up to the connectors. So it looks really, really, really sharp. You've got adapters for these fans as well, so you can plug them into three pin connectors. There you go, there's adapter. Or you can use the Molex passthrough. Internal USB 3, which is good to see again, especially on a more budget oriented case. HD audio, USB 2, and I think that pretty much covers it. So this, I know, guys, I've been promising my builds in the Prodigy and the FTO3 Mini for a while, but this is going to be part of our roundup because the FTO3 is our super small one, and I'd love to see how that one does in terms of cooling and performance. The BitFenix Prodigy is sort of like a big mini ITX case, so the cooling should be great, but it's kind of big. It's not that ITX, it's not that small. And then this is going to be like our more traditional ITX case, like our compromise of, and it's looking like it's going to be a really, really strong contender just based on the cooling options that it has. In terms of included accessories, you got some zip ties, you got some screws, and you got one more set of those drive rails, so you'll have enough because two of them came pre-mounted on these adapters. Thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look at the Elite 120 Advanced. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.