I built this mini-ITX rig for my wife around January 2019 using a Corsair 250D case. For a mini-ITX case, the Corsair 250D is very well thought-out, and there was no problem dropping in a 120mm radiator with push & pull fans in the front.
The bequiet! push/pull fans on the radiator are the only fans used in the case, and it ran very quietly – idled slightly over 30°C with ambient room temp at 77°F. The rig sat inside a modded desk with a grill installed at the front for air intake and a bunch of exhaust holes in the back and sides at the rear. The grill was just a 8″ x 8″ steel HVAC duct cover with a black powder coat finish I grabbed from Amazon. Seemed to work well and didn’t overheat (the last photo is a gif showing desk door open/closed).
Fire Strike score 15,699 with everything set on stock specs [link].
The Corsair 250D case normally has a flat front panel. I purchased the custom front panel with all the holes in it from MNPCtech – much better airflow as a result. MNPCtech creates some amazing custom case builds [link], check them out.
All around awesome little mini-ITX build. The GTX-980Ti SC GPU was starting to get a little dated at the time this rig was built, I think it was initially released mid 2015, but it was still a solid performer for what my Mrs required. Some of the components were from my prior personal desktop build (CPU, GPU, monitor). I later upgraded the GPU to an EVGA GeForce RTX-2070 SUPER Gaming (08G-P4-3070-RX – with the blower cooler) which was about a 45%+ performance upgrade from the GTX 980Ti SC.
Components list:
Intel i7-7700k CPU @ 4.2GHz base clock, 4.5GHz boost clock [link] (water cooled).
EVGA CLC 120 CL11 CPU AiO water cooler [link].
be quiet! model BL070 high speed 120mm PWM fans x2 [link] for radiator, no other fans used with this build at all.
Corsair Vengeance LPX (black) memory, 16GB (2 x 8GB) @ 3000MHz, C15-17-17-35 [link].
EVGA GeForce GTX-980Ti SC (06G-P4-4992-KR – with the Titan style cooler) 1190MHz clock [link].
ASUS Strix Z270i mini-ITX motherboard [link].
EVGA Supernova 850 P2 modular PSU [link].
Corsair Obsidian 250D mini-ITX case, black [link].
Samsung 960 EVO (500GB) m.2 NVMe primary drive.
Samsung 860 EVO (1TB) secondary drive.
ASUS PB278Q 27″ (2560×1440) monitor [link].
Phanteks Halos RGB fan frame (for some bling) [link].
Later GPU upgrade: EVGA GeForce RTX-2070 SUPER Gaming (08G-P4-3070-RX – with the blower cooler) [link].
Finally, some photos:
