Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced Mini-ITX Case Review

Looking Closer at the Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced

The Cooler Master Elite 120 Advanced is a nice looking case. Clean sharp lines and black powder coat topped off with subtle aluminum front panel accents.

The right side of the front panel houses the power and reset buttons, power and HDD LEDs and a single USB 3.0 port with an internal connector.

The left side of the front panel contains a headphone and microphone jack as well as a pair of USB 2.0 ports.

The rear of the case is simple as well. Theres the protruding PSU mount (more on that later), a single rubber grommet and a dual-slot expansion card opening to hold your monster GPU.

The left side of the case is simple, just a large meshed area for air intake. This area will help to supply adequate airflow to your hot graphics card.

The right side looks the same as the left. Youll notice the small fan behind this side though, but more on that in a bit.

The top of the case features the same mesh cut into the panel itself with the addition of a removable mesh filter for the PSU air intake.

With the removal of 3 thumbscrews on the back panel the entire top cover slides back then lifts off in one piece, a-la mid-90s horizontal desktops. Inside youll notice the accessories bag twist-tied against the HDD rack and all the internal cables twist-tied together on the floor of the case.

Looking over at the right hand side youll notice the 2 2.5 drive adapters nestled into the HDD cage and the 80x15mm fan and its associated bracket. This fan will provide intake airflow to cool your motherboard, CPU and chipset. This fan and its bracket can also be removed with a few screws if you so desire.

The front panel simply pops off with a tug from the bottom. Underneath youll find a 120mm 7-blade Cooler Master fan for the front air intake. Sadly there is no intake filter with this fan.

The bottom of the case has 4 hard plastic feet and lots of punched-through tabs for your cable management needs.

Now that you have checked out the inside and outside of the CM Elite 120 Advanced we can build in it!