SMALL FORM FACTOR PC CASES

We’ve jammed the tiniest components into the best small form factor PC cases around.

- Dave James

The traditional image of a gaming PC is some hulking monster of a machine, dominating your desktop like some great colossus. But there is something innately satisfying about squeezing the same amount of gaming power into a pint-sized system. And I can’t help but adore those mini-ITX motherboards; the thought of all that PC power held on an upturned palm. Glorious stuff for nerds like me.

Once upon a time, small form factor builds meant making sometimes severe compromises on the parts you used, but the latest micro machines can house the sort of components that would make a workstation blush. These systems can house full size, triple-slot graphics cards, and some come with the power supplies and cooling to make the most of those and the high-performance processors you might want to strap to them. 

H1 v2

NZXT £340

A stellar chassis upgrade forged in fire

1 I was a big fan of the original NZXT H1 mini-ITX chassis when it first came out. But then, mine never caught fire. Which is a good thing because I’ve been using it as the basis for my office work machine ever since. Robin would not have been pleased if I’d burned down the PC Gamer offices because of its faulty PCIe riser cable.

Aside from the specific riser problem, the H1 was a fantastic package to build a wee PC into. And so is this recently updated version, too. On the face of it, the second version looks identical, but NZXT has actually done a lot to improve the overall design, from extra GPU space, more USBs and helpful build guidance.