After seeing reviews of cases like the dan cases a4 and nfc s4 mini on linus's youtube channel I wanted to downsize my pc, now I've finally gotten around to doing it. I'm writing this review/build as a person who is new to sff so feel free to make any suggestions to improve the build.
So first off here's my old build featuring a ryzen 5 1600, 16gb of ddr4 3200, and chonky vega 64, all inside of my quite old corsair spec series case. (sorry for poor image quality, I only have my iphone for that kind of stuff)
I'm so glad I got rid of that piece of crap corsair case, it's just so hard to build in, despite being atx.
Right out of the box the ophion is of significantly better build quality than any case I've had. I chose the ophion because its fairly cheap and has atx psu support and the space for one 3.5 in drive. However I didn't think my extra thicc vega card would fit.
I have no previous experience with itx builds like this so I was glad to see that the riser cable was pre-installed and protected with one of those anti-static bags.
For my new motherboard i'm using a gigabyte b450i pro wifi, which I have heard some people have had problems with, but my experience has been smooth so far.
First I installed the psu, which i don't recommend, especially if you are using atx, it gets in the way of sata and front panel headers, so I recommend just dangling it out the side of the case until you have finished plugging in all the connectors to the mobo. Also to install the psu you have to remove one of the rubber feet on the bottom of the case to access one of the screws. I also installed my ssd which I'm to lazy to re-install windows on so, I'm going to give amd's storemi a chance.
Next in went the motherboard which probably due to some mishap on raijintek's side the IO shield does not fit, though your experience may vary. I would not recommend motherboards with integrated IO shields due to this. Also while this case does support 3 fans, unless you have one slim fan for the bottom and no 3.5in drives you can only fit one, which was fine because my motherboard only had one extra fan header.
Now comes the problem of this build, as you can see from this picture the gpu protrudes from the side, so I cannot put on the side panel. I'm thinking that some standoffs to space the panel off of the side would work and also help to cool that massive gpu, though I live in the United States and i'm pretty sure the screws for the sides are some metric ones, if anyone knows where I can get standoffs like that it would be greatly appreciated.
Overall I'm extremely happy with the build and other than tweaking the fan curve in the bios there was really no software tweaking I needed to do. I have the only fan in the build set as an intake, mostly because I don't want it sucking dust from the floor into my case.vt Oh and I forgot to mention it comes with some dust filters for the top and bottom fans. I would recommend this case to first time itx builders on a budget, but i would not recommend using an atx psu if you can get around it. Also make sure you take ample time to research your build to make sure everything is compatible. you can find this case on newegg, it's called "Ophion ALS", which is just the regular ophion with vented panels, instead of the airflow crippling TG panels.
So first off here's my old build featuring a ryzen 5 1600, 16gb of ddr4 3200, and chonky vega 64, all inside of my quite old corsair spec series case. (sorry for poor image quality, I only have my iphone for that kind of stuff)
I'm so glad I got rid of that piece of crap corsair case, it's just so hard to build in, despite being atx.
Right out of the box the ophion is of significantly better build quality than any case I've had. I chose the ophion because its fairly cheap and has atx psu support and the space for one 3.5 in drive. However I didn't think my extra thicc vega card would fit.
I have no previous experience with itx builds like this so I was glad to see that the riser cable was pre-installed and protected with one of those anti-static bags.
For my new motherboard i'm using a gigabyte b450i pro wifi, which I have heard some people have had problems with, but my experience has been smooth so far.
First I installed the psu, which i don't recommend, especially if you are using atx, it gets in the way of sata and front panel headers, so I recommend just dangling it out the side of the case until you have finished plugging in all the connectors to the mobo. Also to install the psu you have to remove one of the rubber feet on the bottom of the case to access one of the screws. I also installed my ssd which I'm to lazy to re-install windows on so, I'm going to give amd's storemi a chance.
Next in went the motherboard which probably due to some mishap on raijintek's side the IO shield does not fit, though your experience may vary. I would not recommend motherboards with integrated IO shields due to this. Also while this case does support 3 fans, unless you have one slim fan for the bottom and no 3.5in drives you can only fit one, which was fine because my motherboard only had one extra fan header.
Now comes the problem of this build, as you can see from this picture the gpu protrudes from the side, so I cannot put on the side panel. I'm thinking that some standoffs to space the panel off of the side would work and also help to cool that massive gpu, though I live in the United States and i'm pretty sure the screws for the sides are some metric ones, if anyone knows where I can get standoffs like that it would be greatly appreciated.
Overall I'm extremely happy with the build and other than tweaking the fan curve in the bios there was really no software tweaking I needed to do. I have the only fan in the build set as an intake, mostly because I don't want it sucking dust from the floor into my case.vt Oh and I forgot to mention it comes with some dust filters for the top and bottom fans. I would recommend this case to first time itx builders on a budget, but i would not recommend using an atx psu if you can get around it. Also make sure you take ample time to research your build to make sure everything is compatible. you can find this case on newegg, it's called "Ophion ALS", which is just the regular ophion with vented panels, instead of the airflow crippling TG panels.
