Small form factor PC’s, they’re a personal favourite of mine, maybe it’s my lifestyle - I like to be able to unplug my rig and connect to my TV for some story based gameplay. The question is how small can we go while retaining solid performance? We’ve done cases like the Fractal Terra previously, but can we go smaller? You could say that this week's build is a direct follow on from the last, the Prime build was fun, but as we said then the ASUS Prime 4070 Super is the perfect SFF graphics card. While searching the internet for diminutive cases to truly test how well it takes to the form factor the Miningeek MiniNeo S300 has taken our fancy. Matt and I both have musical backgrounds and this case looks like a mini guitar amp head, which we love. Though we have to get past the thought of popping in some valves and having a jam. It’s an unknown brand to us, and so it’s a risk, but at £75 is well priced. The idiom ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’ rings true here, so let’s get into it.
Case Overview
We knew from the specs that the S300 was going to be small, but I was still taken aback when we plucked it from its box, at 312 x 135 x 193mm it’s about the size of a lunchbox! This is going to be a challenge! As for hardware support it takes an ITX motherboard, 2 slot graphics cards up to 305mm, a SFX or SFX-L power supply and there is technically space for 1 x 120mm and 1 x 80mm fans on the bottom. We were more than a little concerned at putting in fans at the bottom, as there is no other space for cable management, so decided to forgo them - it’s a fully mesh case so the CPU and graphics card could pull in their own air directly. Atop the case is a fixed handle, it’s a leather-like affair - it has no markings to indicate what it is actually made from. It is worth noting that the handle is fixed in its position and does not flatten.
Edit 12/08/24: the case manufacturer claims graphics card support up to 305mm, we tested the Pro Art RTX 4080 Super (300mm long all other dimensions the same as the Prime 4070 Super) - it didn’t fit due to a lip around the case:
Stripping the case down took minutes. There are 2 screws in each side panel and they slide off, then a further 3 screws to remove the PSU bracket. There is also a magnetic dust filter on the bottom. The front of the case is a flat solid panel which is not removable, but the case is made in such a way that made sense to have it in a fixed position - though it would have been nice to see it also be mesh, to help in any small way with heat dissipation. The case is dual chamber, one side to house the motherboard and power supply, the other reserved for the graphics card. Interestingly if you’re using a particularly small graphics card (less than 180mm) you can mount some additional storage on this side - we prefer to use an M.2 mounted in the motherboard so won’t be making such a tradeoff.
Parts List
Why Did We Choose This Hardware?
Yes, we know the Intel i5 14400F isn’t a perfect pairing for a 4070 Super, yes we know that there are many technically better options. We chose this configuration to keep temps manageable in a tiny case. The setup relies on only airflow created by a flat mounted air cooler to keep CPU cool, could we have pushed further? Of course! Would we recommend doing so? We’ll find out during testing!
Now we’ve got that out of the way, we wanted to build a portable set-up that could handle 1440p gaming at framerates that would be pushing 100fps. Then we could reduce resolution to 1080p and increase fps for competitive gaming when needed but also up the graphics settings and run at a solid 60fps if we decided to connect up to the living room TV for some single player story based content.
What Was It Like To Build In?
This one felt weird, we’re all about airflow, but yet the only fan that was mounted was to the CPU cooler! The build was actually refreshingly simple for such a tiny case, the motherboard was mounted upside down to accommodate the riser cable (both gen 3 and gen 4 are available with different versions of the case), the riser cable then screws to the back of the case.
The obvious sticking point was always going to be getting power supply in situ and managing the resulting cables. Luckily there is no RGB involved here which cut down the cable management, and at this point we fully realised that leaving out the case fans was the only way this build could possibly work. The power supply cables were velcroed into position at the bottom of the case - though not attached to the case in any way, but they still sat firmly in position. To get power to the graphics card we needed to loosely connect the power cable before mounting it as it was very tight on space. Overall we’re very happy with how it came together, it all just fit in a logical manner.
We bought the version with the gen 3 riser cable and followed the manufacturer’s instructions to enable its use with the Prime 4070 Super. Knowing that doing this was likely to impact performance we wanted to at least confirm this worked in an acceptable manner. We didn’t discover until after the build was finished it created horrendous screen tearing, stuttering and general sluggishness. We’d recommend researching which version you would need for your graphics card before purchase! We’re in the privileged position of having a spare gen 4 riser that fits available at the studio - not everyone is so lucky. This solved the issue, more on how it performed later.
Airflow and Performance
We were really unsure how airflow visualisation would turn out! After doing the Lian Li Sup 01 a few weeks ago we were confident enough that the graphics card would perform well, which we were correct about. You can see the air being drawn in at the expected rate, which is then ejected out of the top and bottom of the case, so we’ve no concerns with keeping the 4070 Super cool. When it comes to the airflow visual for the motherboard side of the case things get a little more mixed. The fan on the Thermalright AXP90-X47 is doing it’s best to keep air moving, but having the heatsink flat mounted creates turbulence and makes ejecting the hot hair more difficult: especially when you consider getting the air past the heatsinks and the RAM on the motherboard. Upon conducting the testing we were pleasantly surprised with how the airflow was dealt with, you can see the air being drawn in and eject, but it is not even close to the standard that we usually witness. How does this affect temperatures under load?
As we’ve already mentioned we went into testing cautious of cooling efficiency and having just swapped out the riser cable to solve serious performance issues. I’d usually pop in raw numbers, give a little of my thoughts and allow you to draw your own conclusions: but this hit differently!
When we began the ambient temperature was 25°C.
I was expecting to be able to get medium settings at 1440p ultrawide because of thermal constraints so that is where I began. In Spiderman Remastered we were hitting 120-147fps with the CPU maxing out at 71°C and the GPU at 69°C. Encouraged by the results we ramped up to ‘High’ with little change in the results and so pushed up to the top setting of ‘Very High’ and were getting 114-136fps with a max CPU temp of 73°C and a max GPU temp of 72°C. I was astounded at the difference in quality being presented in the visuals for such a small drop in frame rate! The fans on the air cooler and graphics card were working hard though and were audible when playing using a speaker for sound output and the case was giving out a fair bit of heat, but both of these complaints are common of SFF builds.
We ran the system through the same testing in Forza Horizon 5, starting at ‘Medium’ and ramping up a step each time until we got to ‘Ultra’, the results were similar to Spiderman, but the loss in framerate was higher, though still around a consistent 136fps during races on Ultra settings. The full results are below:
Spider-Man Remastered
3440x1440 Medium
120-147fps
71°C max CPU
69°C max GPU
High
116-141fps
73°C max CPU
72°C max GPU
Very high
114-136fps
73°C max CPU
72°C max GPU
Forza Horizon 5
3440x1440 Medium
159-201fps
71°C max CPU
70°C max GPU
High
146-199fps
71°C max CPU
70°CMax GPU
Ultra
121-167fps
76°C max CPU
71°C max GPU
Extreme
117-156fps
76°C max CPU
71°C max GPU
Roundup
We asked at the start, can we go smaller than a Fractal Terra? The answer is yes! Should we have gone smaller? Thats an interesting question, for my purposes yes, it works as we wanted.
If you’re intending to build this one yourself just be careful as to which version of the case you buy, I’d suggest springing for the more expensive version with the gen 4 riser cable and save yourself the headache. The chassis seems well built, and is made from good quality materials. It’s very easy to strip ready for the build and using the parts we chose it all went together seamlessly, though if you choose different components your mileage may vary!
We’re were very happy with the performance once we’d replaced the riser cable, and love the look and fit of the Prime 4070 Super, the little graphics card works hard, looks good and is cost effective relative to its spec. We had been concerned about a CPU bottleneck, we didn’t find evidence of it, but then our testing didn’t push the CPU as hard as we perhaps could, more testing would be required to find a conclusive answer on this. What we did find in this respect is it would be worth looking at the AMD Ryzen 7800X 3D, the cooling seems like it would handle it and would allay future concerns.
Would we recommend this build? If you buy the right version of the case for your hardware, then absolutely! It’s small, portable, pretty and durable. It would be a good build for a living room setup but also taking to LAN parties or events.
Link to full Video:
Blog post written by Sam Thwaytes
It is possible to remove the handle completely?