GoKawiilOnce every quarter, we’ll be publishing a build here at Tom’s Hardware Premium, intended to showcase the best of our building abilities. After much deliberation, we decided that for this second ‘showstopper’ build, we wanted to push Mini-ITX to its absolute limit, not as buying advice, but as a test, to see whether doing so is remotely viable.
Why are we doing this?
For the first Tom’s Hardware Premium build, I went all out and spent three months building a wooden PC that I called The Stout Owl . This was a full-ATX, 100% air-cooled machine centered around Noctua’s brown-and-beige colorway. A few months have passed, and I’ve been busy cooking up something smaller.
I’ve built many PCs in my life, but there’s one challenge I’ve never taken on: an ultra-high-end, custom-cooled ITX system. After looking around the options available, I spotted the NCase M3, and instantly saw a vision for it.
(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)
I’ve seen many NCase builds, and although I can attest to it being a fantastic case, there’s one issue I always had with many of the builds, even my own from many years ago: they hide so much of the hardware with side-mounted radiators, fans, & mesh covers.
The demands of the challenge
This led to the demands of my self-imposed challenge:
Use an NCase M3.
Cram in the most powerful hardware on the market.
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