Performance Analysis

With no rear fan mounts and just the PSU for active exhaust airflow, it wasn’t surprising to see the CPU temperature sit a fair amount warmer under load than in other cases from SilverStone and Thermaltake. This is largely due to our low-profile cooler – good as Noctua is, it can only deal with so much heat, and clearly it isn’t as capable as larger tower coolers or AIOs. We can’t be too critical here seeing as the case is clearly geared towards AIO coolers too, with plenty of space for them.

The GPU delta T was helped along to a reasonable result by the front fan, which is strategically placed out of the box to point right at the vertical GPU mount. This is encouraging, as it means that combined with a liquid-cooled CPU there’s plenty of scope for building a high-end PC into the Neo-G Mini without worrying about heat. Some coolers do spill a lot more warm air out into the case than our GeForce GTX 980, but positive air pressure should prevent this becoming too much of an issue.

Conclusion

The Metallic Gear Neo-G Mini an interesting addition to what is essentially Phanteks' line-up. The company only has a trio of mini-ITX cases to its name, but the Neo Mini and Neo-G Mini are both quite different to what has come before from the company’s talented case designers. The internal design with the Neo-G is probably polarising, especially if you want to use a tower air cooler, but giving you the choice of two layouts – one focused on using AIO coolers and boosting aesthetics, the other leaning more towards air cooling - is an interesting decision. Of course, it wouldn’t have taken much to allow both designs to be incorporated into one case with removable sections catering for standard and vertical GPU mounts, but this would cost more to implement, so as this is a budget-focused case keeping the tooling costs down and offering two SKUs makes sense.

For the price, the build quality and features are excellent, although you’ll have to pay careful attention to cable tidying, cooling, and storage options to cater to your own needs. The Neo-G Mini is in this regard far less flexible than something like the BitFenix Prodigy or Fractal Design Define Nano S, which offer both great air- and water-cooling support out of the box, but in being so the Neo-G Mini allows Phanteks/Metallic Gear to step away from those done-to-death designs and do something different that's still compact, offers a decent amount of room to work with, and facilitates the construction of a high-end mini-ITX PC. In short, there's another solid option to consider if you're in the market for a mini gaming rig.