Performance Analysis

With no ventilation above the CPU cooler, limited ventilation for the GPU, and no fans, it’s unsurprising to see lacklustre results in the cooling department from this case. In fact, both the CPU and GPU reached their maximum temperatures in both the horizontal and vertical tests, which ended up affecting clock speeds. Vertical was better, however, as clock speeds remained higher there. Again, this isn’t wholly shocking, as the GPU in this orientation can draw air in through the sides rather than the cramped underside (the rubber feet don’t actually give all that much clearance), and heat from the CPU cooler naturally rises out through the side panel ventilation.

While you could certainly use a graphics card with a more effective cooler than ours, many of these will be too big to fit; cards specifically designed for small form factor use are likely the way forward. It’s also hard to see how you’ll improve on the cooling of the CPU, as the 65mm limit on CPU coolers is rather restrictive. As such, we can’t recommend this case for CPU overclocking.

Conclusion

We won’t be too harsh on the Project S Mini for its cooling performance, as it seems clear that it’s designed more for HTPCs than high-end gaming rigs. However, it does feel like the latter would be well within its grasp with a few design tweaks, so it’s still a shame.

Even so, there are just a few too many niggles for this to be award-worthy at the current price, even though the build quality is very good. The GPU ventilation, lack of proper SFX-L support, and the flimsy rubber grommets all spring to mind - we don't feel these are issues we should be seeing in a case this pricey. In fairness, the highlight of the case is the drawer design, and this works very well. You might be a bit restricted with certain hardware choices, but you could still quite easily build a great HTPC in this without major impediment. We’re sure it will find merit among a specific subset of users, therefore, but it’s an unfortunate near-miss as far as recommending it more generally goes.