Hardware Installation
Overall
For the most part, Mini Build was assembled without too many issues. The mini-ITX motherboard’s compact size and the dimensions of the case didn’t leave much room for my hands, but they were workable. One constant issue I had was accidentally pulling cable connectors off of a motherboard pin every time I had to nudge a tight harness out of the way. Since the pins for the case’s front-panel electronics were underneath the heat sink, reconnecting a loose wire usually required unscrewing the motherboard tray from the chassis and pushing it away from the case’s back wall. Rosewill definitely put some thought into this case because it added a couple of rails that the motherboard tray sits on, making it easy to access the back of the platform in loosened cable situations like the ones I had.
The rails sitting horizontally below the graphics card and above the hard drive cage came in really handy when I had to work on the back end of the motherboard without having to completely remove it.
Motherboard Problems
When I said that I got pretty good at not having to return items due to bad judgment calls, I was telling the truth. In the case of my returned MSI Z97I AC motherboard, it was different matter.
Once the machine was built, I let it run for a while just to make sure it stayed powered on. Mini Build worked fine fFor the first few days, until one night when I went to reboot it. I kept getting a “no signal detected” error on the 4K display that was connected to the EVGA card. I confirmed that the cable was fine and that the monitor's DisplayPort interface was functional. I even swapped out the EVGA graphics card with Big Build’s Gigabyte card and confirmed that it wasn’t a graphics card problem; the EVGA card worked when I put it in Big Build, while the Gigabyte card couldn’t send out any signal on behalf of Mini Build.
At this point, the problem was either the motherboard or the Rosewill power supply. I pulled a be quiet! Dark Power Pro from one of our reference systems, connected it to the MSI board and its components, and still had the “no signal detected” message come up. Just to be sure, I also grabbed my multimeter and checked the two power leads that plug into the GPU, confirming that voltage was there.
At this point, my guess was a bad PCIe slot. I did have some extra cards to test with, and the only ones that worked were smaller ones like Sapphire's R7 240.
After all of that, I gave in and sent the motherboard back to the vendor for replacement.
Cooling
The Rosewill Neutron case really grew on me, especially when it came to having a nice cooling configuration. You can fit up to six fans: two on top, two in front and two in back. For this build, I ended up using five fans since the DVD writer I added takes up the space where a sixth top fan would have gone. The two fans in front blow air into the case, with the bottom fan blowing air straight to the storage drives and out the back through the rear-lower fan. The top-front fan blows air over the motherboard and exhausts out of the computer through the rear-upper fan.
The Rosewill Neutron’s split-level design helps the case keep heat-producing elements separated. Even the PSU had vents on the case's side panel.