Limited edition NCASE M1: The perfect ITX case?

Chassis manufacturers rarely get things perfect and often design their cases from a one-size-fits-all perspective. Some brands do cater to enthusiasts, as in the example of Bitfenix and Corsair, but rarely do they ever make something truly unique and appealing at the same time.

Enthusiasts on the HardwareOCP forums decided to change that and went about designing an ITX chassis that would appeal to enthusiasts. With a limited run of just 660 units, the entire allotment has already sold out and its unlikely that it’ll be made ever again.

It’s called the NCASE M1 and it’s designed by two enthusiasts who figured that they’d build what they simply couldn’t find.

NCASE M1 ITX gaming chassis

Its been under development for almost a year and has been crowd-funded from the beginning. The chassis finally went on sale through Indiegogo with an initial goal of $67,500 (approx R695,721) and reached a staggering $152,722 (approx R1.57 million) at the end of the campaign. A total of 667 chassis were sold.

The M1 has space for an ITX or mini-DTX motherboard (if you have one, hold onto it; they’re incredibly rare), three PCI slots for GPUs that use two or more slots at the back, space for GPUs up to 12.5-inches long, a front-mounted ATX power supply, up to three 3.5-inch hard drives and up to six 2.5-inch drives in conjunction with the stacking bracket. A vertically-mounted slot-loading optical drive rounds out the chassis’ capability.

NCASE M1 ITX gaming chassis

The M1 also has a lot of cooling options, with up to four 120mm fan mounts and two 92mm mounts at the bottom of the chassis. There’s space for a 240mm radiator for water-cooling builds (in place of two 3.5-inch drives) and the only real restrictions on the chassis are the CPU cooler height, which must be 130mm or less if you choose to not use water-cooling, and that ATX power supplies need to be 140mm or shorter in length.

The chassis is made entirely out of aluminium and manufactured by Lian Li. The chassis won’t be leased out by Lian Li, although a successor could be designed by NCASE in the future. It certainly looks like ITX is a booming market waiting to be tapped by the right company.

NCASE M1 ITX gaming chassis