The adorable, easy-to-build-in CM NR200P PC case is down to £50
A lovely small form factor case, provided with glass and mesh panels, fans and PCIe riser.
It's happening again! One of my favourite small form factor PC cases, the phenomenal Cooler Master NR200P, is down to a crazy-low price at Ebay thanks to that now-familiar CATCH20 code.
If you've already tuned into one of my party political broadcasts regarding how brilliant the NR200P is, then please skip the remainder of this post. For everyone else, let me tell you why I love this little PC case so much.
In short: you get a ton for your money, it's super easy to build in, and the end result is a tiny PC that can still pack in surprisingly high-end hardware without sacrificing performance. As this is the NR200P, rather than the vanilla NR200, you get some great extras too - including a choice of mesh or glass side panels, a pair of extremely low profile case fans and PCIe 4.0 riser cable that lets you mount your graphics card vertically if you prefer.
Let's talk about the build process. I've built two PCs in this case, once using the standard NR200P and once using the NR200P Max that bundles in a power supply and AiO. In either case, it's pretty similar - you choose a Mini ITX motherboard, a SFX power supply, a matching CPU, RAM and SSD. There are a few different configurations from here depending primarily on your CPU cooler of choice; you can fit up to a 280mm AiO liquid cooler with the graphics card installed normally on your motherboard, or a low profile air cooler with your GPU installed vertically - I went for the former.
Other options are workable too, and with a bit of adjustment you can do stuff like include 3.5-inch HDDs, use a larger SFX-L power supply or even pack in stuff that isn't meant to fit. The popularity of the NR200P means that there are a ton of great examples of what to do on the small form factor PC subreddit, amongst other places!
Once you actually come to install your components, you'll find that with all the panels removed, it's easy to maneouvre things into position and there's enough space left over to route your cables - two common pain points with small form factor builds.
Once everything is in position, you're left with a tiny computer with a ton of ventilation, especially if you used the mesh side panel rather than the glass one. This helps keeps temperatures in check, even with higher-end components, and especially on the Ryzen side of things you can easily enable eco mode to drastically cut down on the heat produced by your CPU without sacrificing much performance if you want a near-silent build.
Good work, tiny computer! pic.twitter.com/jSzIDanbfc
— Will Judd 威廉 (@wsjudd) May 5, 2022
I've taken my NR200P all over the place - around my house from my desk to the TV downstairs, to friend's houses, to LAN parties and even all the way to Eurogamer's Brighton offices on the train! The case is small enough to fit into a decent-sized suitcase, and the build quality is sufficiently sturdy that I don't feel too worried about moving it around.
In any case, I hope it comes across that I'm a big fan of this case. If you're in the mood for something else but you inexplicably kept reading this deals post, may I please recommend our roundup of the best gaming deals found on the currently-running Amazon Spring Sale? And if you'd like to see all of the individual Spring Sale deals we've written up so far, check out the Amazon Spring Sale tag here on RPS!
