And when all said and done, the Louqe Raw S1 is hands-down the nicest ITX chassis I’ve ever had the honor of working with. From its stunning, elegant single-piece external shell to the simplicity with which a system inside it pieces together, the Raw S1 is a chassis that I’m going to remember. This increase in size can be found across all specs comparing the two cases. CPU Heatsink height support also increases from 66 mm in the Ghost S1 to 75mm in the Raw S1. This is, of course, largely thanks to the extra 4 liters of volume that the Raw S1 comes equipped with. It is important to note, however, that it is still an extremely small case. top exhaust fan - I, and many others on Discord thought this fan mounts on the interior of the case. It doesn't. You have to remove the top lid and mount the fan on top of the shell, which ruins the looks of the case (did anyone really buy this case for a reason other than looks?). It's also a giant pain to wire up because you either have to connect it after the shell is on or have a really long cable. The reason feels deceptive is that none of their pictures show it! They all have the top lid on.

This does make me wonder a little about Louqe's quality control, and what kind of awful drill press their manufacturer is using. I have noticed a pattern of occasional QC issues like this popping up on Discord, but to Louqe's credit, their support does a great job of taking care of any issues. My guess is that the GPU cooler moves enough air that some of it happens to escape through the top. I don't have a great explanation for the CPU; I suspect the vent changes some internal turbulent flow pattern that keeps hot air closer to the CPU/mobo. Louqe's CPU Cooler Test and their support recommend adding an A12x15 fan on top of the NH-L12 GE cooler to achieve silent performance. You can get extra 120mm fan clips from Noctua for free to mount it, and you should get "silent" full performance!

The Louqe Raw S1 is more than just a case – it’s arguably a functional work of art.

With a small footprint and beautiful finish in both the tempered-glass and mesh variants, the Evolv Shift 2 is perfect as an SFF PC for use in the living room, or moving around the house wherever you need it. The easily accessible top IO makes plugging devices in a breeze too. Building in it was tight, and came with the typical frustrations associated with Mini-ITX systems, but I still managed a build within about 3 hours, and the end result was well worth the effort. The overall size is a bit bigger than most Mini-ITX cases would be, but the tempered glass side panels do wonders for creating systems to show off, though keep in mind that its single-fan radiator support may be too thermally limiting for some systems.

However, you can fit a PC in here. There’s no AIO support, nor air filtration. So yes, there are sacrifices, but it offers among the easiest build processes – chances are you’ll be done building within the hour and have a very tidy end result. It will also happily fit huge triple-slot graphics cards, despite its ultra-compact 12-litter frame, and with a fancy ‘Cobalt’ PCIe 4.0 riser cable, there’s hardly a thing about this case that isn’t ultra-premium. It even has a carrying handle. Considering the total size of this offering and its support for some of the largest graphics cards on the market, thermal performance holds up extremely well. There are not many fan formations – only two fans can fit in the case – but it is clear that airflow was a major consideration during design. There are two other cooler options recommended by the community: Scythe Big Shuriken 3 Rev. B and the Thermalright AXP120-X67. Both of these have top mounted 15mm fans, but a 25mm fan can also apparently fit, closing the gap to the shell with a little more wiggle room.

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The only real catch to this chassis is that it relies entirely on the AIO for airflow. But in testing, we found that this setup is perfectly adequate, even when we threw our high-TDP i5-11600K and RTX 3080 Ti graphics card at it. The smallest DIY PC cases from just a few years ago have often been thwarted by the increased cooling needs and size of today's components – particularly graphics cards like Nvidia's RTX 4090. But at 10.4 liters, the Mini-ITX Fractal Design Terra case has (just) enough room for most big GPUs, while delivering eye-catching aesthetics thanks to an aluminum exterior with some real wood trip up front. As compact cases go, this is one of the prettiest around. The CPU Cooler Test - I'll get to this in more detail, but it convinced me thermals are acceptable which is not really the case. So if you're going into the small cases, enjoy your journey down the rabbit hole! You'll wonder why you ever put up with large towers! Despite the added pain, the extra fan definitely improves things. The CPU is nearing maximum performance. When I tested the extra fan in open air, though, the difference was minimal. This tells us that the real benefit to having the extra fan is not improving static pressure through the heatsink, but rather cool intake air! With such a tight fit, the extra fan basically acts as a gasket for the CPU cooler.

tl;dr: Louqe's RAW S1 is a beautiful, high quality case with awful thermal design that can be somewhat mitigated with mods At 50% with no gasket, the air speed was below the resolution of the anemometer (0.1 m/s), so I had to bound the calculation. We see a 2X improvement at max fan speed and a >4X improvement at silent fan speeds.The new RAW S1 promises full gaming PC power in one of the smallest chassis currently available. Its thin, minimum aesthetic is also unique; the popular Corsair One and Ghost S1 are two of the only other thin cases of this size. Outside of these options, it is rare to find other models that can also support powerful components. In an already limited category, LOUQE aims to situate itself as the best option. Because of this, I would actually say the Raw S1 is perfect – because it does a 100% job at achieving what the designers set out to achieve: a simple, easy-to-work-on minimalist system that looks the part and cools well. Air Temp is measured by the mobo, and it's obviously high. This is because the cooler is blowing hot CPU air right on the mobo sensors, but it's still useful for relative measurements. GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO AX gave me a bit of headache. CPU cooler clearance is perfect, plenty of room at all sides, however I struggled with CPU-less bios flash. I had to flash the bios to get support for Ryzen 5000 and I couldn't make the flash work. Eventually I googled out that it only works with USB 2.0 thumb drives. Granted I was using USB 3 thumb drive. So I replaced it with older USB 2.0 thumb drive and then the flash went through properly. Another problem with the board is that PWM fan speed regulation sometimes does not work. I have created separate post about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/gigabyte/comments/r79tra/pwm_sometimes_failing_on_b550i_aorus_pro_ax/ . Not sure if it's issue with my concrete piece or if it's general problem with all these boards. This was resolved by removing Gigabyte software (SIV and EasyTune Engine).

The spine-and-shell design make the RAW S1 extremely easy to build in. With the shell off, you have plenty of room to install components, route cables, etc. I definitely recommend following the instructions since there are a few things to remove before the shell can be taken off. All of the included cables (PSU input, power switch, USB-C, PCI-E 4.0) were easy to install and route. There's some community unhappiness with the fact that the USB-C cable uses the mobo I/O instead of the internal connector. It's certainly easier, but there's no reason Louqe couldn't have added a hole in the case bottom with a proper USB-C internal cable. That, plus the money you spend on the case is money you’ll save on cutting the RGB and not caring about what your motherboard or GPU look like – not only do you not see the internals – you simply can’t fit much in here.Their previous cases are some of the most popular choices for Mini-ITX builds around thanks to their premium materials and minimalist aesthetics. From early images and specs, the new LOUQE Raw S1 offers an increase in size without compromising on much of anything. For most getting into the mini-ITX cases, you can't go wrong (and may not go any further) going with the NR200. It's much smaller than the big cases you may have been using, and it's easy to build in. You don't necessarily have to get the Max version if you weren't planning on going with an AIO build. However, if you were, then it doesn't get much easier than the Max with the large 850W PSU and AIO already installed. I started with some tests of the CPU and GPU without the shell on. This allows us to get a sense for how the coolers perform in the best case scenario (open air) and serves as a sort of thermal performance target. For all the various configurations, mods, etc., I used Cinebench for CPU testing, Furmark for GPU testing, and Unigine Heaven for mixed/gaming. An important note: the Corsair One case is only available in prebuilt configurations, severely limiting GPU and CPU options. Meanwhile, the Raw S1 will support most graphics cards and CPUs on the market thanks to its construction. The Raw S1 is a more subtle design than the Corsair One, opting for simple sides and vents instead of the Corsair One’s LEDs and large vents. Instead, the Raw S1 looks much closer to its smaller brother, the Ghost S1. There are almost no markings or features on the outside of the case. In fact, the front only features one small button for power, and I/O options are limited to a single Type-C placed on an angled panel.