Rosewill RS-MI-01: An Ultra Low-Cost Mini-ITX Chassis

Installation:

For this build I used an AMD Athlon 5150 APU, 4GB of DDR3 system memory, and an ASUS AM1I-A motherboard.

Assembling the system went very smooth around this socketed AMD Kabini APU hardware. For the disk drive was a standard Serial ATA hard drive. No optical drive was installed given that most Linux systems don't need a DVD/Blu-ray drive for day-to-day use any longer with most Linux distributions being hybrid ISO compatible for USB installation, Amazon Instant Video providing movies to Linux systems with Flash, etc.

The overall assembly of the system was very straight forward and took only a few minutes. While there's nothing extraordinary about this sub-$50 mini-ITX computer case, it's nice overall and so far the power supply has been acting fine.

Conclusion:

Normally I am very hesitant about using any computer case that ships with a pre-installed PSU since normally they are of low quality and tend not to be too reliable, but for carrying out an AMD AM1 Kabini APU build I really was indifferent. When the highest-end AM1 APU costs just over $50, AM1 motherboards can be found for just over $30, and the other hardware is nominally expensive these days, I decided to go ahead and buy the Rosewill RS-MI-01 after having extra AM1 APUs around. This system is going to be commissioned within the Phoronix continuous integration benchmarking farm, so over the coming months if there's any PSU problems I will be sure to make it known on Phoronix. In terms of the case itself, it was fine although there's nothing special about this mini-ITX chassis -- just the nice fact that the steel case plus the 250 Watt power supply retails only for just about $45 USD.