Hydra Mini

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication

- ZAK STOREY

AS CHASSIS DESIGN goes, this is the most extreme example of minimalism we’ve ever seen. There’s no frills here, no excess garnish or gaming flair, there’s no support for crazy, over-the-top liquidcooling, and you can’t make it into a glorified NAS with hundreds of TBs of storage. The reality is that the Hydra Mini is a true manifestation of pure, clean, functional style, merged with exceptional craftsmanship and an attention to detail that makes it perhaps one of the most interesting cases we’ve ever had the pleasure of reviewing. That’s not to say it doesn’t have its flaws, and we’ll cover those in due course, but despite that we can’t help but admire this thing.

So what exactly is the Hydra Mini? Well, it’s a tiny ITX SFX chassis that is built by a small Italian company called Hydra. It’s available in three different color skus (white, black, and a clear satin finish, the latter being slightly cheaper). You can buy the Mini in a bundle, which includes a Hydra-branded PCIe riser extension for your GPU, at around $112 or $105 (not including shipping/import duties), or you can go for the standard case for just $78, or $65 for the satin steel variant.