Hi everyone! I've got this worklog going on a couple other forums but so far have received pretty lackluster response. Hopefully you all have some input Here goes:
What is it: A slim miniITX case that can accept dual-slot graphics cards
Why?: I wanted a small ITX gaming case, and hate cubes!
This is also satisfying an Engineering Design project at my college for a friend and I, so we get school credit for playing. I feel like there maybe a niche in the market for a case like this.
We went through a couple design concepts before settling on the one pictured above. Part of this is because of the components I have- everything being used is being donated from my gaming PC. You can see it will accommodate up to a 10.5" graphics card in theory.
So far as I know there aren't many (if any) cases like this. From the beginning the idea was to use a 90 deg PCI express riser to mount the graphics card horizontally. One thing we had to do was verify this would work with a high-performance graphics card, so we tested that very early on with a very low budget testbed:
We decided we wanted the case to accept standard components with minimal or no modification. It will need a low profile heatsink, but that's about it. It would be possible to reduce dimensions further by making a proprietary case, but that kind of defeats the purpose of DESIGNING a case, eh?
Of course tackling the noise and thermals will be the biggest challenge with this project, and that's what we are prepared to devote the most time to. So far we've got everything running at acceptable levels of both noise and temp in open air, but we've yet to simulate our case environment.
Here's our most recent mockups:
Size comparison to Dell Studio 15 laptop:
Size comparison to Sony Upscale DVD Player:
Interestingly, it looks like a case of these dimensions would also easily accomodate an mATX or even ATX motherboard without a discrete graphics card, if one could get away with using 2.5" hard drives.
Pretty cool that we can get his much diversity out of this design. It could possibly accommodate a single slot GFX with an mATX or ATX motherboard using a flexible riser card, but I'm not going to worry about designing that in just yet (unless there is overwhelming interest!)
Now I know what you're thinking, holy geesh this thing is going to be loud and it's going to overheat terribly. That was our initial fear, but so far the thermal testing is going very well. I won't consider the project a success if it's unbearably loud. The graphics card will definitely be the loudest component running at full load, and that's more or less unavoidable.
Case materials are actually up in the air but most likely Aluminum. We have some ideas already on how to mount and route everything that are present in our hand sketches and not yet in the Solid models.
So you probably want to know the components I'm using:
DFI Lanparty P55 T36 Motherboard
Core i5 750 Quad Core w/ TurboBoost enabled
OCZ 2x2 GB DDR3 RAM
HIS Radeon 5770 1 GB
2x 1 TB WD Caviar Blue
Not top end components, but this case is really intended for more midrange parts anyway, although we'd like to accommodate as much as we can.
Let me know your input and if anyone has any questions! Look for rapid updates on this project becuase we need to have it completed in only a couple months. Thanks!
What is it: A slim miniITX case that can accept dual-slot graphics cards
Why?: I wanted a small ITX gaming case, and hate cubes!
This is also satisfying an Engineering Design project at my college for a friend and I, so we get school credit for playing. I feel like there maybe a niche in the market for a case like this.
We went through a couple design concepts before settling on the one pictured above. Part of this is because of the components I have- everything being used is being donated from my gaming PC. You can see it will accommodate up to a 10.5" graphics card in theory.
So far as I know there aren't many (if any) cases like this. From the beginning the idea was to use a 90 deg PCI express riser to mount the graphics card horizontally. One thing we had to do was verify this would work with a high-performance graphics card, so we tested that very early on with a very low budget testbed:
We decided we wanted the case to accept standard components with minimal or no modification. It will need a low profile heatsink, but that's about it. It would be possible to reduce dimensions further by making a proprietary case, but that kind of defeats the purpose of DESIGNING a case, eh?
Of course tackling the noise and thermals will be the biggest challenge with this project, and that's what we are prepared to devote the most time to. So far we've got everything running at acceptable levels of both noise and temp in open air, but we've yet to simulate our case environment.
Here's our most recent mockups:
Size comparison to Dell Studio 15 laptop:
Size comparison to Sony Upscale DVD Player:
Interestingly, it looks like a case of these dimensions would also easily accomodate an mATX or even ATX motherboard without a discrete graphics card, if one could get away with using 2.5" hard drives.
Pretty cool that we can get his much diversity out of this design. It could possibly accommodate a single slot GFX with an mATX or ATX motherboard using a flexible riser card, but I'm not going to worry about designing that in just yet (unless there is overwhelming interest!)
Now I know what you're thinking, holy geesh this thing is going to be loud and it's going to overheat terribly. That was our initial fear, but so far the thermal testing is going very well. I won't consider the project a success if it's unbearably loud. The graphics card will definitely be the loudest component running at full load, and that's more or less unavoidable.
Case materials are actually up in the air but most likely Aluminum. We have some ideas already on how to mount and route everything that are present in our hand sketches and not yet in the Solid models.
So you probably want to know the components I'm using:
DFI Lanparty P55 T36 Motherboard
Core i5 750 Quad Core w/ TurboBoost enabled
OCZ 2x2 GB DDR3 RAM
HIS Radeon 5770 1 GB
2x 1 TB WD Caviar Blue
Not top end components, but this case is really intended for more midrange parts anyway, although we'd like to accommodate as much as we can.
Let me know your input and if anyone has any questions! Look for rapid updates on this project becuase we need to have it completed in only a couple months. Thanks!
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