DAN A4-SFX: The smallest gaming case in the world

MIDIBoss said:
Thank you Blackreplica. I do not mind delidding the CPU, no problem.

I guess the only question I have left is if you guys think the upcoming 8700k would be a good match in the Dan case.

Most of my software synthesizers do benefit from multithreading. Dune 2 for example uses multithreading to great advantage, which is why I thought it might be useful to wait for the new hexacore Intel 8700k chip.

All this is still pretty new to me, so forgive me if my question is naive, but: Will the 8700k be that much more of a wattage guzzler than the 7700k that the thermals will be un-useable when overclocked even if delidded & well cooled in the Dan case?

I suppose we'll have to wait and find out, but I thought someone here might have some insight on that. If speed and multicore processing are both equally important, should I just build now with the 7700k or wait for the 8700k? I am hoping thermals between the two would be similar, which would mean waiting for Coffee Lake would be the best choice. I do not currently have a motherboard, so buying the one for the new 8th Gen socket when it becomes available would be a non-issue.

Thanks again for your time.
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I would wait for the 8700K reviews to come out. Heck, if you need a pc now, you could just go with an 8-core Ryzen 1700 and pair it with 3000-3200mhz ram (get the G. Skill Trident-Z or Flare-X models). You do not have to worry about delidding your Ryzen as well since the cpu is soldered.

8700K will be based on an even more improved 14nm node process and will have wattage similar to the Ryzen 1600 and it is using ring-bus architecture (same as 7700K and better than mesh in gaming due to lower latency). Clockspeeds are unknown, but I am guessing all 6-core boost of probably 4.2-4.4 GHz realistically. As for the TIM, I am guessing that you will most likely have to delid.
 
MIDIBoss said:
Thank you Blackreplica. I do not mind delidding the CPU, no problem.

I guess the only question I have left is if you guys think the upcoming 8700k would be a good match in the Dan case.
[...]
All this is still pretty new to me, so forgive me if my question is naive, but: Will the 8700k be that much more of a wattage guzzler than the 7700k that the thermals will be un-useable when overclocked even if delidded & well cooled in the Dan case?
Click to expand...
Keep in mind people have run a 22 core Xeon in the Dan case. Anyway, a GPU throws even more heat, also no issue.

So long as you can get the heat from the die into a heat sink, getting the heat out of the box is no problem, especially if you can leave the I/O shield off.

If you can wait a couple weeks, 8700k benches will start to appear. A few weeks after that, motherboard BIOS updates will let us see what the chip can really do. Ryzen & TR should be really solid by then as well.

However, unless you are in possession of an A4 v1, you're waiting until Jan for a v2 case like many of us ...and who knows, maybe 10nm chips by then?
 
Living Weapon said:
Keep in mind people have run a 22 core Xeon in the Dan case. Anyway, a GPU throws even more heat, also no issue.

So long as you can get the heat from the die into a heat sink, getting the heat out of the box is no problem, especially if you can leave the I/O shield off.

If you can wait a couple weeks, 8700k benches will start to appear. A few weeks after that, motherboard BIOS updates will let us see what the chip can really do. Ryzen & TR should be really solid by then as well.

However, unless you are in possession of an A4 v1, you're waiting until Jan for a v2 case like many of us ...and who knows, maybe 10nm chips by then?
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The thing is that Xeon chip is soldered, unlike the consumer chips. I was thinking about it yesterday, these new 6 core chips may be difficult to cool. They will probably be the same temperature wise when it comes to playing games but unless they drop there all core turbo boost down from a 7700k it is going to be throttling. Maybe i am being pessimistic and they will drop the frequency and it will hit a better point on the frequency voltage curve. Worth waiting to find out I suppose but on the other hand Ryzen is here and is performing very well while being easy to cool!
 
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MIDIBoss said:
Thank you Blackreplica. I do not mind delidding the CPU, no problem.

I guess the only question I have left is if you guys think the upcoming 8700k would be a good match in the Dan case.

Most of my software synthesizers do benefit from multithreading. Dune 2 for example uses multithreading to great advantage, which is why I thought it might be useful to wait for the new hexacore Intel 8700k chip.

All this is still pretty new to me, so forgive me if my question is naive, but: Will the 8700k be that much more of a wattage guzzler than the 7700k that the thermals will be un-useable when overclocked even if delidded & well cooled in the Dan case?

I suppose we'll have to wait and find out, but I thought someone here might have some insight on that. If speed and multicore processing are both equally important, should I just build now with the 7700k or wait for the 8700k? I am hoping thermals between the two would be similar, which would mean waiting for Coffee Lake would be the best choice. I do not currently have a motherboard, so buying the one for the new 8th Gen socket when it becomes available would be a non-issue.

Thanks again for your time.
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In your shoes, I would probably wait for coffee lake. Reason being that the 8700K is very likely to have 6 cores which will make big difference for your multi core loads. The heat output will probably be unmanagable if stock but since you dont mind the delid, there should be no issue

Im probably one of the few here who ran a delidded 7700K processor in my dan before selling it to a friend then running a stock undervolted one later. As long as you delid, temperatures for all intents and purposes are no longer an issue, and I'm pretty sure it will be the same thing for the 8700. I even managed to overclock my delidded 7700K to 4.8GHz and saw reasonable temps (below 90deg if i recall) under synthetic loads. Whereas with the stock chip under the same conditions I had to undervolt to 4.1GHz/1.15V
 
Blackreplica said:
In your shoes, I would probably wait for coffee lake. Reason being that the 8700K is very likely to have 6 cores which will make big difference for your multi core loads. The heat output will probably be unmanagable if stock but since you dont mind the delid, there should be no issue

Im probably one of the few here who ran a delidded 7700K processor in my dan before selling it to a friend then running a stock undervolted one later. As long as you delid, temperatures for all intents and purposes are no longer an issue, and I'm pretty sure it will be the same thing for the 8700. I even managed to overclock my delidded 7700K to 4.8GHz and saw reasonable temps (below 90deg if i recall) under synthetic loads. Whereas with the stock chip under the same conditions I had to undervolt to 4.1GHz/1.15V
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Right on. Thanks Blackreplica and all else for replying. I'm learning a lot. Sounds like the delidded 8700k is gonna be the way to go. That's killer about your 4.8ghz delidded 7700k. I have a feeling this build, when it happens eventually, is going to make my 2010 2.6ghz dual core Apple laptop seem like a toy.

What I'm really hoping for is being able to run audio workstation buffers at lower sample rates and use more unison voice counts & polyphony in my softsynths as well as higher modulation resolutions. Right now I have to water a lot of sounds down in my softsynths to make them run at 128 samples i/o. My DAW has options to run the audio buffer all the way down to 16 samples i/o. I would be blown away if I get 16 samples i/o without audio distortion using some of the more CPU-intensive synth patches, but I do have high hopes of running the audio latency buffer at 32 samples i/o with the 8700k in the Dan Case build. That would make the instruments feel so much more real when playing. We shall see, I suppose.

Anyway, thanks and looking forward to continuing to read the discussion.
 
MIDIBoss said:
Right on. Thanks Blackreplica and all else for replying. I'm learning a lot. Sounds like the delidded 8700k is gonna be the way to go. That's killer about your 4.8ghz delidded 7700k. I have a feeling this build, when it happens eventually, is going to make my 2010 2.6ghz dual core Apple laptop seem like a toy.

What I'm really hoping for is being able to run audio workstation buffers at lower sample rates and use more unison voice counts & polyphony in my softsynths as well as higher modulation resolutions. Right now I have to water a lot of sounds down in my softsynths to make them run at 128 samples i/o. My DAW has options to run the audio buffer all the way down to 16 samples i/o. I would be blown away if I get 16 samples i/o without audio distortion using some of the more CPU-intensive synth patches, but I do have high hopes of running the audio latency buffer at 32 samples i/o with the 8700k in the Dan Case build. That would make the instruments feel so much more real when playing. We shall see, I suppose.

Anyway, thanks and looking forward to continuing to read the discussion.
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This case can run anything with a loud enough fan. The better question is: what can you run quietly with stock hardware? The best bet for anyone interested is a 8700 non-k with noctua or Dan's cooler.

I think you don't comprehend how fast this hardware is. Your laptop is about as fast as a iphone cpu, and you have fewer cores. The 8700 we're talking about here is as fast or faster than 99.9% of computers that exist. It's (presumably) faster than a Mac Pro! Any constraint on performance or latency here is due to your audio hardware or software, or anything other than the CPU.

The 8700k will completely obsolete the 7700k. Coffee lake has a huge increase in the number of available threads for free, simply because of competitive pressure from AMD. And yes, more threads means more power usage for sure, so it's not totally free.
 
I just went 7700k due to impatience, but agree Coffee Lake should be a nice improvement.

Without overclock, temps seem fine with my 7700K and l9i, although Prime95 will send temps up to 100C. It has been pretty hot in my part of the world and my apartment is lacking aircon so my system has been through some torture though :)
 
Ok so my crucial mx100 has stopped booting, hopefully a firmware update will sort it out but if it doesn't what's everyone's feelings on nvme SSDs mounted on the back of the motherboard? Are they cool during long gaming/rendering sessions? Are they even worth it at all apart from reduced cabling? I'm wondering if a 960 pro sata drive would be better than a 960 evo nvme drive. Longer warranty and no heat issues, if heat is even an issue...
 
richiegore said:
Ok so my crucial mx100 has stopped booting, hopefully a firmware update will sort it out but if it doesn't what's everyone's feelings on nvme SSDs mounted on the back of the motherboard? Are they cool during long gaming/rendering sessions? Are they even worth it at all apart from reduced cabling? I'm wondering if a 960 pro sata drive would be better than a 960 evo nvme drive. Longer warranty and no heat issues, if heat is even an issue...
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I too am curious about heat / throttling in smaller cases

As for SATA, it doesn't support the NVMe protocol nor the throughput of 4x PCIe v3 that you'll get from an m.2 port (not that you'll be >2GB/s often, but nice to know you could on sequential read). My guess is even a throttling m.2 drive is consistently faster than a similar controller / flash chips on the other side of SATA, but I'd really like to hear from people who use one for database, rendering, VM work, or similar multi-threaded grinds
 
Living Weapon said:
I too am curious about heat / throttling
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I use two M.2 SSDs on the Z270I: In the frontslot the SATA-SSD and in the backslot the NVMe-SSD (because of board-limitations it is not possible to use SATA-SSDs in both slots).
While gaming I'm not monitoring my drive temps but when benching CPU & GPU simultaneously a while ago I watched all the temps I could find and neither one of them got above 60°C. In the manufacturers specifications they can handle up to 70°C - so temps were high but not critical. I've not seen any throttling so far.
 
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Seeing all these posts are getting me so excited for the v2. Really like everyone's posts regarding their setup. I wonder if I could fit my zotac 1080ti amp in this, lol. Probably not! I decided on the black version just because the silver version looks off in my current room setup so really thankful for all of the setup people are showing, lets me plan ahead.
 
Set the motherboard to uefi only and it booted straight away. Set I back to uefi and legacy and it booted too. Seems it's a common enough problem with the crucial mx100. I will keep the motherboard set to uefi only and hopefully it won't happen again. If it does I'll get a new drive. Never had the issue on my old sandy bridge system using the same drive it seems to be a problem with newer chipsets. Thanks for the advice on the NVME drives, I would probably go for one just too see the crystal disk benchmark results! :)
 
Do you have any better pics of cable routing for psu? I'm having an issue with being able to route them and binding up fan on 545lc so the fans not spinning. I've almost thought of swapping psu around where fan is facing gpu since I believe that is an intake fan on sf600. Any help appreciated, thank you.



Rorschach said:
And the results...

Wooow.

The PSU Corsair SF600 doesn't even start anymore in games - 10 minutes of ME: Andromeda. Usually ii started the moment i entered the game.
Was getting like 80 C degrees with the 980ti no oc and of course it was on the loud side ! Now it stays at 60 ! and Dead Silent !

5960x / 32 GB/ M.2 950 Pro / Asetek 545LC / Asrock X99 miTX

And not to forget that it lights up ! :snaphappy:

Oh yeah, so glad i did this.

View attachment 30152 View attachment 30153 View attachment 30154
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snipes23

Unfortunalty not at the moment. Will do more once i get back home.

Yes the psu's fan acts like an intake. Worth a try but more heat from the gpu. (?)

From what i remember you really have to bend almost each individual wire to make it work. If you do this you will see that there would be adequate space left for the fan to work even if the wires will sit on the fan. Have a look at pg 277 where Dan has a better wm than me to give you an idea. And will come back with more pictures as well from my pc.

Hope it helps.
 
I just did some tidying up of my cable management and wanted to share it with you guys:

KRQ6RS5.jpg

XQrq4RM.jpg

9otunjK.jpg
 
Uhm once my V2 arrives I might go with Ryzen/Volta build aswell. Does anyone have any idea when the x300 motherboards will arrive? and in terms of build quality will they be better than the ab350 series? Would have prefer a Icelake/Volta build but intel is soo slow and in my pov milked 14nm too much that AMD caught up with em.
 
jenosmaverick said:
Uhm once my V2 arrives I might go with Ryzen/Volta build aswell. Does anyone have any idea when the x300 motherboards will arrive? and in terms of build quality will they be better than the ab350 series? Would have prefer a Icelake/Volta build but intel is soo slow and in my pov milked 14nm too much that AMD caught up with em.
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Are you talking about X370 ? Because those ITX boards are already out from Biostar and Asrock. Im rocking Ryzen 1700 in my Dan right now.
 
Hey guys, i just stumbled upon this article. Does anyone think watercooling in this case would be possible with a card like this ?
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It would be possible, but it would be far louder than any air cooling solution.

Does anyone have any idea when the x300 motherboards will arrive?
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No. I am waiting for them, too. If AMD doesnt give us more informations about this, I will probably buy Cannonlake.
 
Shaav said:
It would be possible, but it would be far louder than any air cooling solution.


No. I am waiting for them, too. If AMD doesnt give us more informations about this, I will probably buy Cannonlake.
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Why bother waiting for the x300 series? There's already 5 mITX boards out for Ryzen.

Biostar:
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=878
http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=879

ASRock:
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Gaming-ITXac/
http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITXac/index.asp

Gigabyte:
http://www.gigabyte.us/Motherboard/GA-AB350N-Gaming-WIFI-rev-10#kf

Currently enjoying the ASRock AB350 with the R7 1700X.
 
Pr0Pain said:
Hey guys, i just stumbled upon this article. Does anyone think watercooling in this case would be possible with a card like this ?

http://wccftech.com/zotac-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-mini-arcticstorm-pictured/

ZOTAC-GeForce-GTX-1080-Ti-ArcticStorm-Mini_2-740x479.jpg
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Without any hint of irony - I'd love to see you try!

I think what you'd have to do is get rid of the SFX PSU and go with a custom DC PSU and use a high wattage power brick outside of the case. You could use the SFX space for a 120 ( would a 140mm fit? ) rad in its place.
 
Chapeau said:
Without any hint of irony - I'd love to see you try!

I think what you'd have to do is get rid of the SFX PSU and go with a custom DC PSU and use a high wattage power brick outside of the case. You could use the SFX space for a 120 ( would a 140mm fit? ) rad in its place.
Click to expand...

Even if you got rid of the PSU, you only have 200mm (H) x 112mm (W), So even a 120mm would not fit in any orientation. Whatever you do, it would have to fit within 112mm.
 
Pr0Pain said:
Hey guys, i just stumbled upon this article. Does anyone think watercooling in this case would be possible with a card like this ?

http://wccftech.com/zotac-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-mini-arcticstorm-pictured/

ZOTAC-GeForce-GTX-1080-Ti-ArcticStorm-Mini_2-740x479.jpg
Click to expand...
Gotta agree w/Chapeau - cross-flow in place of the PSU is about the only place with room for a rad, unless you want it external. FWIW, a 2x92mm rad has 17.5% more frontal area than a 1x120mm. You may even have room to throw one of these in the case:


Edit: Dual 92mm rads I can find are 229mm and 213mm long, including end tanks vs. 205mm height of Dan's case. Sorry, not a better option than 1x120mm after all
 
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snipes23 said:
Do you have any better pics of cable routing for psu? I'm having an issue with being able to route them and binding up fan on 545lc so the fans not spinning. I've almost thought of swapping psu around where fan is facing gpu since I believe that is an intake fan on sf600. Any help appreciated, thank you.
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I'm back. It's all i can do for now without taking out the video card. Maybe pause the video that i did when i build it to see some of the routes. From min 5.23. Hope this helps.



20170811_214715.jpg 20170811_214725.jpg 20170811_214756.jpg 20170811_214801.jpg 20170811_214826.jpg
 
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Will there be any difference in terms of durability between the current am4 mitx and the upcoming x300? I'm not in a hurry to buy since the case will arrive next year and probably newer techs would be out. But I do consider buying at black friday or cyber monday whatevers avail for a cheaper price.

I live in the Philippines so everything is much more expensive.
 
Well halfway there, got the fan working now just gotta figure out how to get the side panel on lol. On 2-4hr sessions of csgo I'm getting max temps of 82-84 with the 545lc and delidded 7700k and idling around 30.. I have a lp53 I might put on to compare temps, not sure on ambient temps.
 
Decided to try the low noise adaptor for my ryzen 1700 and noctua L9a. Fan maxes out at 1900rpm, based on this review its a bit less than 28dBA which is damn quiet. After an hour and a half of prime95 it has it 79 degrees in a 23 degree ambient room. I'm really impressed, it's much quieter than the fan at full speed. 79 isn't too bad for a synthetic load. I'm going to take off the adaptor and test a bit more to see how general usage is with to unrestricted fan.
 
richiegore said:
Decided to try the low noise adaptor for my ryzen 1700 and noctua L9a. Fan maxes out at 1900rpm, based on this review its a bit less than 28dBA which is damn quiet. After an hour and a half of prime95 it has it 79 degrees in a 23 degree ambient room. I'm really impressed, it's much quieter than the fan at full speed. 79 isn't too bad for a synthetic load. I'm going to take off the adaptor and test a bit more to see how general usage is with to unrestricted fan.
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If the mobo bios allows this, just set a max fan speed % when it hits a max temp. I would try 2000-2100 rpm first.
 
CknSalad said:
If the mobo bios allows this, just set a max fan speed % when it hits a max temp. I would try 2000-2100 rpm first.
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Yes I think around 2100 would be perfect. Let's just say biostar's fan control leave alot to be desired. I'm sure it's fine for most coolers but the L9a with its relatively low heat capacity and high rpm fan are not a god combination for a steady fan speed. I think I will set the minimum speed up to about 1000 and let I climb gradually from there, that should give it enough buffer to not climb during regular desktop usage.
 
Hey guys !

So, i am really excited to share my Gigabyte 1080ti Gaming Noctua fan mod with you guys.

For those of you who don't know, i have the 2 slot 1080ti Gaming OC from Gigabyte in the Dan, as i was impatient and the only thing that fit at the time (ironically, i only got the guts for the case 3 months later)

So, the card screams like a baby on crack when gaming and due to it being right next to the sidepanel, i was going nuts. The temps were also all over the place, reaching 82-85 celsius easy during load.

Here is what it looked like:

Y1XJmVB.jpg

KRQ6RS5.jpg


I enden up inspecting the card, for some way to replace the fans and turns out the shroud is held in place with 4 tiny screws. Removing those gives me access to the entire cooling surface and then i went to work doing proof of concepts, before ordering more Noctua fans:

First with 2 old ThermalTake Air Penetrator 120mm fans i had lying around. Couldn't get the side back on
8oWcEaL.jpg


Then with one NF-A9x14 and the stock cooler from my Cryorig C7
BdaMnq2.jpg


Then my buddy donated another NF-A9x14 and now we are getting somewhere
2LbVXKT.jpg


I then purchased the last NF-A9x14 and the real work began.

I scavenged a spare GPU fan plug from the LED Gigabyte Logo on the card (who cares) and soldered it to a Noctua extender cable, which i split into 2 other Noctua Y-splitters, bundled up at the end of the card. I then zip-tied the fans to the grill. This is the end result:
W9Rr2J5.jpg

s1WZ2lx.jpg

vpHjvW2.jpg

AaigfGn.jpg

N9wXh2d.jpg


The fans fit perfectly and because of my solder work, the card is none the wiser and throttles the fans down to stop when idling and up to around 2000rpm when gaming.

The noise is down and i am getting 68 degrees in gaming instead of 82-85 before. The shroud partly was at fault here, because it "folded" around the top part, preventing the air from exhausting up the top of the Dan.

All in all, i am now a happy camper :D ....(waiting for his AM4 bracket, CRYORIG !!!!)
 
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Pr0Pain said:
Hey guys !

So, i am really excited to share my Gigabyte 1080ti Gaming Noctua fan mod with you guys.

For those of you who don't know, i have the 2 slot 1080ti Gaming OC from Gigabyte in the Dan, as i was impatient and the only thing that fit at the time (ironically, i only got the guts for the case 3 months later)

So, the card screams like a baby on crack when gaming and due to it being right next to the sidepanel, i was going nuts. The temps were also all over the place, reaching 82-85 celsius easy during load.

Here is what it looked like:

Y1XJmVB.jpg

KRQ6RS5.jpg


I enden up inspecting the card, for some way to replace the fans and turns out the shroud is held in place with 4 tiny screws. Removing those gives me access to the entire cooling surface and then i went to work doing proof of concepts, before ordering more Noctua fans:

First with 2 old ThermalTake Air Penetrator 120mm fans i had lying around. Couldn't get the side back on
8oWcEaL.jpg


Then with one NF-A9x14 and the stock cooler from my Cryorig C7
BdaMnq2.jpg


Then my buddy donated another NF-A9x14 and now we are getting somewhere
2LbVXKT.jpg


I then purchased the last NF-A9x14 and the real work began.

I scavenged a spare GPU fan plug from the LED Gigabyte Logo on the card (who cares) and soldered it to a Noctua extender cable, which i split into 2 other Noctua Y-splitters, bundled up at the end of the card. I then zip-tied the fans to the grill. This is the end result:
W9Rr2J5.jpg

s1WZ2lx.jpg

vpHjvW2.jpg

AaigfGn.jpg

N9wXh2d.jpg


The fans fit perfectly and because of my solder work, the card is none the wiser and throttles the fans down to stop when idling and up to around 2000rpm when gaming.

The noise is down and i am getting 68 degrees in gaming instead of 82-85 before. The shroud partly was at fault here, because it "folded" around the top part, preventing the air from exhausting up the top of the Dan.

All in all, i am now a happy camper :D ....(waiting for his AM4 bracket, CRYORIG !!!!)
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Wow!.. That surely is amazing! A little ghetto, but damn I'm impressed! Nice z5500 btw ;-)
 
richiegore said:
Will you do the same build in both cases? It would be really interesting to see the temperature differences between the two cases if any!
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There wont be any build at all. This will sit empty until some other projects are over
 
So most GPU reviews Vega are pretty rushed but I can't believe this hasn't more attention. You can knock 100w off load wattage and lose only a couple of frames versus the standard power option here. In the example linked vega is performing slightly better than an evga 1080 FTW, better minimums, while using about the same amount of power.

Put simply with the power save mode you get virtually the same performance as the default power profile (gtx 1080 level) at virtually the same power level as a 1080. Obviously it will vary in a per game basis but that seems pretty good to me.

My monitor started acting a bit funny last week, not powering on, and I was shocked how poor the g-sync monitor scene is. I don't want a TN panel, I'd like a good IPS panel will a <2 delta-E that with nice reserved styling. I couldn't find anything. If my monitor does go I'll probably get free-sync monitor and sell my 1080 for a good aftermarket Vega. Hopefully my monitor doesn't go though! :)
 
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