Advice to ultra-compact mITX build?

[grandmaster]

Hi,

I'm looking to build a mITX system with either socket 775 quad core or one of the new Clarkdale set-ups.

I'm looking for the smallest possible set-up, factoring in that I will be using one or two SSDs (no bulky desktop drives required). An optical drive is not necessary.

The only issue I can foresee here, aside from heat dissipation, is that I need to get a half-height PCIe expansion board in there too.

Can any one suggest a potential case/cooling/power solution?

 

[Blazestorm]

Antec ISK300 would work depending on if you can get a PSU to power everything... but it has room for 2 x SSD's, long PCI-E low-profile cards etc.

Along with 2 x80mm directly next to the CPU and room for largeish cooler if you remove part of the HDD brace (not really needed)

 

[Proneax]

the Antec is one way to go, if you accept their 2x 80mm fan philosophy.

I would be more inclined to try to get a heatsink like the scythe shuriken on there and put a 120mm fan exhausting out the top of the case, although I have no specific reason why that is better than 2x 80mm fans exhausting on the side if you can find the right heatsink... Most cases would require drilling holes or cutting a square and meshing it to vent out the top of the case.

If you look around there are a number of cases similar to the antec (most are actually smaller), look at aopen. If you don't need an ODD, you should be able to make it pretty compact.

As for a PSU, I am planning a similar build and will likely use the picoPSU and a 200W dell brick (google dell da-2) that puts out a 12V rail fro the picoPSU, and you can connect one of the dell rails directly to the 12V AUX on the mobo as this will be your biggest power draw, while the picoPSU will draw from another rail and supply the ATX-24 on your mobo and your SSDs. A few @ silentpcreview have done this.