Compact living room gaming rig concept (~2.5 L)

[CC Ricers]

Hi people at [H], I don't post here often but I think this would be a good place to put this topic. I've got an idea for scratch build case. A few users here like iFrelicht would be familiar with what I have. It will be SFF like my last one, but MUCH smaller than the 15 L case I made. It will be less than 2.5 liters. Its intention is a living room gaming PC that can play most games well at 1080p on medium settings. It will also be low power.

It will be kind of like the Gigabyte Brix, but a bit larger (more like Zotac's ZBox) and less sucky on the noise and heat issues. The inner layout is taken from the Brix, since it is the most reasonable way you can do this with off-the-shelf parts in a very compact form factor. A PCIe riser will be used, of course. Here is a view of the inside of a Brix with a desktop GTX 760 inside.

I will be using a GTX 750 Ti instead, and also a low power 35w Intel CPU. Like the Brix it will have two small fans but with less heat dissipation from components they won't have to run as loud. CPU and GPU will have passive heatsinks and the fans will take the warm air out. I'm not sure yet whether a pull or push config would be better. There is also the possibility of using a GTX 950 (Ti) instead, which will most likely be more powerful, and since I am in no rush to finish this system, it will probably be out by the time I am working on it.

Power will be supplied by the HD-Plex 160w DC-DC converter with its compatible 120w AC-DC adapter. Both components will also be small enough to fit inside the case, and would be amazing for a sub 3 liter build.

Sorry I don't have any cool pics of my own to show, but I should be able to whip up something in Sketchup soon.

Thanks for your time, and any suggestions, especially on the power and cooling, are welcome.

 

[rawrr]

Sounds very interesting. Will follow!

 

[iFreilicht]

Oh cool, didn't know you were on [H] as well. Not so fond of the external power brick, but it will make cooling quite a bit easier.

I'll wait with in-depth criticism until I see the first mock-up, but colour me interested.

 

[CC Ricers]

Oh cool, didn't know you were on [H] as well. Not so fond of the external power brick, but it will make cooling quite a bit easier.

I'll wait with in-depth criticism until I see the first mock-up, but colour me interested.

I was wondering when you'd come in I'm actually going with internal power since the 120w adapter I linked to is meant to be installed inside a case. So that's gonna keep with the tiny size!

 

[iFreilicht]

I was wondering when you'd come in I'm actually going with internal power since the 120w adapter I linked to is meant to be installed inside a case. So that's gonna keep with the tiny size!

Oh I see, I misread that part. I thought about the concept of having an external adapter installed internally for passive cooling, but didn't really know whether it would be worth doing. If it works for you, that would be amazing!

 

[CC Ricers]

Here's a tentative and incomplete parts list I've made: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/t8q4TW

The GPU incompatibility is solved with a riser card/cable. I'm not sure yet which type of riser I'm going to get, and it will depend on how I orient the GPU.

I might upgrade the CPU to a 4570T, if the turbo difference in speed will be a huge improvement for games.

For cooling, a 1U server heatsink will be used, and the two case fans will pull the hot air out. the GPU's stock fan will be removed also to reduce it to a single slot size. From there I could either go with leaving the just the heatsink and letting the case fans circulate the air, or salvage an old graphics card with a 1 slot cooler design. Coolers that should fit on this card on the GPU's mounting points include the GeForce 6600, 8400, 8500, and 8600 GT.

 

[SaperPL]

I had gainward 650TI with similar cooler to what 750TI's are getting now and you could look for this type of cooler because it would nicely fit your purpose.

I still have the photos on my potato phone:




You could get something like this since they're still making those:

palit 750TI

I assume you're getting such type of cpu cooler:

You could make a sandwith out of those two radiators(GPU & CPU). The distance of gpu radiator from the end of the card should match the location of cpu on TM-itx.

You could install blower fans like this in front of the case to blow through those rads instead of noisy 40mm fans.

 

[CC Ricers]

That's a really great cooler and something I would like to use for a 750 Ti, although Gainward and current single-slot GPUs are hard to come by in the states.

However I have re-considered the model that I will be using for this build. I decided to go for MSI's low-profile 750 Ti.

With this card I decided not to go with sandwiching the mobo and GPU anymore. New design will not have the thickness of the case exceed 50mm. I have a 1.5U (39mm height) PCI-e riser which is the right height to give clearance to the card's cooler without wasting any excess space.

The CPU cooler will still be 1U profile, a blower type cooler. In theory it should not run at uncomfortably loud volumes with a 35w CPU. Anyone familiar with the brand PC Cooler for server coolers? I haven't seen any reviews on it but it looks good.

 

[Diverge]

The CPU cooler will still be 1U profile, a blower type cooler. In theory it should not run at uncomfortably loud volumes with a 35w CPU. Anyone familiar with the brand PC Cooler for server coolers? I haven't seen any reviews on it but it looks good.

These will sound like hair dryers no matter what you do. Server cooler != quiet. I bought one for a DIY NAS I was building... ending up be way too loud.

If you're looking for a quiet low profile blower type cooler, look for the reference design cooler for Intel's thin-ITX heatsink/fan. It's really quiet, and can easily cool a 35W CPU.Only problem is you'd need a thin-itx board, or would need to get creative.

Intel HTS1155LP

I made a customer cooler out of one for one of my past DIY NAS boxes: https://picasaweb.google.com/104979206991404158659/HTPCNASLianLiPCQ16?authuser=0&feat=directlink

 

[SaperPL]

I don't get one thing here Diverge - why didn't you simply rotate the cooler 90 degrees and bend the heatpipes 90 degrees up? It would be positioned next to hard drives and all of that would be ventilated the same way from front to rear...

 

[Diverge]

I don't get one thing here Diverge - why didn't you simply rotate the cooler 90 degrees and bend the heatpipes 90 degrees up? It would be positioned next to hard drives and all of that would be ventilated the same way from front to rear...

I didn't really want to go off topic. But I no longer use that box (loving my U-NAS box ).

Anyway, you can't do what you propose, as there is 0 space between the fans and hard drives. The bracket that they are attached to, that I modified, can't be moved back either, or it would interfere with the clips that hold on the side panels.

It's also not possible to have them bend up on the backside of the hard drives due to the location of the cpu socket (and it would interfere with sata and power connections). Nor can you have the heatpipes come out the other side of the socket, because it would require too sharp a bend to not interfere with motherboard components. Either way you can't really bend already bent heatpipers too much. FYI, my mod cooled an i7-3770T (45W CPU) just fine Heat was not only dissipated from the fan/heatsink, but also to the mounting of the heatsink (and heatpipes) to the aluminum case.

 

[SaperPL]

I meant rotating the bracket 90 degrees one way or another and then bending the pipes 90 degrees up like this:





I can see you did bend them like 40 degrees so making one 45 degree bend + second 45 degree bend with a bit of distance to acheive 90 degree up shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Diverge]

I meant rotating the bracket 90 degrees one way or another and then bending the pipes 90 degrees up like this:
..
I can see you did bend them like 40 degrees so making one 45 degree bend + second 45 degree bend with a bit of distance to acheive 90 degree up shouldn't be a problem.

I see what you mean now. I might have been able to pull that off on the PCIe side. At one point I had a PCIe cablecard tuner in there (Ceton Infinitv4), since it was also my HTPC / Flexraid box. But now I use a Silicondust HD Homerun network tuner, android TV and/or xbox 360 wmc extender, and my U-NAS box runs ESXI, with an Xpenology VM (hacked version of synology DSM). The opposite side wouldn't have had enough room: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-...i8ICUcs8gUY/s912-Ic42/IMG_20120616_132635.jpg

 

[SaperPL]

The opposite would work if you've left the space in the middle between drives for the radiator.somehow.

 

[CC Ricers]

These will sound like hair dryers no matter what you do. Server cooler != quiet. I bought one for a DIY NAS I was building... ending up be way too loud.

If you're looking for a quiet low profile blower type cooler, look for the reference design cooler for Intel's thin-ITX heatsink/fan. It's really quiet, and can easily cool a 35W CPU.Only problem is you'd need a thin-itx board, or would need to get creative.

Intel HTS1155LP

I made a customer cooler out of one for one of my past DIY NAS boxes: https://picasaweb.google.com/104979206991404158659/HTPCNASLianLiPCQ16?authuser=0&feat=directlink

I am in fact getting a thin mini-ITX board for this build, but hat one is going to occupy a lot of space on the side of the motherboard. Then I'll have to go back to making the GPU single-slot to fit it on top of both components.

Looks like I'll just go with one of the normal 1U heatsink fans such as Gelid's Slim Silence i-Plus. Not as loud as a blower fan, should cool this CPU no problem and I could put the hard drives just above it without completely obscuring the fan.

I'll have to make some mockup layouts using Sketchup to see if I can get the parts to fit in the case dimensions I want. It will be very slim, tiny tower with measurements of 180mm width, 230mm height and 45-50mm in thickness.