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

Today I got the 300mm Version of the 3M risercard that was extra made for the A4-SFX from an employee of 3M.

img_3136v9py9.jpg
 
Gorgeous riser, but the traces on the PCB look weird. Is the riser only using every third pin or are so many pins just ground?
 
CknSalad said:
Hey Dondan, what's the likelihood of a second run or V2 of this case. I will probably get this case, but since there isnt a tag like in the Ncase M1 v1 cases, I'll probably hold off for the second run or V2.
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That's fair. First edition of anything is rarely any good.

Just wait for some reviews. I am already unhappy with the fact that I can only get 3 of my SSD's in the case. (is this still the case? Heheh no pun intended :D)

That is my ONLY gripe, but it's not enough for me not to purchase. ;)
 
Where and how can I buy this case? I mean can I buy a prototype, if Kickstarter is not yet available? How much would it be to ship to Russia? And from where would be the shipment?

khan613, you crazy? You're not satisfied with THREE 2.5 drives? What is it you need, a server? Adding any more drives would make this perfect tiny case BIGGER and HEAVIER, which is a no-no! I'm happy even with only 2 SSD drives: 128 ssd for system and 1TB 2.5 for the rest.
 
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I rarely get excited over computer parts these days, but this seems to be an exception. Can't wait till sits available. Keep up the great work!
 
khan613 said:
That's fair. First edition of anything is rarely any good.

Just wait for some reviews. I am already unhappy with the fact that I can only get 3 of my SSD's in the case. (is this still the case? Heheh no pun intended :D)

That is my ONLY gripe, but it's not enough for me not to purchase. ;)
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If your board has an mSATA or M.2 slot, you can have 4 SSDs. 4TB of unlimited power! :D
 
Vexel said:
Where and how can I buy this case? I mean can I buy a prototype, if Kickstarter is not yet available? How much would it be to ship to Russia? And from where would be the shipment?
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If you are ready to pay 1700$ for my prototype you can get it ;) But otherwise you have to wait if the case is available.
 
Dondan, if I were filthy rich, I'd do that in a heartbeat, but that is in a perfect world lol jaja... Gonna have to wait for your kickstarter then.


P.S.: you might wanna hurry, cuz big daddies started copying your ideas. Just googled, this is new MSI nightblade M1:

hEMugYx.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46IcfJkGE1c&list=PL5-Slnb72IjSujC8DdLsnGSyOT160EWXj&index=2

Tiny bit bigger than yours though, but structurally the same. I think yours is better cuz yours don't have unneeded CD-drive and oh god, they added two huge 3.5 hard drives! Why?! It loses the point to make things compact.
 
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It's not structurally the same - note that the motherboard is turned to the inside sucking the air from the back with custom turbine cooler. Also the power supply is totally different and located in classic position.

Nightblade is a good example of (terrible) let's copy from those guys - oh wait let's not make too good of a product...
 
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Dan A4 SFX > MSI Nightblade

Wins by quality, materials, internal organization.. Smaller..

Dan, u did the professional photo session? :D
 
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Yeah the night blade looks significantly larger. I'm sure it's also louder with that tiny fan on the PSU. Really don't understand why another manufacturer hasn't created a design on par with the A4 as far as size and materials.
 
This is off-topic, but do you guys think it would be possible to have modular DIY barebones solution for PC boxes like the Zotac EN970 or Alienware Alpha?

I can't wait for this case to come out. Hopefully this will push companies harder for smaller PCs!
 
CknSalad said:
This is off-topic, but do you guys think it would be possible to have modular DIY barebones solution for PC boxes like the Zotac EN970 or Alienware Alpha?

I can't wait for this case to come out. Hopefully this will push companies harder for smaller PCs!
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The H2O-micro is going kind of that way. The problem is that if you were to make something like that, you'd have to design all kinds of components yourself. Motherboard, GPU, all that jazz would have to be custom made which increases the price. If you use off-the shelf components and go as small as possible, you arrive at cases like mine, the A4, the NFC Systems S3 (Mini) or the Little Mac casemod.
 
jb1 said:
Yeah the night blade looks significantly larger. I'm sure it's also louder with that tiny fan on the PSU. Really don't understand why another manufacturer hasn't created a design on par with the A4 as far as size and materials.
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Several factors involved, I guess. Working for a case company probably means you need to meet deadlines, cater to trends, can't take risks, keep cost low, be generous with hardware that can fit, etc. All to reach the big masses out there. Certainly lack of talent matters as well. You need to have the right company culture to succeed. I still cringe when I think of the Bulldog case from Corsair... Eagerly awaiting their SF600 PSU though.
 
I got an well priced 5820k so I ordered today an Asrock x99e-ITX, Dynatron T318, 8GB Crucial DDR4, Crucial 256GB MX200 M.2. The Deepcool 120x120x20mm fan is already here.

Lets see how the A4-SFX can handle a Six Core CPU with Prime95 default clock, undervolt and overclocked. I will also test different FANs on the T318.

Sorry @Ca11idus but I can't wait.
 
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Good luck with the test,

U are working really hard this summer

Appreciate the work u put on this project ;)
 
I'm excited to see the results of your test dondan!

And thanks for working so hard on this, you easily could have built your personal case and left it at that, but didn't. :)
 
dondan said:
I got an well priced 5820k so I ordered today an Asrock x99e-ITX, Dynatron T318, 8GB Crucial DDR4, Crucial 256GB MX200 M.2. The Deepcool 120x120x20mm fan is already here.

Lets see how the A4-SFX can handle a Six Core CPU with Prime95 default clock, undervolt and overclocked. I will also test different FANs on the T318.

Sorry @Ca11idus but I can't wait.
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This is just awesome! :D
 
Hmmm not a fan of the Nightblade. I would prefer the motherboard and graphics card to be back to back - the way the A4 does it.

The blower style CPU cooler is interesting
 
dondan said:
I got an well priced 5820k so I ordered today an Asrock x99e-ITX, Dynatron T318, 8GB Crucial DDR4, Crucial 256GB MX200 M.2. The Deepcool 120x120x20mm fan is already here.

Lets see how the A4-SFX can handle a Six Core CPU with Prime95 default clock, undervolt and overclocked. I will also test different FANs on the T318.

Sorry @Ca11idus but I can't wait.
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That's not a prob, I kinda forgot about it. Have fun with the build.
 
Hey everyone, M1 user here. Just stumbled upon this project the other day while I was thinking about how my M1 is entirely too big and I wish there was something smaller. All I can say is... Holy crap. I'm glad I didn't find out about this sooner. Because now that I know about it, the waiting is already unbearable. :( I must have this in my life right now! Dan, you are amazing.

That said, I've also been keeping an eye out on the Nova project in case I decide to switch to mATX when I upgrade to a new motherboard / Skylake processor. Basically, I want something that can deliver an awesome VR experience in as small of a package as possible, and if it looks like a single GPU won't cut it, then I'll need to go mATX. But... I'd really rather not. I already feel like the M1 is too big for me. I'd really just love to have an awesome gaming machine that I can carry with me in my backpack. The M1 technically fits but it takes up so much room that I need a second bag if I want to bring more than a few essentials.

Anyway, I'll probably go full stalker and check this thread daily from now on, I can't wait to see more progress updates! :D
 
superblockio said:
Hey everyone, M1 user here. Just stumbled upon this project the other day while I was thinking about how my M1 is entirely too big and I wish there was something smaller. All I can say is... Holy crap. I'm glad I didn't find out about this sooner. Because now that I know about it, the waiting is already unbearable. :( I must have this in my life right now! Dan, you are amazing.

Anyway, I'll probably go full stalker and check this thread daily from now on, I can't wait to see more progress updates! :D
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You precisely summed up what I feel right now. Been stalking this thread for over a month now, can't wait either.
 
superblockio said:
That said, I've also been keeping an eye out on the Nova project in case I decide to switch to mATX when I upgrade to a new motherboard / Skylake processor. Basically, I want something that can deliver an awesome VR experience in as small of a package as possible, and if it looks like a single GPU won't cut it, then I'll need to go mATX. But... I'd really rather not. I already feel like the M1 is too big for me. I'd really just love to have an awesome gaming machine that I can carry with me in my backpack. The M1 technically fits but it takes up so much room that I need a second bag if I want to bring more than a few essentials.
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This might be crazy, but I'm thinking about doing a dual R9 Nano in the A4. Using an M.2 slot you could get x4 3.0 PCI-E lanes for the second R9 Nano. You would then place one R9 Nano in the normal spot, and then another you would place directly behind the power supply and angle the ports upward toward the top of the case.

The ports on the second R9 Nano might not be easily accessible, but given the small size of the R9 Nano maybe you could fit two of them in here if you arrange the second one just right. Couple that with a 700W SFX-L power supply and you're good to go.

What do you think?
 
jb1 said:
This might be crazy
...
What do you think?
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:eek: Yes, you are crazy!

Don't you need the motherboard to support Crossfire to make that work? I doubt any ITX board has explicit support, due to an obvious lack of slots.
 
I think it whould be better to wait for the Nano x2 or a pcie riser Splitter riser^^.
 
dondan said:
I think it whould be better to wait for the Nano x2 or a pcie riser Splitter riser^^.
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There are already passive pci-e splitter risers like this one



The only thing you need to do when splitting is to give additional power(drawn from PSU) to the second slot by duplicating the first (short) section of the connector for the second slot. I believe the rest is addressed independently as PCI bus on each pci-e lane so you can easily split them.

As for the SLI/CrossfireX support - at least for intel chipsets, I think, there's no requirement for special features on the motherboard to support them nowadays. SLI on amd boards might be somehow different but once again there's no mITX AM3+ boards on the market.
 
Holy crap that idea is crazy! But that's why I love lurking around these forums! Assuming there are no motherboard support issues... I guess my main question would be, will the nano work well enough with only 4 PCIe lanes? I'm dumb so I don't know how much bandwidth GPUs normally use up. :D
 
superblockio said:
I guess my main question would be, will the nano work well enough with only 4 PCIe lanes? I'm dumb so I don't know how much bandwidth GPUs normally use up. :D
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It depends - if you remember the techpowerup scaling tests you'll know that if you go down with framerate then the real use of lanes go down as well - with ultra high details and 4K resolution you get similar performance for both 4 and 16 lanes.

So in simple multi gpu config without SLI you would have the same performance, but I believe it'll be slightly different since there's a transfer between the gpu's taking additional bandwidth you've gotta know how it's really implemented:

If there's a master which gets whole data and delegates portion of the tasks to other gpu's then it's possible that config 8 lanes for master and 4 lanes for each of two other gpu's would work without significant performance loss.
 
superblockio said:
Holy crap that idea is crazy! But that's why I love lurking around these forums! Assuming there are no motherboard support issues... I guess my main question would be, will the nano work well enough with only 4 PCIe lanes? I'm dumb so I don't know how much bandwidth GPUs normally use up. :D
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This comes up every now and then, and the answer is that yes, 4 PCIe lanes are enough, at least if they're PCIe3.0. SLI wouldn't work with PCIe4x, but CF does.
Using the riser splitter is the better choice, though, because the PLX chip can give each GPU eight lanes. Not sure how you'd then mount the second GPU, but it would work in theory.
 
Just curious question - anyone has done some proper research on these PLX chips?

I mean logically they can give multiple pci-e guests 8 lanes each even when there's only 8 lanes on the host but there must be latency problem when guests are transmitting synchronously. And that's especially the case when in SLI/Crossfire yeah?

I get it makes sense when you're running a bitcoin mine with asynchronous transmissions for multiple gpu's but what happens with SLI and Crossfire? Are those transmission made async then and it's supported by these multi gpu techs?
 
SaperPL said:
There are already passive pci-e splitter risers like this one

As for the SLI/CrossfireX support - at least for intel chipsets, I think, there's no requirement for special features on the motherboard to support them nowadays. SLI on amd boards might be somehow different but once again there's no mITX AM3+ boards on the market.
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The splitter does seem like a better option.

In that case, x8 should be enough to do this with SLI as well, but don't motherboards need to be specifically approved for SLI? According to Nvidia's website this seems to be the case.
 
iFreilicht said:
This comes up every now and then, and the answer is that yes, 4 PCIe lanes are enough, at least if they're PCIe3.0. SLI wouldn't work with PCIe4x, but CF does.
Using the riser splitter is the better choice, though, because the PLX chip can give each GPU eight lanes. Not sure how you'd then mount the second GPU, but it would work in theory.
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Yeah, not exactly sure about mounting either, but if there is a will, there is way
 
jb1 said:
In that case, x8 should be enough to do this with SLI as well, but don't motherboards need to be specifically approved for SLI? According to Nvidia's website this seems to be the case.
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But you get to run dual gpu cards on single slot motherboards anyway, don't you? And that's also a SLI/CrossFire configuration.
 
SLI approval is not necessary for SLI to work. Not sure if it's just marketing gibberish, but I suspect that they were at least tested to work with SLI configurations.
Same goes for Crossfire.

SaperPL said:
Just curious question - anyone has done some proper research on these PLX chips?

I mean logically they can give multiple pci-e guests 8 lanes each even when there's only 8 lanes on the host but there must be latency problem when guests are transmitting synchronously. And that's especially the case when in SLI/Crossfire yeah?

I get it makes sense when you're running a bitcoin mine with asynchronous transmissions for multiple gpu's but what happens with SLI and Crossfire? Are those transmission made async then and it's supported by these multi gpu techs?
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Well I know that quite a few ATX boards with 1150 sockets use them to offer quad-SLI support because those mid-range CPUs don't have enough lanes.
 
SaperPL said:
But you get to run dual gpu cards on single slot motherboards anyway, don't you? And that's also a SLI/CrossFire configuration.
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Right, if you buy a dual GPU Nvidia card you are running SLI, presumably each chip is using x8 lanes. However, if you set up SLI yourself I think you have to be using an "SLI-cerfitied" board from this list: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/sli/motherboards

Notice how there aren't any mini-ITX boards there...

As for crossfire, these days you don't even have to buy a bridge anymore, everything operates over the PCI-E bus and any motherboard will work.

Am I right about this? I'm hoping SLI is possible without needing an approved board...



EDIT: Here's some funky way of getting SLI working on a non-SLI certified motherboard:
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/hypersli-enabling-sli-on-non-sli-motherboards.153046/

Seems pretty funky. Is this really necessary?? Or is this obsolete info?
 
It's most likely obsolete since it's from "core 2" era when north bridge(including pci-e host controller) was still on the motherboard and not integrated. Note that since "core i" era there's no nvidia chips onboard anymore to support SLI.

EDIT: there ain't any mITX boards on the certified list since you can't usually fit two cards into one slot :p
 
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