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

Does anyone know if you can install a different fan onto the C7? It kinda looks like you can use fan clips ( Noctua 120mm clips ) since there is a ridge like Noctua coolers.
 
KizakuraVolt said:
Does anyone know if you can install a different fan onto the C7? It kinda looks like you can use fan clips ( Noctua 120mm clips ) since there is a ridge like Noctua coolers.
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I just kinda tried with the spare clips from my M9i, it's kinda works?
But the lip the made for the included fan is designed to be clipped into a certain way, so the clips didn't really hold.
There are some holes running the length of the fins, those might work to run some wire or string through.
 
QuantumBraced said:
Seriously: Samsung Momentus 4TB
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that is a 5400 rpm drive and 2.5 inch which mean smaller platter. i didnt know they had 128mb cache but max sustainable transfer rate of 130 MBPS? which means real time will be lower than that and WD black drives 3.5inch read speeds up to 200 REAL TIME. also you were the only comment worth replying as the other ones clearly show lack of knowledge as i have found the type of mount i was looking for.
 
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rkohliny said:
that is a 5400 rpm drive and 2.5 inch which mean smaller platter. i didnt know they had 128mb cache but max sustainable transfer rate of 130 MBPS? which means real time will be lower than that and WD black drives 3.5inch read speeds up to 200 REAL TIME. also you were the only comment worth replying as the other ones clearly show lack of knowledge as i have found the type of mount i was looking for.
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Does the mount fit in the A4?
 
rkohliny said:
im loving every bit of this case except for one thing, lack of 3.5 inch drives. im not a hardware geek so someone feel free to correct me but 3.5inch hdds have around 64mb of cache vs 2.5 inch hdds which top out around 16mb cache. that and the price for 3.5 inch hdds 1tb or more is cheaper than 2.5inch hdds and ssds. i will be planning on using a m.2 drive, a 2.5 inch ssd AND a 3.5 inch drive. does anyone know if there is an adapter that can fit a 3.5 inch hdd into the 2.5 inch mounting bracket?
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There isn't enough space anywhere in this case for a 3.5" drive, with the exception of the GPU compartment (if using a short GPU). Dan has indicated that he would entertain the idea of such bracket for the GPU compartment, but not for the first production run of the case.
 
Necere said:
There isn't enough space anywhere in this case for a 3.5" drive, with the exception of the GPU compartment (if using a short GPU). Dan has indicated that he would entertain the idea of such bracket for the GPU compartment, but not for the first production run of the case.
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so then ill use a shorter gpu? like a gtx 970 itx? problem solved
 
rkohliny said:
that is a 5400 rpm drive and 2.5 inch which mean smaller platter. i didnt know they had 128mb cache but max sustainable transfer rate of 130 MBPS? which means real time will be lower than that and WD black drives 3.5inch read speeds up to 200 REAL TIME. also you were the only comment worth replying as the other ones clearly show lack of knowledge as i have found the type of mount i was looking for.
Click to expand...

Here's a 7200 RPM, 1TB, 32MB Cache, 2.5" drive for $65:

HGST Travelstar 7K1000

32MB is still not much, and there are 64MB models and higher at 7200RPM, but then you start to enter enterprise territory, they start to get expensive and it's better to just get a consumer SSD instead. A 2.5" to 3.5" adapter-type thing will not fit anywhere in the A4-SFX. The only 2.5" mounting point is under the PSU and there is no room whatsoever under there for any brackets, let alone a 3.5" drive ha. Your only option is to go for a short GPU and mod some kind of a bracket or wait for the next version of the case, which may be a while. Non-NVMe SSDs are quite affordable now if you're concerned about performance, and you can get a 256 or 512GB SSD for your OS and applications/games, and a 2.5" HDD drive up to 4TB for storage. The case supports 3 2.5" drives, which is plenty.

It's a bit odd to be concerned with 2.5" price-performance vs. 3.5" price-performance, because that means you're considering an HDD as your main drive which is definitely not recommended nowadays. You either go all SSD or you go a mixed setup if you are more price conscious and/or need a lot of storage. 5400 RPM is actually better in that regard as the drives are less prone to failure. We're really not talking a big price difference here, especially not if you can afford the A4-SFX. The case is optimized for small size, not versatility. The NCase M1 is optimized for versatility and supports 3 3.5" drives, but is 40% larger. You may want to consider it. It may make more sense for you, but if you want to try to mod the A4 and are okay with a short GPU, by all means -- we'll all be curious to see what you come up with!
 
rkohliny said:
that is a 5400 rpm drive and 2.5 inch which mean smaller platter. i didnt know they had 128mb cache but max sustainable transfer rate of 130 MBPS? which means real time will be lower than that and WD black drives 3.5inch read speeds up to 200 REAL TIME. also you were the only comment worth replying as the other ones clearly show lack of knowledge as i have found the type of mount i was looking for.
Click to expand...

Most people won't utilize the max sequential speed of their hard disks though. If you have a basic knowledge of sequential access speeds, 4K random access speeds and what the difference between these two speeds are (most people only know about sequential speed aka 130MB/s), and the kind of disk workloads each kind of application uses, fast SSD + slow HDD will cover all your bases. For e.g. a video file playing is a 3MB/s sequential access at most, you won't notice the difference if you read it off a 50MB/s hard disk or a 520MB/s SSD.
 
dondan said:
What do you think of my four hardware example configurations?

Pricebreaker: Pricebreaker Preisvergleich | geizhals.eu EU
Performance: Performance Preisvergleich | geizhals.eu EU
High-End: High-End Preisvergleich | geizhals.eu EU
Enthusiast: Enthusiast Preisvergleich | geizhals.eu EU
Click to expand...

For the pricebreaker, I would go for 8GB of RAM. To quote techspot: "For those building a new system or simply looking to upgrade their memory capacity to 16GB the answer is simple: don't bother unless you have the money to burn. For general usage and gaming there is no advantage to be had by using 16GB of RAM."

Speaking about RAM: I would go for DDR4-2400. Not that there are many real world scenarios where it would be faster, but 2133 and 2400 mhz are only cents apart. Heck, the 2400 is even cheaper at this moment.

For high end / enthousiast storage, I would go for the sm-951 / 950 pro. With these, you'll have read speeds around 2GB/s instead of 500MB/s. You could also just change the enthusiast one since it will cost extra (€85 when upgrading to the sm-951).

As for power supplies, I like the Sharkoon SilentStorm SFX Gold 500W over the Silverstone. There seem to be a lot of problems with the silvertone (including danij3l above) while I couldn't find any problems about the Sharkoon.

About the 1070's / 1080's: I really wouldn't go for a blower type gpu with all the holes you've carefully designed for the GPU. Also the founders edition seems to have fan problems and the non-founder's edition will be cheaper once they will actually be in stock. I would go for a GPU with 3 fans that fits: I've heard that the Asus 10XX cards has 2 heatpipes which weren't connected very well (I can't remember the source), so I would go for the Gigabyte's 1070 and 1080 for the performance / high end systems.
 
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Has there been a post in regards to the motherboard temps under load? I know that there is a gpu plastic shield installed to prevent gpu contact with the motherboard/psu plate. Just wondering is all as I saw gpu and cpu temp results that Dondan posted.

I cannot wait for my silver Dan A4 case to arrive!
 
Cristan said:
Speaking about RAM: I would go for DDR4-2400. Not that there are many real world scenarios where it would be faster, but 2133 and 2400 mhz are only cents apart. Heck, the 2400 is even cheaper at this moment.
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If you want faster memory ram you need to change the motherboard, because H170 chipset only support up to 2133mhz memory.

You will need to buy a motherboard with Z170 chipset in order to have faster ram.
 
Xan-Z said:
If you want faster memory ram you need to change the motherboard, because H170 chipset only support up to 2133mhz memory.

You will need to buy a motherboard with Z170 chipset in order to have faster ram.
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Nice catch! In that case you can still change the RAM in the enthousiast version (or even still use it in the other systems because it's cheaper).

You could also change the motherboard in the high end to for example a Gigabyte GA-Z170N-WIFI. It supports fast memory, all USB-connectors on the back are USB 3 and it has a USB-C connector, but I don't know wheter it is worth the extra 30 bucks.
 
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QuantumBraced said:
Here's a 7200 RPM, 1TB, 32MB Cache, 2.5" drive for $65:

HGST Travelstar 7K1000

32MB is still not much, and there are 64MB models and higher at 7200RPM, but then you start to enter enterprise territory, they start to get expensive and it's better to just get a consumer SSD instead. A 2.5" to 3.5" adapter-type thing will not fit anywhere in the A4-SFX. The only 2.5" mounting point is under the PSU and there is no room whatsoever under there for any brackets, let alone a 3.5" drive ha. Your only option is to go for a short GPU and mod some kind of a bracket or wait for the next version of the case, which may be a while. Non-NVMe SSDs are quite affordable now if you're concerned about performance, and you can get a 256 or 512GB SSD for your OS and applications/games, and a 2.5" HDD drive up to 4TB for storage. The case supports 3 2.5" drives, which is plenty.

It's a bit odd to be concerned with 2.5" price-performance vs. 3.5" price-performance, because that means you're considering an HDD as your main drive which is definitely not recommended nowadays. You either go all SSD or you go a mixed setup if you are more price conscious and/or need a lot of storage. 5400 RPM is actually better in that regard as the drives are less prone to failure. We're really not talking a big price difference here, especially not if you can afford the A4-SFX. The case is optimized for small size, not versatility. The NCase M1 is optimized for versatility and supports 3 3.5" drives, but is 40% larger. You may want to consider it. It may make more sense for you, but if you want to try to mod the A4 and are okay with a short GPU, by all means -- we'll all be curious to see what you come up with!
Click to expand...

thank you so much for this informative response, most of what u said was general knowledge i had but was just blind to. i now realize that i don't really need a 3.5 inch drive in this case as much as i thought. the main reason i want this case is the portability aspect and gaming. the reason i need 3.5 inch drives is because i have a lot of data movies games music huge collections which i now decided i will get nas box or set up my own freenas server. i also will be having my home surveillance being run to a nvr custom built and none of those things will be able to fit in here anyway. i have decided I'm just going to stick with a 512gb Samsung 950 pro nvme ssd and a single 1Tb Samsung 850 2.5 inch ssd and maybe get another one later if i need it. everything else that takes up lots of storage will be on a nas/server.
 
That's exactly it, the case is for size portability, not storage, in which case solid-state is the way to go.
 
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I have 3x Samsung M9T 1.75TB ready :)
Still waiting on M.2 situation to develop a bit more because Samsung being only one on market with m.2 NVME device is not doing us any favors price wise. (Toshiba/OCZ have done shit job on pricing as well, waiting to see how Phison e7 drives do ...)
 
Did a quick PS to determine whether the MSI 1080 Gaming X would fit and wanted to share. If it's even somewhat accurate, this card will not fit because of the connectors and the pushpin (unless you are so [H] you want to directly solder the cables to the card?)
Edit: Dan says it fits! :)
 
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I removed the trouble making push clip (this is very easy and you can easily mount it again for your next GPU) and the sidepanel stay in position. Only if you pull hard with your nails on the corner with the missing clip it will move. But after release it it will move back in the original position. So theoretically you can mount the MSI Gaming X card.

I think for the moment you mount the card, you hve to remove both clips to have enough room over the card to maneuver it in. After the you can reinstall the left clip.

Edit: I measured the clip in CAD the depth is 9,5mm. So after mounting the card reinstall both clips. It will work because the power sockets are behind the clip. (46,5mm - 9,5mm)
 
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Aircoookie said:
Did a quick PS to determine whether the MSI 1080 Gaming X would fit and wanted to share. If it's even somewhat accurate, this card will not fit because of the connectors and the pushpin (unless you are so [H] you want to directly solder the cables to the card?)
Edit: Dan says it fits! :)
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I hope it will fit.... ;)

20151106_205958.jpg
 
Excellent news Dan!
Just to be clear we can use the stock PCI-E plugs ? From the Corsair sf600 for example.

Because there is no 8 pin low profile adapter in stock anywhere, just the 6 pin ones.
 
D-Wiz said:
That's exactly it, the case is for size portability, not storage, in which case solid-state is the way to go.
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True, although you could have a 1TB M.2 + 12TB of HDD storage in the A4-SFX. That's 13TB in total. If you need more, then yes this case is not for you. :D
 
rkohliny said:
im loving every bit of this case except for one thing, lack of 3.5 inch drives.
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3.5 inch drives are just too big for a case like this. I already have two because they were like 1/4 the price of their refurb brothers including USB3 enclosures so my plan is to just use the enclosures and run 12V power cables for the enclosures out an open space in the I/O shield.

I bought refurb Hitachi 1TB for $35 (2TB are same price now) and enclosures were $20, you might be able to find a better deal though.

QuantumBraced said:
Seriously: Samsung Momentus 4TB
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While this is pretty awesome, I have two concerns:

1. Samsung drives aren't too notable for being reliable, but that may not concern everyone, especially with RAID 1 and the like.

2. These are 15mm drives, about twice as thick as a normal one, so it might not even fit in the Dancase or maybe take up two spaces.
 
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I know its been beat up alot. I have the strix 1080, and it will not fit in the Ncase, even though they said 12 inches.... Dan will it fit in your case with these dimensions: 11.73 " x 5.28 " x 1.57 " Inch
29.8 x 13.4 x4 Centimeter. I really hope so, its a beautiful card, 2100mhz stable at 70c. its on an open bench till i get a new case to put it in. (preordered Dan Case)
 
william quick said:
I know its been beat up alot. I have the strix 1080, and it will not fit in the Ncase, even though they said 12 inches.... Dan will it fit in your case with these dimensions: 11.73 " x 5.28 " x 1.57 " Inch
29.8 x 13.4 x4 Centimeter. I really hope so, its a beautiful card, 2100mhz stable at 70c. its on an open bench till i get a new case to put it in. (preordered Dan Case)
Click to expand...
Dan mentioned judging by the dimensions that it should fit. Are you sure it is not the height that conflicts in the ncase? For ncase, height limit is 111mm for longer cards longer than 292mm.
 
KarateOC said:
Dan mentioned judging by the dimensions that it should fit. Are you sure it is not the height that conflicts in the ncase? For ncase, height limit is 111mm for longer cards longer than 292mm.
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I tried to put it in and its too long to fit between the frames, and the front whole wont fit the card to slide it in.
 
Yup. Ncase is the greatest in the classical layout plus the extra versatility (WC, PSU etc) - also had one.
But the A4 is the perfect example of thinking outside of the box - parallel GPU with the motherboard, chamber separation etc
 
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