Die Case - Mini ITX

A

addep

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Jul 12, 2015
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Hello





The case will use a mini itx motherboard, mini itx gpu and an flx psu. There will be place for two ssds and one regular sized hdd. airflow will come from two 140mm fans in the top and bottom with passive exhaust from the sides. There might be enough room for 4x 40mm fans below the motherboard next to the harddrive.


Since I'm not that great with SketchUp yet, this is as far as I have come. (What programs do you use?)

sEDM3hu.jpg


DDuiFDp.jpg


ZycxOex.jpg


I dont know if the dimensions I've found for the mini itx gpu is with or without the pcie connector, so I'm not 100% sure if this placement of the gpu will work.
There should be enough room for cable-management behind the psu and around the hdd.
Does a similar layout already exist?

Thanks for reading, I will update this post as soon as I have more to show you.
 
If you can get some free version of Solidworks or any other good mechanical cad that would be better than sketchup for designing the metal parts of the case.

Cube layout looks interesting but I'm not sure how hot it will be inside and that might fry the SSD's.

Apart from that, It's a really interesting idea. I don't like the use of mesh all around the case though.
 
Thanks for the feedback!
I'll check out solidworks.

This is one of my concerns as well. Placing the disks between two heatsources might not be the best idea.

The reason it is mesh all around is because i'm bad at sketchup. It was meant to be aluminium with a perforated area in the middle, but i couldn't find a good way to do it in sketchup.
 
Cool. Pretty small design at 6.1L. But have you taken into account the space needed for the PCIe riser on the GPU? It looks like the PSU gets in the way.
 
If you cannot afford Solidworks / Pro/Engineer / Catia (and/or do not want to use a 'free' copy) Onshape is worth a look.
 
addep said:
Placing the disks between two heatsources might not be the best idea.
Click to expand...

You could try putting a slim 120 fan on the side of the case opposite the PSU. I can't imagine a bottom mounted 140 is going to do much for the rest of the system, as the GPU is going to block most of that airflow.

I'm not a huge fan of HDDs in SFF systems. So the bulk and the added heat are a no-go for me. Interesting layout though!

rawrr said:
Cool. Pretty small design at 6.1L. But have you taken into account the space needed for the PCIe riser on the GPU? It looks like the PSU gets in the way.
Click to expand...

This. You can find a data sheet on 3M's site that covers the dimensions of the riser's connectors.
 
The dimensions you've got for the GPU are certainly without PEG connectors. In your renderings, the GPU looks to be ~130mm wide. The widest mITX GPUs are a little bit less than 140mm measured from the end of the PCIe bracket, and that doesn't include the space you'll need for the PEG connectors, which is at least 20mm.

If you were to use the 3M riser, you'd need to add a few more mms to bend it around the corner. I personally really like the LiHeat risers, those are available as angled versions so you wouldn't need additional space for them.

Having the disks sandwiched between the board and the GPU this way is a rather bad idea, but with this layout you could have two 40mm fans on the side that cool those. Maybe that's enough to make up for the unfortunate position.

Other than that, I like it. Small volumetric footprint, enough space for cabling, direct intake for all components. Seems like a pretty good combination.

Will be interesting to see how you mount everything and I think you'll have to add 0.5L if not 1L more for the final design, but other than that, very nice.

I personally use Autodesk Inventor for modelling.

EDIT: The AMD R9 Nano would fit as the case is right now, though. But I guess you don't want to limit yourself to just one type of GPU :D
 
So I got around to measuring a Asus 960 mini itx and a riser.

As you can see the riser will extend about 20mm with the bend of the cable, and the total length will be ca 140mm with the bend. In my renderings the gpu were 122mm as provided from Asus' website.
I have been hard at work learning SolidWorks, so soon I'll post some internals.

Thanks for all the great replies!
 
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Yeah the Asus card seems about right. I personally added 5mm in the model I use to be absolutely safe, but that's not mandatory. The end flange of the PCIe bracket is actually 1.29mm longer than your dimension (according to the standard, the one on ASUS' card might be a bit shorter), but everything else is close to about 0.5mm, good job. :)
 
If you're enrolled/employed at an university you can try to get Autodesk Inventor as full working version for a couple of years via their education program, just don't do any commercial work with it.
I don't know how useful FreeCAD is for this (I got it installed and can do stuff with it, but as I have Inventor and not much time the need to really do things with it are not there), but might be another way to go for you vs. SketchUP.


No one mentioned it yet, but aren't those flex PSUs pretty loud?


Are you aiming for the box concept or are you flexible and just want as small as possible?
If latter case you could kick out the 3.5" hdd (who uses them for SFF these days?), turn GPU 180 deg and use a shorter riser cable, then put the PSU to the side and the SSDs somewhere with less heat.

 
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FlexATX can indeed be loud, but The FSP500-50FSPT seems very promising in that regard, as it has an 80 Plus Platinum rating and 500W output. Passive PSUs have that sort of efficiency, so there's hope that it can be quite quiet at 300W load which would be the maximum for a non-overclocked system of this size.
 
Thanks for the replies, you guys give really great criticism!



As you can see there will be decent amount of space if I were to use a PCI Riser with a 90 Degree connector from a circuitboard. I also removed the 3.5" HDD as they also need a more stable operatingtemperature. Adding two fans on the side above the GPU will provide some cool air to reduce the temperature of the ssds.



I made some bad heatmaps to illustrate airflow, there must be passive exhaust on all sides of the case, and I fear things will run very hot.

I'm aiming for a very small box-concept case with mini-itx gaming/cad gpu

Regarding flexpsu noise I must look into that some more. I have also seen someone use pico psus in some cases, but they often have to use a brick outside the case which I don't want in this case. Does anyone know how we can fit a sfx psu with a similar square footprint?

Again, thanks for all replies!
 
Nice drawings, I love the heatmaps :D And an angled riser is definitely the way to go here. You forgot the PCIe power connector though, those wil stick out 21mm at the very least from the GPU (including the cables).
 
Why the overly complicated design?
Do something simple and call it a day - no risers, no overheating drives, easier cooling with front mounted huge fan, should be less than 6 liters.

900x900px-LL-dcf61356_l9yFIma.jpeg
 
niksus said:
Why the overly complicated design?
Do something simple and call it a day - no risers, no overheating drives, easier cooling with front mounted huge fan, should be less than 6 liters.

http://cdn.overclock.net/d/dc/900x900px-LL-dcf61356_l9yFIma.jpeg
Click to expand...

The problem is that that layout highly impedes CPU cooling performance and actually doesn't allow for coolers as large as the current layout. It also doesn't allow for higher GPUs, so you'd have to make it quite a bit wider which wastes space. The current layout has seperate airflow for every component.
 
Nice observation. If I were to mount the riser behind the sheet metal (please note that the metal is ~3mm thick in my illustrations) and make a hole to fit the PEG-connector, there will be 11mm on the other side of the gpu. Would that be sufficient to fit a 90-degree pcie connector like this?






As iFreilicht said there are cooling performance issues with that kind of layout. I am using a jonsbo v3 right now with a similar style, and every component is running very hot.
With my hardware layout every component is provided with external cool air, except for the ssds, which is the problem to solve. It is also possible to make an extension on top of the case to fit a taller cpu-cooler.

q2D75HP.png
 
Yeah I think an angled one like that would fit. Good way of solving this! Keep in mind that you need a bit of clearance between the riser and the PSU as the leads of the PCIe slot are sticking out a little bit. A protective shield of thin plastic would probably be a good idea there.
 
A plastic film sounds like a good idea.
I have a couple of questions.

How thick is the sheet metal?
And what's the minimum/default bend-radius?
 
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