Kimera Industries Cerberus: The 18L, mATX, USA-made enclosure

backfeed said:
What if you sandwich the ssd with thermally and electrically isolating sheets of suitable material, to prevent it being heated by the graphics cards? Cardboard, maybe (though I have no idea how good cardboard is as a thermal insulator)?
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With cardboard isolation (if at all possible in those tiny spacings) there would be even less airflow surrounding the SSD so I'd imagine it would make things worse for the SSD; the PCIe SSD itself is a heat generator, so much so that in the thermograph part of the SSD temp was actually higher than the portions of the sandwiching video cards that were near the SSD.
 
What about putting the SSD in the bottom slot and having the two GPUs closer together? I know this would make the temps of the top GPU worse, but that may be a viable setup nonetheless.
 
Yeah, there really isn't enough room to fit insulation between the drive and the video cards.

Even with the cards spaced out the top card comes close to thermal throttling so I wouldn't want them right next to each other.
 
veryrarium said:
With cardboard isolation (if at all possible in those tiny spacings) there would be even less airflow surrounding the SSD so I'd imagine it would make things worse for the SSD; the PCIe SSD itself is a heat generator, so much so that in the thermograph part of the SSD temp was actually higher than the portions of the sandwiching video cards that were near the SSD.
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A majority of the ssd heat must surely be caused by the proximity of the hot graphics cards, otherwise Intel must have made a serious mistake in their thermal design. :p

Aibohphobia said:
Yeah, there really isn't enough room to fit insulation between the drive and the video cards.

Even with the cards spaced out the top card comes close to thermal throttling so I wouldn't want them right next to each other.
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Yes, on closer inspection I see it's too tight. Silly me. :cool:
 
backfeed said:
A majority of the ssd heat must surely be caused by the proximity of the hot graphics cards, otherwise Intel must have made a serious mistake in their thermal design. :p
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I think the two GPU's have the most of the heat to account for (aluminium absorbs heat easily), but since it's a passive card (generating it's own heat) it seems realistic that this happens. Maybe the fan right in front of it isn't enough when the SSD is squeezed in between two heavy-breathing fire demons.
 
backfeed said:
A majority of the ssd heat must surely be caused by the proximity of the hot graphics cards, otherwise Intel must have made a serious mistake in their thermal design. :p
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I remember seeing reviews say the XP941 gets over 100°C, so it wouldn't surprise me if the Intel SSD gets super hot without any air passing over the heatspreader. Agree with Phuncz, not sure if it's possible to get any air in there. Maybe under normal use the temperature would stay reasonable?
 
The XP941 does get hot and I expect the SM951 will to although less. I've seen most reviews of it without a heatsink on a PCIe board. The problem is these SSD's are just bare PCB's without any form of cooling, whereas most high-end 2,5" SSD's often use the aluminium casing as a heatsink.

It's also only the controller that seems to heat up, I would guess a "beefy" heatsink (like this) on that would solve most of the problems. I'll be the first one in line to get an SM951 NVMe as soon as they are available in the Western Europe and I'll be testing it and report back ofcourse. With the insane prices of high-end Intel SSD's, I expect the SM951 to be the top dog for a while anyway, until Crucial launches it's PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD.
 
Is the Intel 750 really expensive over there? It's about $1/GB over here, which is about the same as the XP941 and SM951.
 
Aibohphobia said:
Is the Intel 750 really expensive over there? It's about $1/GB over here, which is about the same as the XP941 and SM951.
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How do you like the 750 so far?

Also depending on where Phuncz is in Europe the VAT rate may make the cost pretty exorbitant.
 
Aibohphobia said:
Is the Intel 750 really expensive over there? It's about $1/GB over here, which is about the same as the XP941 and SM951.
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The dollar has strengthen itself significantly against most European currency during the last year. It is just falling a bit again.
 
Kaos_Drem said:
How do you like the 750 so far?

Also depending on where Phuncz is in Europe the VAT rate may make the cost pretty exorbitant.
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For day to day stuff I don't notice that much of a difference between it and the 840 Evo. As a test though I did try opening 50-something PSDs at once and it did a great job :p

I'd think VAT would affect pricing for both the Intel and the Samsung though. It may have to do with currency rates like CybKnight said though, Intel is a American company while Samsung is Korean.
 
While the XP941 and SM951 may be expensive now, it's because they are OEM and the only company that sells these is RAMcity in Australia and people scavenging these from laptops. No supply, much demand = high prices.

The NVMe SM951 (also the AHCI version) will be sold in retail soon, it will probably be well below $1/GB.
 
The XP941 is sold by Newegg here and has been readily available for some time now.

I don't think the SM951 was ever intended for retail. I'd bet Samsung is waiting for the motherboard compatibility issues to settle down before releasing a 860 Pro or whatever they'll call it.

Especially once we get Skylake and the Z170 chipset with its extra PCIe 3.0 lanes so it can run dual-GPU and have x4 leftover for these PCIe SSDs, then it would make perfect sense to release a new drive with an updated controller and 3D V-NAND to the consumer market.
 
Ah ok I was under the impression the XP941 was also OEM-only.
Reviewers have been getting samples of the SM951 NVMe drive the past few weeks which makes me expect these soon.

I personally hope manufacturers don't waste too much time with dead-end SATA600 drives, since there has been little improvement the last few years. So I hope Samsung is not going to hold out just for the sake of a SATA600 860 Pro.
 
I think we'll see SSD makers jump all over M.2 because at this point the Sata 3.0 interface is such a bottleneck that they can't easily differentiate themselves from the competition since all the drives perform similarly.

So many people just buy the cheapest SSD in the capacity they need and move on which is bad for profit margins.
 
Indeed ! M.2 has the advantage of being useful everywhere: notebooks, desktops (M.2 or PCIe card) and even servers (M.2 or PCIe card). It also means ZERO cables.
 
Aibohphobia said:
I think we'll see SSD makers jump all over M.2 because at this point the Sata 3.0 interface is such a bottleneck that they can't easily differentiate themselves from the competition since all the drives perform similarly.

So many people just buy the cheapest SSD in the capacity they need and move on which is bad for profit margins.
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The other thing, too, is that laptops use flash storage in far greater frequency and quantity - and have more pronounced benefits from using it - compared to desktops. Coupled with the flexibility of the M.2 interface, there's a lot of incentive for manufacturers to close in on that form factor for all x86 solutions. (And, in time, board manufacturers for non-mobile computers should follow suit.)


Phuncz said:
Indeed ! M.2 has the advantage of being useful everywhere: notebooks, desktops (M.2 or PCIe card) and even servers (M.2 or PCIe card). It also means ZERO cables.
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Indeed, and that's why I'd spend extra on a M.2 SSD relative to a SATA one, among other reasons. Less cables is pretty much always preferable, and you begin to appreciate this more and more as the size of the case you're working in gets smaller... Plus, the tiny amount of space they do take up almost never interferes with anything else.
 
Phuncz said:
Indeed ! M.2 has the advantage of being useful everywhere: notebooks, desktops (M.2 or PCIe card) and even servers (M.2 or PCIe card). It also means ZERO cables.
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It's also a complication, due to where the socket is located on the motherboard, there are no 1TB or larger drives, it's harder to clone them (I always clone when upgrading to a larger capacity drive to avoid the hassle of needlessly reinstalling the OS) and harder to cool them (which I guess usually isn't necessary, but in some cases).

For me, M.2 has very few advantages but many disadvantages.
 
1TB SSD limitation is a moot point, at the moment most SATA drives (except the Intel DC series) are also maxed at 1TB and with 3D V-NAND this won't be a problem in the future.
Also no one needs a single >1TB SSD as a system disk without any other means of storage, junction points help if your C-drive needs to be >1TB.
The issue with cooling is also observed with one M.2 SSD (the XP941) so this might not be a global issue.
 
SFF 8639 will accommodate where M.2 does not. Sata has lost its relevancy with the arrival of NVMe.
 
Phuncz said:
The problem is these SSD's are just bare PCB's without any form of cooling, whereas most high-end 2,5" SSD's often use the aluminium casing as a heatsink.

It's also only the controller that seems to heat up, I would guess a "beefy" heatsink (like this) on that would solve most of the problems.
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On the Impact VII for example, adding a heatsink would require modding the motherboard bracket. I think it will be up to motherboard manufacturers to comply to some sort of standard to allow heatspreaders, since something like a RAM heatspreader might do the job without adding a lot of thickness. Maybe M.2 v2 would allow for a heatsink in the specification.
 
Yes, it might be enough to have a very thin aluminium sheet like the not-so-insane RAM modules. I'll be testing the SM951 NVMe as soon as it's available to see if a single 5mm heatsink will suffice. The M7I's bracket is a bad design choice in my opinion, as I have seen no other manufacturer limit the Z-height with these kinds of implementations. So if manufacturers need to include heatsinks on the faster M.2's, the M7I's bracket will require modding.
 
Phuncz said:
1TB SSD limitation is a moot point, at the moment most SATA drives (except the Intel DC series) are also maxed at 1TB and with 3D V-NAND this won't be a problem in the future.
Also no one needs a single >1TB SSD as a system disk without any other means of storage, junction points help if your C-drive needs to be >1TB.
The issue with cooling is also observed with one M.2 SSD (the XP941) so this might not be a global issue.
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M.2 is still stuck at 512GB max as far as I know?

"No one needs" is almost always an incorrect statement. I do. Local virtual machines and the ever-increasing size of games. And no, rotating rust buckets shall never again take place in my main machine. :)

Still waiting for consumer-grade 2TB (or more).
 
You are right, the largest M.2 is still 512GB, I was thinking of the even smaller mSATA variant that has 1TB variants. It seems that there is no reason not to have an M.2 1TB due to physical constraints.
 
Carisma said:
My wallet is ready for this so I can make my Define R4 a backup server
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yoyo55 said:
Waiting for this and the Dondan A4....come on! Take my money!
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We're happy you're eager, and I can promise you that we're working in the background on a bunch of stuff, as quickly as we can. We will have significant progress updates pretty soon.

Anyway, just wanted to share that we have a new update on the KI blog! It's just a simple summary of some of the additional changes we've made to the design - I like to elaborate a bit on the "how" and "why" of certain things, so it's in these posts where I often have the opportunity to do that.

I also threw in some neat testing Aiboh has done of Intel's new 750 SSD, when sandwiched between two GTX 980's in Nova :)
 
Awesome!! Thanks for the update! I see watercooling both the cpu and hopefully dual GTX 980's would make that Intel 750 sit nice and snug between both cards. Excellent job so far guys!
 
Oh boy oh boy oh boy ! I can't wait to build something in this case :D

And now I've discovered the SFF forum :D
 
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yoyo55 said:
Awesome!! Thanks for the update! I see watercooling both the cpu and hopefully dual GTX 980's would make that Intel 750 sit nice and snug between both cards. Excellent job so far guys!
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Yes, if you want to have the 750 between the GPU I'd recommend water cooling the cards. Hopefully the upcoming Asus mATX X99 board will be able to use their HyperKit without interfering with dual-GPUs so those who don't want to go water still have an option.


Phuncz said:
And now I've discovered the SFF forum :D
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I saw that ;)


backfeed said:
:confused: :)
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Read the update blog post to the end :)
 
backfeed said:
Edit: a new forum, set up by you?
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Yup, love the community here but Vbulletin 3 is just ancient, especially the PM system. I've had a few times where people didn't realize for weeks or even months later that I sent them a PM :p

I ask that everybody not post links to the site here though, it's against the rules and is rude.
 
Yeah I agree the new board software is a much needed fresh wind. I'm all for it since we have so little all-SFF forums on the net. I used to visit Sudhian that was also focussing on SFF mainly, when Shuttle was so popular (and mITX very obscure) but it has gone for years now.

While the [H] forum does fill my SFF discussion needs, I'm hoping to see more come out of a specific SFF forum. The Collective (not Borg, the manufacturing one) comes to mind.
 
What tends to happen is that the SFF gold is very thinly spread across a vast collection of different forums; namely those such as [H], OCN, Sweclockers, LTT, Bit-tech, etc etc...

There are tons of cool projects across all these boards. But I simply do not have the time to view all of them, let alone maintain accounts on them. Some people post their projects on a variety of forums (eg Qinx). But some don't (eg ungreedy on LTT; cool NES mod).

So hopefully this new forum will cater to people like me. I look forward to see what comes out of this.
 
rawrr said:
What tends to happen is that the SFF gold is very thinly spread across a vast collection of different forums; namely those such as [H], OCN, Sweclockers, LTT, Bit-tech, etc etc...
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Yes, I find this often as well. Without a centralized gathering place, this is somewhat expected given the niche that SFF occupies.

rawrr said:
There are tons of cool projects across all these boards. But I simply do not have the time to view all of them, let alone maintain accounts on them. Some people post their projects on a variety of forums (eg Qinx). But some don't (eg ungreedy on LTT; cool NES mod).
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We've kept threads going on OCN and LTT as well as on here, but it's very time-consuming to work across all of them. We really only do it as a matter of exposure, and for the convenience of readers who do prefer to live on one website.
 
PlayfulPhoenix said:
We've kept threads going on OCN and LTT as well as on here, but it's very time-consuming to work across all of them. We really only do it as a matter of exposure, and for the convenience of readers who do prefer to live on one website.
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But you'll stick around here at [H], because we're certainly charming people with fun ideas :p
 
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