• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

NCASE M1: a crowdfunded Mini-ITX case (updates in first post)

@Greasy Bacon & @Necere

Thanks again for all the help guys! I look forward to the puzzle of making it all work. Will post pics when done. It will be a while though as I am in the latest M1 shipping batch.
 
Greasy Bacon said:
@grazina

Yes, you can control the pump in the mobo with pwm.

Just so you know, I have 3 motherboard fan controls. 1 is the CPU pump, the 2nd is the CPU fan, and the last is the GPU fan. The GPU pump is getting power from where the blower style fan normally gets power.

I also took some pictures of the 3 pin being plugged into a 4 pin, not sure if you were asking so i posted them anyway.

Check it out here: https://drive.google.com/folderview...d2VVVxZlY0bG5GR3lGUklZU1VQdWFXRjg&usp=sharing
Click to expand...

Sorry I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was, The noctua fans you're using have 4 pin connectors right? And the fan connector on the 980 hybrid is 3 pin. How did you connect the 4 pin fan on the 3 pin connector? Or are you connecting both fans to the mobo?

P.S - Thank you for the pictures.
 
grazina said:
Sorry I wasn't clear enough. What I meant was, The noctua fans you're using have 4 pin connectors right? And the fan connector on the 980 hybrid is 3 pin. How did you connect the 4 pin fan on the 3 pin connector? Or are you connecting both fans to the mobo?

P.S - Thank you for the pictures.
Click to expand...

Oh okay. Yeah i just plugged it into the motherboard, even though you can do a jank mod and just cut the little piece in the way of plugging it in. The only reason I didn't do that is because I saw that you can't control the fan speed through that because it's only 2 pin. However even at around 1000rpm under load, it never got above 55c so I don't think i'm going to mess around with it until i start overclocking
 
Greasy Bacon said:
@DfknG be sure to post pics!
It's pretty clever, this guy has one SSD facing down, and the other facing up. I imagine it won't fit unless you do that because of how close they are. Unless you just mount the SSD's in two separate locations.
Click to expand...

It will. Just make sure to use the last power connector on the cable for one of them. The power cable is actually an issue with the proposed one down, one up solution; the standard SATA power cable on the SX600 isn't long enough.
EDIT: It has come to my attention that perhaps it could work, but you would have to use the first two connectors since those have 20 cm of cable between them whereas there's only 10 cm between each of the last three.

ZWSSncUl.jpg
 
Last edited:
Here's the dimensions and two reviews of the Dark Rock TF, for those who are interested.

It seems like, unfortunately, the mounting system is really awful, but the cooler itself it pretty great, on par with the NH-D15.

tpSNhLJ.png
 
Last edited:
Curiositie said:
Here's the dimensions and two reviews of the Dark Rock TF, for those who are interested.
Click to expand...
According to the drawing there's 49mm of clearance between board and cooler, while the M1 needs only 46mm to clear the SFX bracket. That's with the bottom fan mounted, which you couldn't do with the the NH-C14. So this cooler is potentially even better than the NH-C14 for the M1 :)
 
Every review I read of a Be Quiet! cooler always indicates how horrible the experience of mounting it is. Blah. I was hoping this cooler would have been improved in that regard. I've been spoiled with Noctua.
 
mark7993 said:
I'm hoping so badly that it'll fit on Asus Impacts without any issues...
Click to expand...

I'm hoping it'll work on my P8Z77I-Deluxe, if it fits on one it should fit on the other.

Worried about the bolt in the corner by the I/O and VRMs though.



This Cooler + the 700W platinum SFX-L would be amazing. Do want.
 
One could suggest that the current size of the silverstone SFX-L will be maintained, as it would make sense from a production point of view.
 
Necere said:
According to the drawing there's 49mm of clearance between board and cooler, while the M1 needs only 46mm to clear the SFX bracket. That's with the bottom fan mounted, which you couldn't do with the the NH-C14. So this cooler is potentially even better than the NH-C14 for the M1 :)
Click to expand...

What's the problem with the SFX-bracket? I've never heard of that before.
 
Necere said:
So this cooler [Dark Rock TF] is potentially even better than the NH-C14 for the M1 :)
Click to expand...

So.. any thoughts if this one might clear the HDD cage? :p

It appears to be a few mm narrower than the C14, but over 10mm wider than the C12.. so I'm guessing no. And it seems to be 0.8mm too tall for the M1 with its stock upper fan.


And whoa, why didn't anyone show me this build before..

aVvhPZjl.jpg


Beautiful. Hmm.. make room for bigger cooler, or cram 4x 3.5" HDD for a 20TB+ M1? :eek:
 
iFreilicht said:
What's the problem with the SFX-bracket? I've never heard of that before.
Click to expand...
With the (now discontinued) NH-C14, the cooler overhangs the front of the motherboard and the SFX bracket, which prevents the second 140mm fan from being installed on the bottom of the cooler:

RMgfA99.jpg


I say bracket, but technically it might just be the PSU itself that interferes. The Dark Rock TF has enough clearance that both fans can be used without interference.

AFD said:
So.. any thoughts if this one might clear the HDD cage? :p

It appears to be a few mm narrower than the C14, but over 10mm wider than the C12.. so I'm guessing no. And it seems to be 0.8mm too tall for the M1 with its stock upper fan.
Click to expand...
Looking at the drawing of the Dark Rock again, it might actually be possible to orient it so the heatpipe ends are pointed towards the rear of the case, which would allow the HDD cage to fit. It seems very tight though, and a few mm one way or the other on the socket location could make or break it.

Also, it should fit height-wise. I know the specs say 130mm max height in the M1 for the CPU cooler, but there's actually 1-2mm of leeway in that measurement. Keep in mind that's with the fan bracket installed as well, which when removed frees up another ~5mm.

AFD said:
And whoa, why didn't anyone show me this build before..

...

Beautiful. Hmm.. make room for bigger cooler, or cram 4x 3.5" HDD for a 20TB+ M1? :eek:
Click to expand...
He must be using some very low profile connectors on those hard drives, because early on in the M1's design I discovered that orienting the drives that way wasn't going to fit in the width of the case with standard right-angle SATA connectors. I'm actually kind of surprised the cage fits that way, though he did have to remove the front USB ports to get it in.
 
Could very well be the Silverstone CP11 cables.

I've stopped using the few I had as they don't seem to transmit data properly (possibly too easily damaged).
 
Greasy Bacon said:
It's pretty clever, this guy has one SSD facing down, and the other facing up. I imagine it won't fit unless you do that because of how close they are. Unless you just mount the SSD's in two separate locations.
Click to expand...

If you don't mind cannibalizing power cables, you can do what this guy did and make a custom cable to specifically fit 2 drives and (possibly) a slim ODD.
12015260785_b3a123043a_n.jpg


I've done essentially the same thing (sorry, no pics at the moment), but instead of terminating in a traditional sata power connector for the ODD, I terminated it in a slimline power connector, so I won't have to use an adapter.
 
Thats nice and neat. Do those power connectors simply press together, meaning one could simply add it to the existing flat power cables. I love how neat that is.
 
You have to push the wire into connector and it has a sharp bit of metal that cuts the insulation and bites into the metal.

Then you snap the back part on to cover it.
 
Yeah, there are slots that the wires slip into that automagically cut into the insulation to make contact. I'm not going to say all sata power connectors are like that, but all of them that I've ever seen on my modular PSUs are like that.
 
BeQuiet DarkRock Top Flow
it might just perfectly fit on the Asus Impact Z87 in the M1.
... or maybe not ?!

OW29T0S.png


edit: it might interfere with the top panel, though there is some space between the border of the motherboard and the top panel.
also the cooler might fit turned 180ºC
 
grazina said:
I have the Noctua NH-C12PSE14 with their 3000rpm industrial fan and even than the temps go really high.
Click to expand...

I have the same cooler but it is 4670K running at 4.4GHz and with heavy load it stays below 75oC.
Are you doing a huge o/c?
Btw: with low load I set this fan to run at 300 rpm. (very low noise)

uxFbbppm.jpg
 
Greasy Bacon said:
Oh okay. Yeah i just plugged it into the motherboard, even though you can do a jank mod and just cut the little piece in the way of plugging it in. The only reason I didn't do that is because I saw that you can't control the fan speed through that because it's only 2 pin. However even at around 1000rpm under load, it never got above 55c so I don't think i'm going to mess around with it until i start overclocking
Click to expand...

Can I assume that if you replace the evga fan for another one since it's only two pins it will always run at max when connected to the gpu pump?

And I wanted to thank you for your pictures. Because I have a corsair full atx psu in my case I never tough about using a liquid cooler. But now that I see that it fits i've ordered one. I'll be getting the Seidon 120V rev2.0 next week. It was cheaper than the corsair you have and since the asrock itx99/ac includes the bracket for it I'm future proffing myself. Another thing I like is that the cpu block is squared and larger than the round ones in the corsair models.
Curious thing from a reviewer where I bought it. He plugged the pump to sys fan 1 so it would run at full speed and left the fan on the cpu connector. I like this since the fan speed will still be controlled automaticaly by the board.

A couple of questions?

Do you have your pump at full speed?

Have you tried the fans in pull configuration with them in the same position but pulling air trought the radiator from the outside?
 
Last edited:
Proglin said:
I have the same cooler but it is 4670K running at 4.4GHz and with heavy load it stays below 75oC.
Are you doing a huge o/c?
Btw: with low load I set this fan to run at 300 rpm. (very low noise)

uxFbbppm.jpg
Click to expand...

Not doing any overclock. I have my M1 inside a drawer so it might have somthing to do with that. I've ordered a Seidon 120V and next week will replace my noctua for good I hope. I will be keeping the noctua 3000 fan tough since it moves a lot of air.

Our configs look a lot like the same. Only have a gtx 750 ti since a longer card will not fit the that psu and the sfx so far have been to noisy. Really hopping someone brings that in beetween lenght Dirac Tesla 650w model to europ.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, if it's in a drawer and the exhaust of your case isn't effectively vented out of the drawer, you might just be circulating hot air in the drawer. It's like putting a computer case inside of a larger computer case which has no case fans--the air inside the larger case will tend to want to remain inside the larger case, except for the air going into and out of the smaller case.

If that's what's happening, then the Seidon may not help at all. It'd be a good idea to test your system outside of the drawer before replacing the cooler.
 
I tried searching but it is not working well, so sorry if this has already been answered (I'm sure it has). Is there any chance that the v3 SFX bracket be restocked prior to a future case production run?
 
thefivetheory said:
I tried searching but it is not working well, so sorry if this has already been answered (I'm sure it has). Is there any chance that the v3 SFX bracket be restocked prior to a future case production run?
Click to expand...

Unlikely, the minimum order quantity is 1000 IIRC.
 
thefivetheory said:
I tried searching but it is not working well, so sorry if this has already been answered (I'm sure it has). Is there any chance that the v3 SFX bracket be restocked prior to a future case production run?
Click to expand...
No. But the 4th production run is imminent, and we'll be opening pre-orders next week for the first batch that will ship from Taiwan around July 20th.
 
Necere said:
No. But the 4th production run is imminent, and we'll be opening pre-orders next week for the first batch that will ship from Taiwan around July 20th.
Click to expand...

Nice, I take it the 3rd run sold better than it was doing for a while there?
 
Using measurements from the dimensions PDF, and from reviews I did some sketchup and mocked the Dark Rock TF up on someone's model of a P8Z77I-deluxe:

Mehedf9.jpg

DVcxvEy.jpg


I'll post the model once I get the base modeled in.

From what I'm seeing so far I'm fairly certain it'll fit on the P8Z77I and Impact, unless the heatpipes foul something.


Edit:

The fan model and motherboard model were done by other people.
 
Hanakuso said:
Looks very close for the heatpipes
Click to expand...

It might not be centered quite right at the moment, but I will be doing my best to model the heatpipes, which should help a lot.


According to Vortez.net, we'll have to mount it with the heatpipes horizontal, vertical will probably foul the PCIE slot.
 
Aibohphobia said:
Nice, I take it the 3rd run sold better than it was doing for a while there?
Click to expand...
Yeah, sales did pick up a bit in the last couple months. I fully expect demand to rise and fall at different times of the year, but I think the increased coverage from things like the Linus and HardwareCanucks reviews helped out. There wasn't much of an initial increase in sales immediately after those reviews, but as I've explained to w360, most people only buy a case when they're doing a new build, and they don't do new builds that frequently. They're not going to just go out and buy a case because they saw a review on it - it has to be available and in the public consciousness (in reviews, forum discussion, etc.) when they're ready to build. Awareness + desirability + availability = sales.
 
are there any proposed significant changes for the 4th run (V4?) that would make another purchase over the V2 worthwhile? i love my V2 but im happy to purchase a V4 to continue supporting Ncase and would probably end up selling my V2 secondhand.

- i think i saw Necere mention potentially having stronger metal on the fan bracket around the screw mounts (which i have had some problems with wear).
 
callumbolch said:
are there any proposed significant changes for the 4th run (V4?) that would make another purchase over the V2 worthwhile? i love my V2 but im happy to purchase a V4 to continue supporting Ncase and would probably end up selling my V2 secondhand.

- i think i saw Necere mention potentially having stronger metal on the fan bracket around the screw mounts (which i have had some problems with wear).
Click to expand...
We're considering changing the fan bracket to SECC (steel) for V4. It's not for strength reasons though - it's to allow us to include a magnetic filter with the case that attaches to the bracket. This is what it looks like on a Lian Li case.
 
This is roughly how the Dark Rock would fit on an MSI z97i Gaming ACK motherboard.

mX2NUSy.jpg


It only works in this position. The overhang is approximately 8 mm. This is my first time doing this, so I may have made a mistake. Like that blue bit at the top should be near the full width of the cooler. Oops.

Does anyone know if the 8 mm overhang will obstruct the use of the forward 120 mm cooling mounting point?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top