Project H20-Micro a Watercooled 3 Liter system with GTX970

I thought that the psu goes off if the card pulls more power than the psu could provide.
 
A good psu with some type of overcurrent protection should turn off, but I'm just saying that it may be an issue going with a PSU that is "just enough" to meet the TDP of 145w for a GTX 970

A computer that shuts off or crashes under load due to the GPU PSU turning off would not really be a very good computer at all right? I just think it needs to be considered in the overall design here
 
I believe PSUs all handle it differently.

The size is intriguing, but the ITX 970s will likely be louder and even more so at a small size, with little or no blocking or dampening and amplified by the fact it will probably be a lot closer to the user.

Such a small PC wouldn't be placed where a regular tower would be (beside table, under table) but somewhere accessible like on the table for easy disconnection and transport. I can see people using them between multiple locations with KVM set up already (as one example).

Even if you can make the case fans very quiet, the pump noise will almost 100% be louder than the case fans and audible at a low speed.

Now having said all that, you (OP) should still go ahead and fully realise this. That's how we have progress - if no one tries anything then we don't get anywhere.

One of my crazy ideas was how small you can make a PC with 2x 295x2. If I had money and time, it would make a fun project. Just in time for 4k 5" screens.
 
walking away from psu talk

How about something like this? No watercooling needed but some good ventilation would do.



Depending on front panel size and additional space needed for HDPlex it would grow few mm.

What do you think?
 
scrap the drives and go M.2 or mSata if this is supposed to be the smallest case

Edit: I didn't see the limiting factor was the height of the hdplex and not the drives. I still think the additional cables would just be clutter that a case of this size would not want.
 
I added the drives because:
1) HDPlex makes the case this high already
2) at least one 2.5" hdd should have its place in the system I think

Of course using thin mITX woul let use place HDPlex over the motherboard IO and drives about space next to CPU thank to standarized CPU location, but I'm not sure if that would reduce the height considering HDPlex cables space needed.

Its still 3L case :)
 
Time for some responses!

Hi, I saw your thread first at OCN so posted a question there, to which you have already answered on OCN and thank you for your reply. Here is the exchange we had:



Assuming you haven't done a custom PCB work yet, it looks like you are already operating Q87T with GTX970 with two independent 12V sources into GTX970 without frying anything.



This "180W" is exactly what you are measuring? The power consumption of the entire system or the whole GPU or just the power fed through the PCIe 8pin PEG? If the entire system, then is that the AC measurement on the wall?

Also, if I understand your answer correctly, power is constantly fed to the GPU whether the power to the motherboard is on or off. I don't think that's what people like to have, hence dondan's question on how you're planning to let the power-on of the Thin Mini-ITX trigger the 12V input to the GPU. I was thinking you're going to provide a relay.

Another thing I have been wondering and I believe I have asked this question in dondan's A4 thread when we talked about a Thin Mini-ITX and high-end GPU combo, but I still don't know the answer (yes it's probably a dumb question but I'm clueless on this): when the GPU is being asked to do the kind of task that would draw, say, 50W from the mobo thru a PCIe x16 socket, how does it work if it is actually connected via PCIe x1/x4/x8 that is set to 25W max? Is it designed so that whatever the extra amount is required over 25W will be drawn from the PEG connector, or will the GPU simply try to cope with the task with less power and throttle down?

I've had it running with 2 +12V supplies(the motherboard and the HD-PLEX) I am implementing 1 +12V supply in my PCIe riser, I'm not going to connect the +12V from the Motherboard just to make sure it's not going to cause problems.
I had the HD-PLEX shorted to be always on, it wasn't drawing any power for the GPU likely because the GPU is "offline" when the system is off. I've done this for testing purposes but I think I will have the standby function in the final system just to keep it all safe. In the end all 12V power for the GPU will be provided by the HD-PLEX only 3.3V is supplied by the motherboard.

Yes I'm interested in this. (Interested in QinX's and dondan's solutions as well.) When you said a 60mm riser, did you mean a 60mm long flex riser or a rigid left-angle (left when looking from the rear ports) riser that is 60mm tall from the top surface of the mobo? In the latter case it seems a bit too tall to achieve an USFF size.

Looking from the back of the motherboard(IO view) the riser will raise the GPU about 20mm and fold over the motherboard. It will be a rigid riser.

Funny story: I visited a 1-man company that does a lot of electronics work for companies to see if he would be willing to design the PCIe riser for me, I've some PCB designing skills but only amateur level. However upon getting a reponse for €1200 for 2 days of work I decided to just go ahead and do it myself and now 3 hours of work and the riser is halfway done. -_-

As i maybe told, i have a thread in a german forum where i shared the idea of an 3L thin itx system for about 7 month. But not for doing it be my own, only share how it could be possible and the hope that somebody else will do it. And somebody in germany actually do it. He said, that the PCIe gives 25W and the other remainig 50W will the card pull of the 6 pin or 8pin connector. So you dont need to inject it directly in the raiser.

By the way here is a picture how to sync hdplex and thin itx out of my thread:

http://abload.de/img/drawinghmcz4.jpg

(the picture is some month old so i don't remove the powercable to the riser)

You can also try to contact Larry from HDplex or Frank of Picoboxfactory to produce a DC board that converts 19-24v to 12v with 250W and only pcie plugs. Syncing could be done by a special cable between sata-power port and dcboard. Perfect would be a thin itx board that has already 8pin pcie out and 16x pcie port.

I'm doing the bottom implementation pretty much, but will try and figure out a more elegant way then the add2psu board. I'm considering designing my own board just for 12V supply. Not totally sure yet.


Keep in mind that Nvidia with the 9xx series has implemented something similar to Intel's FIVR, which means a 145w TDP does not translate directly to 145w of power consumption.

It's a gross simplification I think, but those cards could draw 250w of power for 1/2 of a second, and 40w for the other half of a second to average out at 145w of total heat to be dissipated for that second. I think it's a large part of why Maxwell cards have a lot of complaints about coil whine - the power regulators are switching many times, on the order of multiple times every few hundred nanoseconds? This switching could place a lot more load on the PSU since the consumption swings so wildly and quickly

Here we go, a source:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-11.html
"Even though the average power consumption is only 176 W, the GPU draws almost 300 W when it's necessary. Above that, the GPU slows down."

I've seen this graph already and now I d believe the GPU was not getting enough juice.(have a 230W) I'll be ordering a 350W PSU and see if it works better. again bandwidth shouldn't be a problem unless the fact that the Q87T has PCIe 3.0 4x going through the PCH really craps out the bandwidth to the point of it being worse than PCIe 1.1 4x

walking away from psu talk

How about something like this? No watercooling needed but some good ventilation would do.

Depending on front panel size and additional space needed for HDPlex it would grow few mm.

What do you think?

This looks like a nice implementation, but what I wouldn't like is that fact that the case would basically be swiss-cheese.
the Neutronium v4 was also a tiny case, but I personally dislike the amount of ventilation required to get right of the hot air.

I believe PSUs all handle it differently.

The size is intriguing, but the ITX 970s will likely be louder and even more so at a small size, with little or no blocking or dampening and amplified by the fact it will probably be a lot closer to the user.

Such a small PC wouldn't be placed where a regular tower would be (beside table, under table) but somewhere accessible like on the table for easy disconnection and transport. I can see people using them between multiple locations with KVM set up already (as one example).

Even if you can make the case fans very quiet, the pump noise will almost 100% be louder than the case fans and audible at a low speed.

Now having said all that, you (OP) should still go ahead and fully realise this. That's how we have progress - if no one tries anything then we don't get anywhere.

One of my crazy ideas was how small you can make a PC with 2x 295x2. If I had money and time, it would make a fun project. Just in time for 4k 5" screens.


You talk about the GTX970 being loud, but it will be watercooled. also the pump I've selected is really quiet, ofcourse it can't be dead silent but it better than any DDC, D5 or alphacool ceramic pump I've used, It only takes 3.5W at 12V.

Also unless you are running sustained 100% load on the GPU and CPU the fans don't ramp up for a while, it has some thermal inertia due to the water being circulated.

This system is meant for 4K gaming or ultra quality 1080P, I think the 970 is good enough for most games on 4K with decent settings
 
Last edited:
You could go with reverse configuration where motherboard faces bottom and that bottom would be made swiss cheese and only GPU would need small intake from the top.
 
You could go with reverse configuration where motherboard faces bottom and that bottom would be made swiss cheese and only GPU would need small intake from the top.

I think something like the Neutronium V4 is the same concept. His build is also in the 3L range. It is definitely doable and a lot cheaper that what i'm doing that's for sure. But I get a kick of making it smaller/same size and having it be watercooled.
 
I notice you are using the HP adapter. It'll be interesting to see how that performs. By the way, the Dell 330W is also an excellent choice (I'm sure dondan will tell you that!). It has been documented to reliably push ~400W, IIRC.
 
What do you think?
- Too less space under the board.
- Not enough space for GPU 6pin 8pin power mounting
- You have to use a flex riser and i think male PCB is to high and female pcb to long for mounting it like this.
- Only compatible for some motherboards because GPU bracket hit the I/O Ports.
- Too less space between GPU PCB and HDD.
- Too less space between HDPlex I/O and board.
- Where is the place for the HDplex jackexpander? There is no space for it.
 
Yeah, again, I know that. It's just It would be good if you were to support card from the thin mITX itself without HDPlex PSU.

If standard was meant to support AIO with external PSU why couldn't they integrate something like hdplex into board and draw power from it to other things like the AIO screen.

If you look at it this way you'll notice that those AIO's will have its own power supplies and the board connector which is unused if I'm not wrong.

Sorry to tell you, but you are in fact wrong. The AIO barebones do come with their own powerbrick, but the exact dimensions of the 19V power connector on the I/O of the board are specified by intel and those powerbricks plug into the board directly.

The mobo does actually have transformers for 3.3V, 5V and 12V on it, and it does power the AIO display and backlight via special connectors, one is a LVDS 40pin micro-coax cable for the panel (namely the ACES-50204-40), and the other is a generic 4pin connector for the backlight.
It is also able to power all sorts of HDDs and SSDs, and interestingly enough, most boards I used came with a cable that had four 7pin SATA power connectors and one smaller one that only supplies 3.3V and is most commonly used on slim ODDs.

So it could actually be possible to ditch the HDPlex entirely and power the GPU through those.
To be honest, that is a pretty genius idea, and it might just work.

This video shows it quite well:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/hardware-developers/ecs-g24-aio-pc-integration.html
 
Last edited:
I noticed that from what dondan posted before with those two configurations images

Thanks for digging up that video though :)
 
Sorry to tell you, but you are in fact wrong. The AIO barebones do come with their own powerbrick, but the exact dimensions of the 19V power connector on the I/O of the board are specified by intel and those powerbricks plug into the board directly.

The mobo does actually have transformers for 3.3V, 5V and 12V on it, and it does power the AIO display and backlight via special connectors, one is a LVDS 40pin micro-coax cable for the panel (namely the ACES-50204-40), and the other is a generic 4pin connector for the backlight.
It is also able to power all sorts of HDDs and SSDs, and interestingly enough, most boards I used came with a cable that had four 7pin SATA power connectors and one smaller one that only supplies 3.3V and is most commonly used on slim ODDs.

So it could actually be possible to ditch the HDPlex entirely and power the GPU through those.
To be honest, that is a pretty genius idea, and it might just work.

This video shows it quite well:
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/hardware-developers/ecs-g24-aio-pc-integration.html

I'd imagine the transformers for 12V that are onboard don't pack the juice needed to power 200W+ of graphics card.
 
I'd imagine the transformers for 12V that are onboard don't pack the juice needed to power 200W+ of graphics card.

Is that actually what the 970 draws? But even if it was 150W, you'd probably be right.
 
It's draw will momentarily (for a handful of milliseconds) peak at much higher, but it;s average power draw is closer to 150-170W.
Unless the PSU's power protection circuitry has been set up with a very sensitive current-draw shutoff trigger (and has it placed AFTER the output smoothing stage), it won't be an issue. Remember how cheap 'n' nasty PSUs are rated by their peak load rather than their sustained load? A decent quality PSU will be rated for sustained load, but can provide a peak load significantly higher for very short periods.
 
It's draw will momentarily (for a handful of milliseconds) peak at much higher, but it;s average power draw is closer to 150-170W.
Unless the PSU's power protection circuitry has been set up with a very sensitive current-draw shutoff trigger (and has it placed AFTER the output smoothing stage), it won't be an issue. Remember how cheap 'n' nasty PSUs are rated by their peak load rather than their sustained load? A decent quality PSU will be rated for sustained load, but can provide a peak load significantly higher for very short periods.

I'm going to have to get the PSU anyway, can't risk blowing up the PSU for my work laptop :D. And if only changing the PSU works, than we know. I still can't imagine the GPU being starved for bandwidth.
 
I've finished up my design for the PCIe Riser. Sent an Inquiry to the manufacturer to see what gold plating the edge fingers is gonna cost me. I hope I did something wrong in their software because when I selected gold plating I suddenly had to pay over €180 per PCB :eek:
full.png
 
Small update:
1st I've ordered my PCBs, after inquiring with the manufacturer I've gone ahead and ordered them with a Nickel/Gold finish. It's a lot cheaper than having a hard gold, but the difference is that hard gold is meant for a lot of insertions, which shouldn't be the case with my build. Now I just pay €3 extra per PCB and don't have to worry about the copper oxidizing.

2nd I've also gone ahead and ordered a new external PSU. I've chosen an HP 350W brick that I like the design of. It should have enough power to deal with the GTX970 and everything else.
545247-500x500.jpg


3rd
I've ordered my custom radiator, it should be build and shipped this week which is amazing!

and lastly 4th
I had an ASUS GTX970 mini for my build but as you guys have told me the reference GTX970 is just as short and even less tall. So i've asked the webshop that I bought my ASUS GTX970 at if I can swap it which they will.

All in a couple things in the works for next month.
 
Cool. A Voodoo PSU. To bad that company went to hell with that small Firebird and their other stuff.
 
Woah, where do you order a custom rad?

It's a company I do business with through my job, I've been lucky they had a old protoype die set, if it would have been truly custom I couldn't afford it, now it's just doable ::D
 
Small update:
1st I've ordered my PCBs, after inquiring with the manufacturer I've gone ahead and ordered them with a Nickel/Gold finish. It's a lot cheaper than having a hard gold, but the difference is that hard gold is meant for a lot of insertions, which shouldn't be the case with my build. Now I just pay €3 extra per PCB and don't have to worry about the copper oxidizing.

2nd I've also gone ahead and ordered a new external PSU. I've chosen an HP 350W brick that I like the design of. It should have enough power to deal with the GTX970 and everything else.

3rd
I've ordered my custom radiator, it should be build and shipped this week which is amazing!

and lastly 4th
I had an ASUS GTX970 mini for my build but as you guys have told me the reference GTX970 is just as short and even less tall. So i've asked the webshop that I bought my ASUS GTX970 at if I can swap it which they will.

All in a couple things in the works for next month.

Did you just order the PCB or will they solder the connector to it, too?

Also wow, that PSU is huuuuuge :D Yeah 350W will be enough, I'm running my 970 off a 300W PSU (though I'm using the i7-4770U, which only has 45W TDP).

A custom radiator is so rad :p
I think this was asked before, but is that a rad with included reservoir and pump?
 
Did you just order the PCB or will they solder the connector to it, too?

Also wow, that PSU is huuuuuge :D Yeah 350W will be enough, I'm running my 970 off a 300W PSU (though I'm using the i7-4770U, which only has 45W TDP).

A custom radiator is so rad :p
I think this was asked before, but is that a rad with included reservoir and pump?


I'm going to solder the connector my self, it's a simple through hole so no biggy.
The radiator is seperate, I have integrated the reservoir and pump but these are also seperate.
 
So i've been looking into this psu deal. Dondan, QinX, do you think a Hdplex 160 would work instead of the 250 for the graphics card?
 
So i've been looking into this psu deal. Dondan, QinX, do you think a Hdplex 160 would work instead of the 250 for the graphics card?

Looking at the specifications it is rated on the 12V line for:
144W MAX power and 108W Full load power.
It might handle more but that would require either a small heatsink, like the ones you can get for VRM or RAM or a fan blowing on it to cool the chips.

Honestly, I wouldn't use the HD-PLEX 160W with a GTX970 or GTX980 because of the way it regulates it's power consumption.
 
So i've been looking into this psu deal. Dondan, QinX, do you think a Hdplex 160 would work instead of the 250 for the graphics card?

You didn't ask me, specifically, but if it powers just the GPU, it should work from my experience. I ran the 970 and the motherboard off of a 15A rail, so 180W.
 
You didn't ask me, specifically, but if it powers just the GPU, it should work from my experience. I ran the 970 and the motherboard off of a 15A rail, so 180W.

Did you still get the same fps with the GTX970?
 
Did you still get the same fps with the GTX970?

Yes, it was running on 100% load and 100-110% TDP limit. But after you said it has a continuous maximum output of 108W, I don't think you should go for it. Except you somehow watercool it, too.
 
Hello
I am desperate, can not solve this issue, implemetation of new ASUS GTX970-DCMOC-4GD5 DirectCU Mini OC

My problem is:
I built 6,8 lit SFF modifed Lian Li Q02 in 2012, using at time
gainward gtx 660 180mmx112mmx2slots, it is small media server and game SFF
http://www.computerbase.de/forum/sho...&highlight=q02

I would like to improve my gear with new GPU ASUS GTX970-DCMOC-4GD5 DirectCU Mini OC
Dimension of ASUS GPU is mentioned as 170mmx121,9mmx40,1mm,
But this GPU has a metal protection back plate and I think that 40,1mm is mentioned as dimension of total sum: PCB protection back plate till plastic cooler shroud.
I´ll appreciate whether somebody who award this GPU could provide me dimension of ASUS GTX970 mini
PCB/PCIe connector - to the top of protection plastic case/plstic cooler shroud

I contacted already ASUS Europe (Sales, Marketing, ROG); Unfortunately nobody can provide me this information, becasue all of them are using same source of information (ASUS official measurement 170x121,9x40,1mm).
Becasue my SFF case is very tight, specially in area PCIE to the bottom (GPU placement), correct mm dimension of GPU is very important, without this value It will be very difficult to think about further improvement of GPU.
Hope you can support me in this matter
Many Thanks and regards from Vienna
 
Please don't spam this request around, this thread is not about the 970 DirectCU. You posted this in the thread about that card and that should be enough. I'm hesitant to report this, it isn't harmful spam, but please refrain from doing this.
 
@iFreilicht
it is not a spam,
rrdiculous predication
I am trying to solve technical problem with implementation of mentioned GPU in my SFF case, details see above,
hope that somebody who bough already this card can take that measurement and help me to make decision to purchase or not Asus,
Thanks in advance
 
@iFreilicht
it is not a spam,
rrdiculous predication
I am trying to solve technical problem with implementation of mentioned GPU in my SFF case, details see above,
hope that somebody who bough already this card can take that measurement and help me to make decision to purchase or not Asus,
Thanks in advance

I've already returned the GPU so I cannot take measurement for you, but I do believe the 40,1mm is including the backplatt and PCIe connectors.
 
@QinX
thanks, that´s what I suppose too, it is included back plate
why did you return GPU?
regards vienna1
 
Just a small update, I've received my radiator on Monday and I've already put it through its paces to see how it stacks up to my reference radiator a Hardwarelabs GTX M160. As expected for it being smaller the performance is down, but only 20% at the maximum heatload(around 400W) and has the same performance up to about 125W.

Just as a size comparison here it is next to a 2x140mm radiator and next to a 120mmx38mm fan. The fans that I'll be using on the radiator are Noiseblocker 80mm slim PWM fans. The height of my case is dictacted by this radiator/fan combination which is 43.6 mm(28.6 mm for radiator and 15mm for the fans)



I've also finished up the final design for my CPU waterblock, it's only 10.5mm high.



The 350W powersupply has also arrived, it's MASSIVE!

The PCIe Riser PCB has been shipped to me and should arrive this week.
I'm waiting on the new GTX970 to arrive and the PCIe 16x socket so I can solder it and test the PCB.

Lastly I made some adjustments to the case. It has "legs" now and it stand a little higher of off the ground, this will improve airflow for the radiator.
The power button has been moved from the front to the back.
Perhaps the front is too clean now? What do you guys think. Let me know if you want to see the standing case with "legs" I don't think it will look nice but who knows.

 
Nice work! Doesn't get much more custom build than designing your own rad and block :D

I like the feet, though you may need to double-side tape a thin strip of rubber to the bottom to keep the case from moving around the desk.
 
Looks really nice, can't wait for everything to come together. Custom rad is really cool.
 
Would it be possible to change the thread title?
As it is now it sounds like I'm building a watercooled system with a 3 liter reservoir or something :p
I would like to change it to:
[Build Log] H2O-Micro (<3 Liter Custom Watercooled Gaming Rig)

That way it's the same as in other forums.
 
Back
Top