I've decided to take my SMD MIT6 concept forward and do some physical prototyping. Yesterday I ordered the parts I need to turn my Sketchup use-of-space study into a physical one.
I shall call this project exfinium-6
Firstly let me be clear about my complete lack of PC modding experience. I have plenty of experience assembling PCs but have never constructed a pc case and my handyman skills are mostly non-existent. It has taken me a couple of years of worry and procrastination to get to this point and I'm hoping for guidance from the [H] community to help and see where this design goes.
This design is deliberately very compromising and by that I mean my intent is to heavily compromise some design aspects to best achieve the primary design objective of this case.
Primary objective: The best single card gaming performance in the smallest possible package. To me that currently means support for GTX 690 and Radeon 7990 cards.
High priority objectives:
• Stable, usable, reliable – good to keep running on a user’s desk at full performance for the expected life of the parts
• Cost sensible – use commodity parts
The MIT6 design features a sealed liquid cooling loop to shift the radiator away from the CPU and allow the PSU to sit tight over the motherboard. The result is a tightly packed small box bounded by the radiator, PSU and motherboard that is much shorter than a full length graphics card. This is the point where I decided to take a sharp turn from any other small gaming box design that I’ve seen…
The signature design feature: Exposed graphics card
Yeah that graphics card really is sitting right out there. Just flapping in the breeze. Honestly, to most people I’ve shown this to this just seems wrong, faulty, unworkable but I can’t help feeling that the pros outweigh the cons. In fact I can’t come up with a negative that can’t be easily countered. One reason I’m posting here is to see if someone else can.
Parts arrive in a few days and I’ll do some kind of a worklog here.
Pros and Cons discussed so far:
Pro
Graphics card receives optimal ambient airflow/temperature
Showcases the graphics card
Better performance per litre than any case on the market
Con
External PCIe power cable might be ugly
Graphics card is exposed to physical impact and ESD
Graphics card will gather dust quicker
Aestheticly jarring - not a clean looking design
I shall call this project exfinium-6
Firstly let me be clear about my complete lack of PC modding experience. I have plenty of experience assembling PCs but have never constructed a pc case and my handyman skills are mostly non-existent. It has taken me a couple of years of worry and procrastination to get to this point and I'm hoping for guidance from the [H] community to help and see where this design goes.
This design is deliberately very compromising and by that I mean my intent is to heavily compromise some design aspects to best achieve the primary design objective of this case.
Primary objective: The best single card gaming performance in the smallest possible package. To me that currently means support for GTX 690 and Radeon 7990 cards.
High priority objectives:
• Stable, usable, reliable – good to keep running on a user’s desk at full performance for the expected life of the parts
• Cost sensible – use commodity parts
The MIT6 design features a sealed liquid cooling loop to shift the radiator away from the CPU and allow the PSU to sit tight over the motherboard. The result is a tightly packed small box bounded by the radiator, PSU and motherboard that is much shorter than a full length graphics card. This is the point where I decided to take a sharp turn from any other small gaming box design that I’ve seen…
The signature design feature: Exposed graphics card
Yeah that graphics card really is sitting right out there. Just flapping in the breeze. Honestly, to most people I’ve shown this to this just seems wrong, faulty, unworkable but I can’t help feeling that the pros outweigh the cons. In fact I can’t come up with a negative that can’t be easily countered. One reason I’m posting here is to see if someone else can.
Parts arrive in a few days and I’ll do some kind of a worklog here.
Pros and Cons discussed so far:
Pro
Graphics card receives optimal ambient airflow/temperature
Showcases the graphics card
Better performance per litre than any case on the market
Con
External PCIe power cable might be ugly
Graphics card is exposed to physical impact and ESD
Graphics card will gather dust quicker
Aestheticly jarring - not a clean looking design
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