[µSFF Gaming Build] Neutronium

Put a thermometer touching the back metal grid of the PSU and see what it says. If it hits 42C/108F then probably best to consider limiting CPU load.
 
Incredible build!

A much more open modders-mesh pattern would help temperatures for sure, if you don't mind being able to see the fan and other components.
 
Pulled out the filtercore and second modder's mesh layer in both the front and the bottom opening. You can see through the front slightly (which is kind of disappointing), but it was necessary to give the computer enough air to work :p

Ambient: 22C

Idle:
Motherboard: 32C
CPU: 34C
GPU: 33C
Chassis fan off
CPU fan @ 800rpm

Furmark burn-in (2560x1600, 4xMSAA) + Prime95 blend (30 minutes of stabilized temps)
Motherboard: 38C
CPU: 65C
GPU: 76C
Both Chassis and CPU fan at full blast (2000rpm)

There was a higher pitched whining which makes me think that the PSU fan was also spooled up to maximum. My IR temperature sensor needs a new battery, but the exhaust was warm to the touch, so that makes me think it was around 40C... still within tolerance :)
 
What happened with flipping the PSU? In an earlier post you mentioned you would have to do it because the flipped 24pin plug. The psu intake being so close to the cpu cooler fan can't be good.

Also is that front fan pulling air in? There's likely a lot of turbulence and dead spots under the mobo where it's hitting the air pushed out by the cpu cooler. To experiment i would try removing it completely, might be doing more harm than good. If that doesn't help you might try a splitter or duct that blocks intake air to just the top of the cpu cooler. That way it gets fed cool air and pressure will push it out the back openings.

Just some thoughts if you wanted to try to get those temps/fan speeds down. Looks awesome!
 
Yeah -- the main barrier to flipping the PSU wasn't the mobo power cord, I could make another one of those, it was cutting a hole in the side panel (for PSU intake). I'll probably end up doing it anyway as the PSU noise puts me a bit on edge :p

Currently, the airflow of the case has the intakes as the bottom (for the dual GPU fans) and the front (for the chassis fan). The CPU heatsink pulls air from the surface of the motherboard outward (toward the PSU). The exhausts of the case are out of the bottom two inches of the front (from the GPU front exhaust), the GPU card bracket (back GPU exhaust), the back of the case (chassis air flow-through), and the PSU (which is pulling CPU exhaust air as its intake). The PSU body itself actually works like a decent duct for the intake air to come down on the top of the CPU HSF, so that might be jamming up some of my airflow in the current setup.

TBH, turbulence isn't all bad -- you want turbulence in close proximity to the actual heat transfer interfaces (it allows better heat transfer), but you also want it in the context of an overall greater laminar flow (or simply less turbulent :p) to get that hot air away from the heatsinks.
 
I think this is about as small as you can make a gaming rig without using an external power brick.

Now if we can just get LL to sell this case with the 2 expansion slots.
 
Thanks, orangesaft :) It was an adventure, for sure.

Screes, as much as I love it, I don't see LL selling the Q02 in this form for a couple reasons:
- the short gaming gpu market is pretty niche (especially for dual-full-height cards)
- in this configuration it is a real PITA to assemble (think laptop hard without all the normal engineering process and special tooling :p)

It could probably get a bit smaller without a brick, especially if I sacrificed the dual raid ssds for an mSATA/NGFF drive, I could shorten the case by about 20-30mm; at that point I might as well go completely custom, though :)

It works great as a gaming rig on my 30" monitor, so I'm definitely happy. It's a bit loud at full blast, but then I'm used to 100% silent builds :D
 
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Machupo said:
It's a bit loud at full blast, but then I'm used to 100% silent builds :D
Click to expand...

Yea, i think this is the only reason i dont try something like this. I think my current PC with 2x 1200rpm slipstream's are too loud. Going to try AP-14's on my next build. If i like the noise signature but think their too fast, i might drop down to AP-13's, but i want to at least give the higher rpm version a chance.

The smallest case i can come up with that i can silence properly is around 9.7 liters, but no one sells the form factor. I'll probably just sacrifice a little volume and go with the NCase M1.
 
One thing I took a look at when I was mulling over the design strategy for this case was non-quadrilateral shapes (i.e. not the standard box)... still kicking around the ideas and moving components around in my head.

I was actually considering going from the ST45SF-G to the alienware 330w unit from the X51... it would certainly open up the flow-through of the case a good bit and allow some serious shrinking, but those cases would all have to be custom. Not to mention that the power-efficiency of the next generation of video cards will have.
 
Screes said:
Did you see the new MAC Pro? 5.5 liter cylinder with dual video cards.
Click to expand...

I did. I would go bonkers if I had access to custom PCB fabrication capability. Unfortunately, in a single stroke, Apple threw out just about every standard, and with no real standards to speak of in the laptop space, it's difficult in the extreme to compete w/ DIY.

If only there was a NUC board w/ a PCIe-16x plug (smaller and non-linear like the current slot, of course)... I could do some real damage :D
 
If we could just get quality shielded flexible pci-e cables we could do a lot more.
 
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