Over the edge

[time]

A thread with a title like this could be populated exclusively by ddrueding. Most of us don't have his budget, so I'm going to try coming at it from a lower angle.


I propose to shoehorn one of these:

into one of these:

To give you an idea of scale, the case is less than a foot square. It's half the size of an Antec 3480 'minitower'. It comes with a 300W SFX3.01 power supply (also half the size) with a single 16A 12V line.

I intend to run the entire PC off this one line, including the 826-million transistor graphics card. And not melt the case while gaming.

Any bets?

 

[ddrueding]

Not exceptionally difficult, provided the PSU has the PCI-E power connector that that card needs. The 4770 is really a cool running card. It also depends on what motherboard you are going to be using, and what CPU cooler will fit.

 

[time]

No, the PS does not have a 6-pin plug. I'm planning on using an adaptor to a Molex connector.

And the CPU cooler will be whatever's currently stock with Intel E6300/7400. This case has a baffle arrangement that ensures the CPU air intake is not contaminated with exhaust heat or heat from any other component. So any CPU cooler will do.

 

[ddrueding]

Looking good, so long as the motherboard's PCI-E 16x slot is sufficiently down the board that GPU air intake isn't blocked by the optical drive.

 

[time]

Yes, thought of that. I only considered motherboards with the x1 socket to the right of the x16 socket. And of course there's a sacrificial PCI socket on the other side (the last PCI socket will probably have to hold a wireless card).

But if you look at the chassis picture above, I'm not sure how the optical drive would impinge anyway?

 

[Fushigi]

You can always do wireless via USB if needed.

 

[ddrueding]

Not the optical drive, really, but the bracket that makes up the left side of the optical bay.

 

[time]

So it's all together and tested. I'll try to post pictures in a day or so.

Thermally, this is a really impressive case design, possibly the best unmodified case I've ever used. The baffle turns the CPU fan into the intake fan, there's an air box to dampen fan noise, airflow across the HDD, and the power supply is at the bottom where it can still suck relatively cool air. Performance falls apart with the case open.

I don't believe heat was an issue, but my configuration, with the second-slot exhaust of the graphics card, was starving the power supply of air. The PS fan was revving up with an annoying whine.

So I ended up moving the HDD into the unused FDD bay (only two screw holes, so I wedged the other side with some rubber tape - a really good solution as it happens). I was then able to remove the HDD holder to enable unimpinged airflow through the corresponding holes in the front bezel.

The baffle is designed for a standard Intel board CPU position. The last time I used on of these cases, I had to make my own cutout for an AMD CPU cooler. Annoyingly, the Gigabyte G31M board also has a non-standard layout, only worse! When I compared it with Asus and Intel boards, I realized that standardization was dead anyway.

 

[time]

The HDD bay has a perforated grill for cooling. The HDD has been mounted in the FDD bay and the HDD cage removed to provide freer airflow to the power supply - which is an 80+ unit, by the way.

The 'airbox' and baffle work better than anything like this I've tried myself (note the dust filter as well), and the external vents on the case are all in places that make sense. This is the first case I've seen where some genuine engineering has gone into the thermal design.

There's actually a small wireless card between the graphics card and the power supply. Otherwise, there's really heaps of space once you figure out how you're going to lay things out.

The point to this exercise is to demonstrate that this a way more sensible size for 95% of users. And 600W power supplies are not only stupid, but electrically inefficient for 99.5%.

 

[ddrueding]

What is the make/model of that case?

 

[sdbardwick]

Case looks like an InWin BK623.

 

[ddrueding]

It does indeed. Good find sdbardwick.

 

[CougTek]

I can buy this enclosure from my suppliers, but I doubt it will come with the 80+ certified power supply. It cost me 65$CAN and cases in that price range typically don't include 80+ power supplies.

Is it sufficiently silent to be recommended for a HTPC? I buy a lot of In Win cases and while they are sturdy and reliable, quiet has never been a qualificative I've used for them. One of my two computers inhabits a BT611 and it's far too noisy to be considered for a HTPC. The only three fans in there are th CPU fan, the PSU fan and the case fan.

 

[time]

If you look at the Features tab on this page, you can see the 80+ specification.

The last one I built used an AMD M2 with HD3200 IGA, and apart from the hard drive, it was silent. I suspect the stock Intel cooler gets noisier when things get busy, but that's why I undervolted the E6300.

With a gaming graphics card, there's obviously more load on the power supply and I found the PS fan starting to whine while I was running 3Dmark. It didn't seem to be getting very hot and the fan stayed reasonably quiet when the case was left open, so I assumed that with the extra exhaust fan on the graphics card, it was probably starved for air - hence the modified layout with the HDD. That seemed to work, but if you want silence while you're thrashing the graphics card, I think a single-slot variant might actually be a better option.

So yes, it's an ideal HTPC with better cooling than a slimline and the ability to take full-size cards.

From InWin's acoustic testing of a complete system. Note that this is total sound power, sound pressure is only 30-35dbA.