For the past 18 months I’ve been rocking a gorgeous custom Parvum ITX. However a few things have left me wanting a change. Firstly, size. As you may or may not know, I’m a SFF obsessive, and the Parvum is small, but with London apartments being the size hey are, I really would like to go smaller still. Being 30 too, I’ve started craving something a little less bling - none of the 48 supermodels I’ve brought back to mine this year have liked the Parvum Next up; cooling. The Parvum provides a single 120mm AIO mount for the CPU, and the GPU draws air in directly from the outside. It’s a system that works pretty well, but my GPU often gets thermally throttled (if you read reviews of the GTX 980 you'll see that NVidia decided quiet but warm was the way to go with this, and I can't fault them for it). Sure I could whack the fan curve up to 100% but screaming fans are just not something I’m prepared to live with nowadays. Also, the Parvum really only fits under my desk (unless I have it on a shelf above) and the poor thing gets seriously HOT under there. I toyed with full loop watercooling the Parvum, but I’d prefer more cooling than a single 120mm rad, and getting a pump to fit proved to be a right pain. More than that though, as well as being expensive, full loop watercooling is a massive ballache. Upgrading is suddenly a huge physical effort, there’s twice as much maintenance and moving the system about is harder, and a huge risk. I previously toyed with the idea of picking up a Kimera Industries Nova in their crowd funding run later this year and with that in mind whilst trawling ebay, I found a guy selling two H55s, two premium Silverstone 92mm fans, and two NZXT G10 brackets for £65 all in and couldn’t resist jumping on it. At the time, the plan was to use them both on GPUs in the Kimera, but. but with SLI being the difficult dog it is (especially for VR), I went off the idea. I then looked at the Dan A4 SFX but the lack of CPU cooling options put me off that. I’d also be looking at between $200-$250 for either of those cases, as well as a long wait (Q1 2016). There is of course one more crowd funded SFF case out there - the NCase M1. I’d ALWAYS wanted one, ever since (missing) the original IndieGoGo campaign. Same problem though, they run to about $265 delivered; which is a serious wedge to spend on a case for just about anyone. Ebay to the rescue again, and while I missed one for sale back in July, I just happened to look this weekend, and struck a deal for a V2. Those that know the NCase, will already be aware that one of its main selling points is that it is one of very few small ITX cases that supports 240mm radiators in the side despite being only 12.5L in size. Some people have even done full watercooling loops in the chassis, but having retired from watercooling you won’t see that here….. kinda. So, what I’m trying to achieve with this build over my current setup, is the temps of watercooling for both CPU and GPU, but with the ease of use of an air cooled setup. The way I’m going to do this is to mount the H55s side by side along the side 240mm mount, with one cooling the CPU and the other attached to a NZXT G10, cooling the GPU. Hopefully that will make this NCase build stand out a bit from the others out there.. All other components will remain the same as my current build - the 3570k remains a top CPU, 16GB of RAM is more than enough, and I still haven’t found a cooler motherboard than the P8Z77-I Deluxe (I will however, be upgrading my GPU next year for VR). I've been waiting a few days but tonight, she arrived..... but all you're getting is a sneak peak until Monday when I'll have time to do the build.... In the meantime, I thoroughly recommend that you all go and check out the Ncase Imgur album - there are some absolutely STUNNING builds in there, which really makes me want to up my game for this one. Couple more glamour shots to get you salivating....
Looking forward to this one. I've been bouncing between mATX and ITX for a while now - I've picked up a cheap SG07 for my ITX rig and I'm wavering on a Raijintek Styx for my mATX machine. The NCase M1 is kind of out of my price range but it is a fascinating little box!
Nice one Parge! The NCase M1 is quite a little beast. Looking forward to seeing how it goes for you. Your Parvum was one of the things that inspired me to get a prototype Parvum ITX last year. I really must get it photographed nicely and posted on BT. Don't start me on big ITX cases; I don't like the Prodigy as it's not SFF, neither is the Phanteks Enthoo Evolv ITX. Someone on Gumtree locally was selling on for £20, so I looked up the specs and it's huge (in my terms, anyway). Interesting that you mentioned the Nova and Dan, both of which I have been following on [H]f. Spreadie, I have been torn between ITX and mATX too, but having a Max VI Impact, what would a mATX board add if I don't go SLI/Crossfire? The Impact has M.2 slot, Wifi on board and semi discrete sound card that is better than any onboard sound I've had elsewhere. What would another slot get me? PCIe SSD maybe, but I can't afford the SSD I want just yet anyway. I'm working on a case mod that will be ITX but sort of Nova sized, which will be smaller and lighter than my existing LAN box in a TJ08. I love the Parvum, but worry about it being carted round weekly to LAN night. I'll fetch my chair
Easily the best designed ITX case available - I've been lusting after one of these for years now. Soooooo jealous.
Yes on all counts. Bit out of budget right now. Much NCase envy! Parge, I look forward to seeing the interesting WC arrangement
Excellent stuff, Parge. Really looking forward to seeing how this pans out. That side-by-side of the NCase and the Prodigy is brilliant - I love teeny little mITX cases, and it just shows how small you can go with this form factor.
Oh, lovely! I've been a fan of this case for a long time, almost bought it a few times too. Of course now I'm torn between a super small ITX and trying to design a low profile under desk case. I may be cribbing a few ideas from you.
The Styx is gorgeous isn't it - what colour are you going for? I'm so over big black boxes now. People keep posting them on the buildapc subreddit and they all look exactly the same. The Prodigy has great internals but totally misses the point of ITX - its huge! Hence the release of the 'M' which was the same size but supported mATX boards. I think my biggest problem with it is actually the use of an ATX PSU. Maybe it was good for bringing ITX to the masses, because at the time, we didn't have the same number PSU options we do now (especially with SFX-L coming soon). Anyway, I'm glad its popularity has waned and a decent number of the latest crop of ITX cases are built around SFX (Silverstone RV01 etc). Yeah, Hardforum is where I first heard about both of those. I think its where the NCase team began too. Seems like they have a lot of innovation going on over there (I like to think 'Parvum' is Bit Techs baby). The CPU cooling options on the A4 just aren't good enough for me to justify spending $225 or more. People happy at 4GHz or so will probably be fine though. The Nova is BAD ASS on the other hand. Only 2.5L more than the M1 and mATX. Looks gorgeous and very well designed too. I just ended coming back to the same thinking as you - what advantages would mATX actually afford me? SLI is hot, loud, power hungry and driver reliant, and I already have a sweet external soundcard (Xonar U7), plus I'd have to buy a new board and a new PSU (700W SFX-L most likely). All in all I worked out I was going to be £400 or so out of pocket - which is a significant amount of cash, that would pretty much pay for an entirely new GPU. I'll try and do ya proud I know right - the Prodigy is such a porker! I'm too rubbish to design my own cases, I've tried a few times and don't have the time, skill or tools for the job. Thanks for all the interest guys!
That's a really nice case, just my sort of thing, looks like its very well thought out, really happy with my core v1 though and don't really want to go any smaller.
I also really like the look of the Raijintek Styx and Metis, but thermal performance doesn't look great with either, although I'm prepared to sacrifice some extra heat for a case that good-looking. I absolutely LOVE the blue finish I'm like Spreadie in that I'm constantly swithering between mATX and ITX. I don't really think that mATX offers me much more than I can get from ITX as I've no intention of going SLI or using any other PCIE cards, but I always have that little voice in my head saying "just in case..." I basically want something as small, cool and quiet as possible, but obviously you can't have everything! At least the Raijintek cases are quite reasonably priced so I reckon I'll be giving one of them a whirl when I come to doing my planned full system upgrade at the end of the year.
I really like it but damn, too small! It's either noisy GPU or noisy PSU. Needs to support full length GPU plus a full size PSU in compact dimensions for me. SFX air cooled kit is too loud. Definitely looking forward to this build though
Bindi, as the NCase can take a full size Gpu there are some cracking mods available to build a very quiet set ups using third party Gpu air coolers. This thread is well worth a read through for anyone thinking of building in one. https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/my-ever-changing-main-pc-ncase-m1.47/ I agree that my SFX psu whines and chatters a bit too much for my liking but my whole rig is certainly quieter than my old FT03 tornado! Sent from Bittech Android app
The M1 is a real gem in this regard. You can fit a GPU with an arctic extreme xtreme with some caveats. The newer versions support SFX-L PSUs. I believe you can order the PSU bracket for earlier models too.
Ah yeah, that is a definite advantage. I have to say though, I honestly cant hear the fan in the 600W version unless I'm gaming. Little update outside of that, I've got a NZXT CAM+ coming from Scan tomorrow. Fed up with relying on Asus' AI Suite (which doesn't work at all since I upgraded to W10) - and the reviews are absolutely stellar. Hopefully a worthy upgrade to the T-Balancer - at the very least the software looks better.
Tom, Do you mean the NZXT Grid+? If so, make sure it's the V2 - the Grid+ v1 is decent but limited to driving all fans based on either the CPU or GPU temperature, whereas the v2 lets you split fan control between the two temps. In other news, I managed to cram my main rig into the Silverstone SG07 yesterday, cooling the CPU with an AIO. The plan was to cool the 780 with the AIO, but the low profile CPU cooler I bought fouls the PCI-E slot on my ITX mobo. That little 450W SFX PSU copes admirably.
Aye, I think CAM is the software but the fan controller itself is the GRID+. Good info regarding the different versions, Spreadie - thanks for posting that.
Yes, CAM is the software. I like it - it's pretty much fire and forget, once you've set your fan curves, which is simplicity itself, and they update it regularly.
