Scratch Build – In Progress Addison - Final photos page 6

Project goal is to design and build a powerful as possible gaming rig into a small as possible enclosure.

Note: I place captions below photos.

Final photos on page 6


Start by building a temporary structure to help mock up equipment locations.







This will be my first use of water cooling even though it is just an AIO unit.




The key to this build is this Mini-ITX sized GTX 970 from Gigabyte.













Gigabyte has been a sponsor of mine since 2006. This is the WiFi version of their Z97 Mini-ITX gaming board. I chose this over their GA-Z97N-Gaming 5 board because I didn't need the onboard Killer NIC and liked the idea of having dual HDMI instead of just one.




Gigabyte was also gracious enough to provide me with one of Hi Cookie's i7-4770K Intel Engineering Sample CPUs.






Silverstone has been a sponsor of mine for over ten years.




For this project I'm using the modular cable version of their 450W SFX PSU.




Here it is sitting next to their hard wired version. Modular cables are awesome but for this design so are the fan and power cable connector locations.




Kingston HyperX is a new sponsor. They provided me with this 480GB SSD which will be the system's only drive.






They also sent me this 8GB Fury kit rated at 1866MHz.







Thanks for looking.

 

Chopped up a bunch of 1/2" thick basswood sticks and glued them up into the matrix. Backing board is 1/16" aircraft grade birch plywood.

Once after mentioning some Imperial measurements a friend in Europe sent me a link to a world map with the US highlighted. It was suppose to be nations in the world not on the metric system. I told him I thought is was nations who have walked on the moon.






Carved out the openings with a razer knife and sandpaper.








Glued up some offset spacers for the I/O plate mounting.
















The thickness of the cases back plate is determined by the mounting tangs of the video card. I also need the thickness to provide extra support because this sucka is heavy.




The project height will be determined by the 8-pin PCIE power connector on the video card. I have a low-profile version in the works. Until then the height of the back plate will remain "crazy tall".




Assembled the components and tested by installing Windows 8.1. Microsoft has been a supporter of mine for the last four years by providing the OS for all projects. Photo can also be captioned "Ten pounds of sh*t to go into a five pound bag".

Thanks for looking!

 

You have my attention. Good start and good objectives. I have a similar build but elected to have un-restricted air path through the AIO rad. And Prime95 torture test or Handbrake I still see temps getting into the low 70's.

Keep the post coming. Good modding,
neil

 

Subbed!

 

*grabs some popcorn*
There´s something awesome coming our way.

 

Very nice

 

Cool! I've got no use for Prime 95 but I do plan on running gaming related benchmarks when I'm finished. I ran a free version 3DMark benchmark on the system to help burn it in but I'm not sure if that is what everyone else is using nowadays.

Hopefully!

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Low-profile graphics card power connector will help keep down the overall height of the enclosure. I calculate about 10mm savings which translates to approximately .6 liters in my design.




This is the cleat that will eventually hold the radiator mounting plate to the case. It needs to be removable so I'm using threaded wood inserts. First drill out pilot holes.




An Allen wrench is used to set the insert into place.






This is the radiator mounting plate with holes located for the four radiator mounts and two slots cut for the hoses. Opening for air flow is on the to-do list. This is 6-ply 1/8 inch aircraft grade birch plywood.




Mounting the cleat using 8-32 screws.




There will be an identical cleat mounted to the other end of the radiator plate. The cleats will be attached to the interior of the case so as to span the distance front to back.


Thanks for looking.

 

Liking those threaded inserts, gives me an idea for my build as I need a few fasteners that aren't easily seen. Thanks!

 

You're welcome.

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Cut out the radiator opening and trimmed the plate length to size.




I had to add some material for the video card mount in order to allow adequate depth for the wood insert. I also had to widen the face on one side in order to center the radiator fan (and opening).




Wood insert and screw for the video card mount. I'll install another one next to it after adding more material to the area. I always use both screws in a two slot video card although some say that is overkill.




The front plate is identical to the back plate dimension-wise. Same 1/16" birch plywood with 1/2" reinforcements.




Here the two are back to back.




Here they are stacked.




Both face plates have the same 1/8" ledge to help align and fit them to the bottom plate.




Something like this. The height will be trimmed down significantly as soon as I get comfortable with what it should be. Sits nicely until the wind blows.




The radiator plate tossed on top. It will bridge the front and back plates eventually. I'm experimenting with 15mm thick radiator fans instead of the stock 25mm fans and that could greatly alter the radiator plate position.

Important to note here that all of this is an internal structure that won't be seen when finished. There is a completely separate candy-coated outer shell that will slide down over the top of this inner structure.

Thanks for looking!

 

Attached the cleat to the front panel.




Showing the embedded screw inserts.




Attached the cleat to the back panel.




Radiator mounting panel with attachment hardware ready to go.




Most of the scribbling is just random thoughts from some previous project. I tend to write on wood instead of paper.




Front and back panels bridged by the radiator mount.








Added in the bottom panel. This will be glued together eventually but I still have significant work to do on the individual panels so this is just a photo op.









Framed in the PSU so it can only move one way...upward.




Bought this mesh desk set at OfficeMax for cheap.




Loads of high quality mesh that will take me years to use up. Some brands are better than others. I like this variety because it is a tighter mesh.




Finally after all these years I sprung for a crimper. This project hinges on reducing the mass of cables.




Over the years I have amassed a virtual mountain of spare modular cables of all varieties. I feel comfortable that I can experiment and screw up on a grand scale without too much consequence.




First up is the 12V EPS 4+4 cable. My board doesn't need the +4 so half of the cables disappear before it gets shortened. Before and after photo.




Next up is the PCIE cable. Instead of the 6+2 connector nonsense I'm going with exactly what I need...8-pin. Before and after. Note: I'm not concerned with fancy sleeving or anything right now. I'm only concerned with proper length and whether it actually works or not. I assumed up front that I'll be making each cable twice before all the dust clears.




SATA cable was a piece of cake because I have done them before. Before and after photo.




I haven't tackled the 24-pin ATX cable yet because of a mystery. The cable included in the new power supply has an electronic component heat-shrinked into the cable bundle. I did a little research but came up with nothing.






My best guess is it has something to do with backfitting PSUs with "Haswell compatibility" by using a special cable set. Does anyone know anything about this?

Thanks for looking.

 

if you open it up. you should find a capacitor underthere. but why its there and if it needs to be there. not sure

 

Looks like the outline of a capacitor. There has been some discussion about it being used to make up for a poor performing product but I'm having a hard time believing a Gold rated Silverstone is sub-standard.

 

The caps are either to eliminate noise, or as a buffer when going from idle to full power on.

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/t361212.html

 

I had the same questions. I have used this PSU on two projects and ended up just generating a standard 25 pin cable pin out. And used a one piece 24 pin connector housing.

neil

 

Compared to your usual work, this sucker is gigantic. I can't wait to see the deco scheme, though.

Can you move the cap back or sleeve over it. -There's always a fat chick in the lineup.

 

I stripped off the factory sleeving to trace the wires. Using the pin diagram from the above extremeoverclocking.com link I determined that pin 13 (Orange) and pin 3 (Black) coming out of the PSU connector "disappear" into the heatshrink. Coming out of the heatshrink are a Black and Orange wire. The Orange goes into pin 2 on the MB connector and the Black wire goes into pin 3.

Can anyone translate that or even understand it?

I left a message with my Silverstone people. I think there might be a holiday going on in Taiwan.

@Cheaps It is smaller than Ingraham. Coke can photos coming soon will reveal it to be smaller than it appears...hopefully.

 

The v1.0 of this PSU had a ripple problem on the 5V rail. Silverstone's quick fix was to add a capacitor right at the connector for the v1.1 and on. I imagine space is limited inside the PSU and it's become a relatively common practice to add caps outside the PSU when a little extra filtering is needed. It obviously makes sleeving a pain and with other PSUs I have removed the extra caps but for this particular one I would recommend leaving it there.

 

Mocked up with the help of some heavy-duty rubber bands. The upper corner pieces are temporary to keep the box square. They will be fitted permanently later.





A Delta AFB-series fan...for when you get tired of playing with toy fans.





Coke can in classic reclining pose.




Circle drawn on the front will be the location of a 120mm exhaust fan.


Note again: This is all internal structure.

 

Officially from Silverstone...

"Hi Jeffrey, that component is a capacitor, it was added after the final
design of the PSU. Its function is to reduce ripple on the +3.3V rail on
higher loading conditions (the ST45SF-G is spec'd up to 19A on this rail).
In actual use, having slightly higher ripple will not change the stability
or function of connected system. The theory is that higher ripple may cause
shorter lifespan for motherboard regulator.

Our engineers originally wanted to add the capacitor internally after final
design, but as you can probably tell already, the ST45SF-G is so tight
inside, there was no more room to do this.

For nearly all PC users, this won't be an issue even if they change to
another cable without the capacitor because demand on the +3.3V from modern
PCs is very low, I doubt anyone could load ST45SF-G anywhere close to 19A.
I think you can say that we added this so the ST45SF-G can perform better in
PSU tests and for machines with special applications that depend more
heavily on +3.3V than typical PCs? We even recommend users to buy our
PP05-E cable kit and that doesn't include a capacitor either."

One of the reasons I love Silverstone products is that they are made by smart and daring people who respond to my inquiries promptly and honestly.

 

Another work of art in progress so subbed to this