I'll take some more when I put in a couple hard drives. I should be able to fit it all in to the smaller version of the case.
I don't know what's worse. The fact I am building an ITX PC, or the fact I have kept pretty quiet about it. Mine is unusual in the fact it's sort of a HTPC but not. It's literally just to play audio. I got this case. For £42 on Amazon. It's really nice but I have had an issue or two with it. Maybe I am unlucky, maybe the manual totally sucks. To get the 120mm fan in there and to access the dust filters you need to remove the bottom. However it just shows you this image that is totally useless, and fails to tell you there are tons of clips around. I thought I had broken the clips, instead I broke off the LED diffuser which also holds in the power button. The correct way to perform this procedure seems to be to remove the front IO before you try. However, one of the posts that holds the screws just turns. So yeah, typically in ITX fashion I have done some cursing along the way. I got this 300w FSP unit on Ebay for £15. It actually looked like a regular PSU in the images. But isn't thankfully. For my board and CPU I got tons of stress. You can not find a Ryzen G, Athlon G or Celeron anywhere. Thankfully I stumbled across this, and after a bit of reading snagged it. You need to be careful with RAM apparently, so I went with 8gb from the QVL list. 2x4 I've been doing bits here and there as they arrive. Today I fitted the SSD and PSU. And fitted the Mclaren badge I bought for it to make it fit in with my stereo gear a bit better. Usually I like my cases blingy, but in this instance I kinda wish they had made a fold down cover for the IO ports on the front. Depending on whether it annoys me enough I may make a cover for those.
Ok I'm as much of an itx addict as and one else on this thread but I have to ask, why not a pi + DAC board?
A simple reason - I don't know. I don't know anything about Pis. The Xonar STX has 192khz ability (I will be using it at 96 as my AV processor only supports that) as well as two DACs and switchable OPAMPs. So I suppose it's more for familiarity than wanting to spend weeks learning new tricks. I can also totally change the sound signature by either swapping out the OPAMPs or just fitting another sound card (I want to try my Tit HD as it has a much more pronounced mid range). However, what the Xonar also has is a digital output. Which means I can still listen to my music in Dolby surround mode, which I find myself using more than stereo now. It really does add something extra to the music. At first I thought maybe it was going to mess with the stereo sound and split it off and mess around with it adding echo, but it doesn't. At all. So dropping down to stereo only means you are robbing yourself of the extra dimension. I've also found this today. https://www.ap-linux.com/ The last version I found was 250 Euro and apparently a bit crap and buggy. Edit. I just did some reading and by the time I decked out a Pi it would have cost me more. The audio board is £89, the DSP is another £49 and that's without the Pi, case etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NZXT/comments/k26whj/h1_safety_issue/ NZXT H1 has been issued a recall because the riser can short and catch fire.
Thanks for the heads up, only got mine a couple of months back. Will wait for the replacement part as I only have it on when next to it and it sounds like the risk of a short is pretty low really.
mid way through transferring the last server from our POS ones to our EPYC boi so didn't have the time. sorry for the slipping standards. it won't happen again
Built a Geeek A50 build for my brother. Very frustrating to put together (one of the screws into the top rail was binding and wouldn't screw in, and omg peeling protective film off of acrylic ) but end result is pretty nice and has an aesthetic you won't get with other cases. Definitely worth considering if you want a minimalist SFF build but don't want to spend £200+ and wait several months for delivery. Wouldn't get if you are moving the pc around a lot though, as it feels a tiny bit fragile.
Hey ITX nerds, quick question. I have a Lian Li TU200b, really cute case. Looks a bit like a guitar amp, has flight case corners and a carry handle. I got it for a song from a forumite here years ago but its RRP was about £250 and it still fetches about that on eBay if it ever turns up. So question is, are there other ITX cases of a similar design? I don't need one right now, it just upsets me that the brilliant design - upright ITX, tall feet, VGA inhaling thru the floor, massive fan mount, carry handle - didn't catch on.
Their new TU150 is practically the exact same case....just a bit newer and better designed and can be had for £109 I think?
Yeah, the 150 is going for around £100 new, but the TU200 (and TU100) was very popular with the LAN party crowd because it was designed to take a knock or two.
Welcome back to the small & awkward side @Vault-Tec That design's a great shape and I'm always a sucker for a good case handle. The TU150 looks pretty good, but I can't forgive it being twice the volume of my NCase M1, just too bulky for my liking. Corona has put paid to my weekly LAN nights locally, so a handle isn't so vital at the moment. The M1 in its webbing carrying harness is perfect for that job.
I'm at a weird point with stuff just not working or not being able to get what I want . Main rig is currently just on an open bench type thing. I really can't decide on the next steps. All my last few Nas builds are too hot for my liking, with drives hitting 50 degrees. I keep collecting random things find they don't work how I want and am building a big reject pile. Current thought is mass clear out and start again with everything!
It is pretty nice. But...it also expands up towards the size of some mATX solutions, while moving the GPU fans further away from the case side (meaning more recirculation of air and less intake) and downscaling the front fan from a 140 to a 120. Still, it's a neat solution within the constraints of the conventional down-facing GPU, front intake, rear exhaust layout. But also, it perfectly encapsulates why that layout is fundamentally flawed, particularly with the GPU designs now. The GPU is dumping its air into the case, largely against the board and back into the CPU loop. The CPU eating everyone else's exhaust and trying to act like it's fine. If you were designing all components and the chassis shape from scratch, you'd have your GPU as its own intake and exhaust somehow, the way PSU compartments have managed to do with PSUs. You'd maybe do the same with CPU cooling, or at least fit it into the intake/exhaust, which an AiO cooler does. And you'd probably want your intakes close to the mainboard and your exhaust further away, and your exhaust to be bigger - the reverse of current conventions. And you'd probably want your airflow entirely going upwards against gravity, as a couple of esoteric case designs have attempted before - because hot air rises. The way my TU200B appeals to me is that it tiptoes towards this concept. The GPU is right against the lower intake, so although that intake is too small, it is at least very directly drawing in outside air from the lowest point. However, the missing links are that the GPU exhaust still spurts all over the inside of the case and board, and the CPU has no dedicated intake at all, subsisting on recycled hot GPU air. Approach the four components - MB, CPU, GPU, PSU - without any preconceptions, and you kinda want to do something like this: Unfortunately it isn't possible to isolate the GPU like that inside the case, because GPU designs are stupid: They're the hottest component by far, yet they belch their exhaust air all over themselves and everything else, making linear airflow basically impossible. We want to do this: But we have to choose between one of these: Since the GPU needs cold air more in most systems and is prone to recycling its own exhaust air, the best we can do is make the GPU an intake, so it's at least only drawing in cool outside air and not eating its own tail: But now we've got a problem, because the CPU and MB are eating the GPU's hot exhaust. We could just stick the GPU outside the case, but this kind of defeats the point of having a case: You need the GPU inside the case. You need the PSU and CPU loop inside the case for the same reasons. But we need to dilute the GPU's horrible hot exhaust air with some cooler air to help the MB and CPU out. The normal solution to this is to just add loads of space and fans, but since this is ITX country, we don't have that option. Are there other options? The PSU has grown smaller and smaller in my drawings, because it's easy to overlook. It's designed to be overlooked. But modern branded PSUs under optimal load are very cool components. We get their air straight in and out, as if they need special treatment, but the exhaust air from a PSU is usually stone cold ambient (if you bought the right wattage for your setup), because the modern PSU is under-stressed and over-engineered. Why not use it as an intake? This might not be as stupid as it first seems. Consider: the CPU has the best cooling solution and is the one component a home user can easily give extra surface area and liquid cooling with a big AiO radiator. The PSU and GPU will get their clean outside air, the GPU's hot exhaust is diluted somewhat by the PSU, and the case can still have a fairly linear overall airflow, despite the GPU's inherently shitty design. The last drawing is deliberately abstracted to a conceptual level because I haven't the capacity to visualize what this might look like in real 3D terms yet. This is just an attempt to start over from first principles, without preconceptions, and think what an ideal case would look like (without the option to totally redesign GPUs and without resorting to very expensive exotic solutions like AiO liquid cooled GPUs).
Some of the sandwich designs seem like they would do a bit better, where they suck in cold air from the sides and exhaust it out the top (and bottom), and GPU is separate compartment. Don't know how well this translates in practice.
I love the drawings! I have come to the conclusion that sticking it all under water is the ideal outcome for cooling in tight spaces (and the NCase I have is really good for it) - but boy is it expensive and fiddly to set up, and actually requires some maintenance!
