This has been ticking along for a while but blame Yuusou he suggested I do a build thread on this so Enjoy and endure. Also, as I am about 3/4 through so its a bit of a mess so apologies Also started as I wanted a fun WFH PC. So I lobbed together a little ITX build with what I had about. It then snowballed somewhat and evolved into an externally water cooled scratch build, because I'm an idiot and enjoy headaches. So, spec wise AMD 8700G ASROCK B850i ITX 32Gb Corsair Dominator Titanium 2Tb M.2 160W Pico PSU This all started a couple of months back so my memory is a little fuzzy on parts. Basically I started out with a rough plan, I wanted a small ITX build and for some reason decided it was a smart idea to not only water cool it, which for a 65W TDP CPU is, daft. But externally water cool it (brilliant move totally wont be the bane of my life in a couple of weeks time) So doodling commenced. I hit upon a design I liked which is a variant of a type of Kumiko woodworking. Except I am not that good at it. Thankfully, I have a laser cutter! Many hours of design work later I have version one of the base (yeah that changed) IMG_20260314_171834631_HDR_AE by legoman posted 20 Apr 2026 at 20:07 This is made from 3mm frosted acrylic which is a slightly off black (Midnight black apparently) its very nice but needed a little more interest. Now initially this was going to be a mixed softline and hardline build which explains the hole you can see in the bottom of the case. This will be the front eventually. but space issues meant it was a no go meaning there was a void that served no real purpose, but I will show later that turned out to be very useful. With the setback of the mixed tubes/hosing aside I decided to start making some overlay panels. Idea here is to add some more strength to the piece as 3mm acrylic is not the strongest of things so some additional 3mm walnut plywood helps massively here. I added some Sakura like Kumiko here, this was taken during the laser process. IMG_20260329_160248148_HDR by legoman posted 21 Apr 2026 at 10:21 The larger side panel evolved from one of the smaller parts after placing it on the case I decided to not add this and then add trim to hide some of the cables also adding some etching to mirror the pattern. This will lock on using magnets glued to both the side of the case and the underside of the panel. With this I thought it would use the Kumiko pattern for something it's used for quite often, which is lamps. Yeah, that void, its now going to be packed with LED strips. For the LED strip I went with a USB powered one. plan being to use one of the internal USB headers to drive this. It's also the same one I use for my monitor shelf light which lights the keyboard area on my desk and is also wireless. I've tested this and confirmed they work I can turn them on and off changing the brightness and colour temperature. Now with a side panel we want to look at the front. This was relatively simple just carry on the pattern and style to this and add a hole for a power button. It was also the perfect opportunity to show a lamp in there to see what happened IMG_20260406_154442441_HDR by legoman posted 20 Apr 2026 at 20:07 IMG_20260406_154435058_HDR by legoman posted 20 Apr 2026 at 20:07 Excellent! Its doing what we want. The front here is wrong I forgot to add 6mm to one side to come level with the top panel. Also the hole was 0.50mm too small, All part of the learning process. Also you have to consider I am designing this in 2D so it adds some additional messing about. At this stage we are quite close to the present state, and here is where I made a substantial change in terms of hardware. Initially I was going to use a 5600G with an X570i with 64Gb of RAM. But, I had the 8700G and board I was going to use for another project, which was a little silly as that will have a GPU. So all change and back into the laser software to re make the entire rear IO! To make this cleaner and because it looks cool I re made the rear IO in the software. being 3mm thick you can still plug everything in without issue. Image by legoman posted 20 Apr 2026 at 20:07 Faffing aside I turned started testing things, I noticed the pico PSU gets quite warm in use and it had no cooling so I added a panel with a large channel a channel for some cable to run and some 40mm holes for the cutest little fans, just look at them with their little fan grills! IMG_20260411_193933512_HDR by legoman posted 21 Apr 2026 at 10:49 An yeah, I labelled everything internally you can see "ght tape" that is part of where the LED light strip will run. Plan with this is both fans blow back into the main body of the case pulling air over the PSU so happy PSU. This panel simply slots in. I have already cut some internal panels for this just I have no photos currently Now we are pretty much up to date. I have re cut the front panel and created the cable channel to hide the power cables and cables that run down to the external radiator. IMG_20260419_160141664_HDR by legoman posted 21 Apr 2026 at 10:41 IMG_20260419_161618502_HDR by legoman posted 21 Apr 2026 at 10:41 More to come soon, hopefully somewhat more coherent though!
Bit of an update as its all now glued together. Well, it was at least but I have pinged off a wood panel as I am debating a hole in the side which I will explain. But here we are at the moment, in this shot the bottom sits proud slightly, that was an error on my part which I fixed, I failed to add the stack height for the magnet when I fitted the magnet. I also took out a strip from the magnet to reduce the pull force. Its secure just doesn't mean you have to bend the thing to remove the side panel now. IMG_20260503_115044335_HDR~3 by legoman posted 4 May 2026 at 22:09 IMG_20260503_115134376_HDR~3 by legoman posted 4 May 2026 at 22:09 Waiting on some bulkhead fittings and black 90 degree fittings then I can actually plumb it up. Speaking off this is the radiator I will be using. IMG_20260426_151601466_HDR by legoman posted 4 May 2026 at 22:11 Yeah, dual 80mm fans... These are the arctic P8 silent, so they run at their full speed of 1600rpm and they are silent basically. Radiator is 160mm X 60mm so beefy enough to deal with the APU. I mentioned a hole, this is because the little pico PSU gets a bit toasty I did have a plate with a pair of 40mm fans to circulate air but there was nothing direct onto the PSU so I am thinking a mount so the fan is facing the PSU like below. I can also drill a hole into the side but I think there would be enough coming from outside the case, seeing as there is no glass it has a big enough area with the main "window" to draw in from. IMG_20260502_222201570_HDR by legoman posted 4 May 2026 at 22:09
It looks fantastic. Cabinet magnets are a bit clunky and overkill. You probably could have gotten away with gluing just the magnet to the case edge. Radiator box time?
