Sub 4.5L Internally Powered PC in a Made-to-Spec Chassis

Hey all. I’ve been interested in SFF for a while now and coming over from large water-cooling systems that take up a lot of space on your desk and are made to draw attention has been a real breath of fresh air.

I recently built a PC in a Modivio xCase S and while I really enjoyed that chassis and I felt what they are doing with those was a great idea I started looking for something that fits in a bit more with my desktop. Something sleek, metallic and with some sharper edges. As a fan of the console style layout I first looked into the Skyreach and while I do love how that case looks, in the end I guess I was after something a bit more unique for me.

As I am active on Gury’s Discord server I saw him posting pictures of some cases he made for other clients there and became intrigued, so I reached out to him to ask if it’d be possible to design a console style case made to spec of the parts I planned to use;

Z370 ITX Motherboard of some variation
QN8J Engineering Sample (8700t equivalent)
Cryorig c7 cu
Gigabyte ITX card of less than 170mm (1070/1080 and now 2070 mini)

He agreed and we got underway planning. At first I requested a system with an external power brick using his archdaemon solution as I had good experience with it in the past, however shortly into the designing of the case he proposed the possibility of fitting the brick in the otherwise wasted space under the GPU.

As of yet I don’t have this case in hand, however I have many photos he has sent me throughout the manufacturing process which I’m eager to share. I’ll reserve two posts after this one for updates when I get new photos and the case in hand. So here goes.

Photos:

Spoiler

Please keep in mind these are just photos of a test fit of parts, the final chassis will also feature two USB-C ports on the front (the final spec of these ports is not fully decided yet)

I'm hoping I'll be able to finish this build of shortly after CNY so stay tuned for updates. I'd love to hear your comments on it

 

Have some nicer images here:

Spoiler

Thanks

 

Here's some photos of the build!







More in this imgur gallery here https://imgur.com/gallery/C8SmmYs

 

Awesome small case!
Is that a custom made PSU just for this case?
Any reason not to have the MB / GPU on the other side, so that the PCIE riser can be much shorter and not go under the MB?

 

Custom PSU for the case yeah! Riser would still be roughly same length as there aren’t many increments and this way it frees up room under the GPU for the psu

 

Love it man, such a nice design. Have you seen the Velka M case from Velkase?
It's about the same size, 4 litres or so, and uses the sandwich design with 2 top mounted 80mm fans and a flex-ATX PSU.

Similar hardware compatibility to your I reckon.

Looks like you have some properly impressive cooling capacity here, have you considered using a Alpenfoehn Black Ridge with a bottom 92mm fan blowing up, then another one of those Cryorig fans exhausting out the top? If you ran both those 140mm slim fans as exhaust I reckon you'll be able to vent most of the hot air out of the case pretty easily.

 

I’m not a huge fan of the Velka personally, not sure what it is exactly. I hadn’t considered a black ridge, not certain it’ll fit. I’ll do some precise measurements when I get it in hand though for sure, certainly something to think about.

 

If it does fit I think it will be the best option definitely

 

Sorry for a perhaps stupid question, but how is the psu cooled?

And... friggin' awesome sauce project you have there. Love the idea of a flat psu!

Edit: ahh found the reddit thread on this... and I see that its chassis cooled

 

Yeah the chassis dissipates the heat!