Something I've been putting together for fun after looking at a few things such as Valve's steam machine prototype, NCASE's steam machine prototype, and a few other things. Here are some photos in SketchUp. The frame of the case is made out of three parts like the NCASE steam machine: a front panel assembly, rear panel assembly, and a bent midframe (see here for a clearer idea, courtesy of Necere). The case was made in mind with 1.5 mm aluminium (glass bead or sand blasted, bright dipped (?), and anodized). This is still a work-in-progress.
Specifications:
Things incomplete:
This case is designed to take three 2.5" drives. The heights of the mockups from left to right are 9.5 mm, 12 mm, and 15 mm. All dimensions were taken from the official SFF-8201 document describing 2.5" hard drive dimensions, connector positioning, and mounting hole measurements. The GPU is approximately 5 mm from the midframe in this compartment from the restricted component height area from the back planar side of the GPU PCB. I searched up the thickest backplate I could find dimensions for (at least the one that looked thickest, and it was the Heatkiller GTX970 backplate which is about 3 mm thick so there is some space left, though barely).
Hard drives are mounted under the GPU. The original plan was to have them above the GPU behind the back of the GPU, but from some of NCASE's testing that seems to be a rather poor choice, so this is the only other viable option in my opinion. Here is the link to the post after testing.
Quote: Necere
Now for the part about the motherboard cutout I mentioned earlier. mITX spec (which refers to mATX spec) states that for the secondary (bottom) side of a motherboard that you MUST have 0.250" or more clearance. The motherboard standoffs themselves are actually only 4.85 mm. However, due to the cutout and some extra spacing, the actual distance from the bottom of the motherboard to the closest surface (which is now the back panel due to the cutout) is 6.35 mm. What I am unsure of, however, is if this distance needs to be changed for the use of M.2 SSD's on the bottom of the motherboard (since most mITX boards have the M.2 connector on the bottom of the motherboard), so I need to find a source to check this. Motherboard minimum distance trick is courtesy of Necere.
Quote: Necere
The hard drives are mounted on a removable bracket just like on the NCASE M1 with it's fan/radiator/HDD mount assembly. I tried to remove as much aluminum as possible from the bracket to allow air to pass through to the GPU.
The cutout in the front panel assembly you've been seeing in some of the photos is to make it easier to insert or remove the SFX power supply since the area between the motherboard and power supply is likely to be crowded with cables. The cutout allows you to grip the top sides of the power supply to move it around to make it easy to move.
https://www.behance.net/wip/1556443/2662369
Specifications:
- 2-chamber design (1. Motherboard and SFX PSU, 2. GPU and HDDs)
- 315 mm GPU chamber (312 mm is the maximum length and specified by PCI-SIG PCIe specification)
- Actual maximum length will be lowered because of power button assembly taking up some space in the GPU compartment. Rarely do many cards come close to this length (well, there's a few 390X aftermarkets that exceed this length but there are also some below this length). Later cards will be getting shorter and shorter with the introduction of HBM as seen in the new AMD Fury and Nano cards.
- GPU will be connected using a riser card based on a ribbon cable. The PCB of the riser card will be mounted to the midframe.
- A 10.5" GPU (Titan X/980 Ti/980 sized card) is shown for reference.
- SFX and SFX-L support
- CPU Cooler height restricted to the specified mITX component height restrictions (57 mm from PCB. Average height of Intel socket structures are approximately 8 mm, leaving you with 49 mm of cooler height. The best performing cooler you can fit in here is probably a Cryorig C7). There is 1-2 mm of extra clearance just in case. The 57 mm clearance height specification also means that ASUS boards that use a daughterboard perpendicular to the motherboard for the power regulation circuitry WILL fit in this case (those are designed to comply with the maximum component height restrictions). All dimensions were taken from formfactors.org.
- Motherboard cutout (not finished but planned, part of the reason this case stays within spec)
- Storage: 3 x 2.5" Hard Drives (15 mm height maximum), M.2 (need to check if clearance requirement changes for M.2 SSDs mounted on back)
- Dimensions (with calculated side panels on. Dimensions of current WIP are slightly smaller due to some missing panels)
- Height: 73 mm (not including case feet)
- Width: 321 mm
- Depth: 319.5 mm
- Volume: 7.49 L (not including case feet)
- I can try to make the case a bit shorter though to try to compensate if support for 300 mm graphics cards is deemed irrelevant, but I can only make it so short so that the SFX PSU touches the edge of the 24-pin side of the motherboard.
- Valve Steam Machine Prototype Dimensions (for reference), all dimensions are approximates Valve gave:
- Height: 73.66 mm
- Width: 304.8 mm
- Depth: 314.96 mm
- Volume: 7.07 L
Things incomplete:
- Left and right panel covers
- Ventilation (need to choose a grill pattern(s) and layout)
- Front Panel Cover (to attach in front of front panel assembly)
- Power and USB (Front Panel Cover)
- Screw and Panel Mount Holes
- Power Supply 3-prong extension cable to back of the case
- Motherboard cutout
- Midframe cutouts for PSU power cables and SATA cables along with GPU riser card
- PSU mounting bracket
This case is designed to take three 2.5" drives. The heights of the mockups from left to right are 9.5 mm, 12 mm, and 15 mm. All dimensions were taken from the official SFF-8201 document describing 2.5" hard drive dimensions, connector positioning, and mounting hole measurements. The GPU is approximately 5 mm from the midframe in this compartment from the restricted component height area from the back planar side of the GPU PCB. I searched up the thickest backplate I could find dimensions for (at least the one that looked thickest, and it was the Heatkiller GTX970 backplate which is about 3 mm thick so there is some space left, though barely).
Hard drives are mounted under the GPU. The original plan was to have them above the GPU behind the back of the GPU, but from some of NCASE's testing that seems to be a rather poor choice, so this is the only other viable option in my opinion. Here is the link to the post after testing.
Quote: Necere
The case works with SFX and SFX-L power supplies. The exhaust end of the power supply sits 20 mm from the end of the midframe (21.5 mm from side of case) and will require a right angle 3-prong extender like seen on the NCASE M1. I don't know the dimensions of 90 degree 3-prong power connectors so I do not if this distance can be reduced to give more room on the other side of the PSU where the power cables come out (I hope so).So here's what's going on: I did some thermal testing over the weekend and I'm not entirely satisfied with the results. The CPU and PSU cooling aren't an issue, it's the GPU side and the drives that are a concern. I tested with a reference (blower) GTX 780, and while it ran at its rated clockspeed @<83C, the backside of the card and/or some components (VRMs) were obviously getting quite hot. I say obvious because while I had no way of measuring it, there was a notable smell of hot plastic, which I don't find acceptable. Now, this is a fairly hot running card (250W TDP), but it's nevertheless something the case ought to be sufficiently designed to handle. The bottom line is that you really do need some active airflow across the back of the card - relying completely on the card's fans is fine for the what the heatsink covers, but inadequate, IMO, for cooling the parts of the card it doesn't. Honestly, I should've listened to my own advice on this.
What's more, drives temps got pretty high. I had an 2TB 2.5" drive installed at the back and it saw 50C while the GPU was under load. So Saper, you were right about this, and in my theorycrafting I neglected to take into account just how well aluminum conducts heat. In fact, under GPU load conditions, the entire rear part of the case becomes completely heat saturated and basically turns into an oven for the drives. The situation might be better in a case like the RVZ02, which has the same drives-behind-the-GPU-separated-by-a-partition layout, due to the lower heat conductivity of steel and the plastic drive mounting. But clearly for an aluminum chassis, a different design is in order.
Now for the part about the motherboard cutout I mentioned earlier. mITX spec (which refers to mATX spec) states that for the secondary (bottom) side of a motherboard that you MUST have 0.250" or more clearance. The motherboard standoffs themselves are actually only 4.85 mm. However, due to the cutout and some extra spacing, the actual distance from the bottom of the motherboard to the closest surface (which is now the back panel due to the cutout) is 6.35 mm. What I am unsure of, however, is if this distance needs to be changed for the use of M.2 SSD's on the bottom of the motherboard (since most mITX boards have the M.2 connector on the bottom of the motherboard), so I need to find a source to check this. Motherboard minimum distance trick is courtesy of Necere.
Quote: Necere
Most of the case is 1.5mm. Currently the standoffs are 3.5mm, however the cutout on the motherboard tray encompasses everywhere there's likely to be extended features on the back of the motherboard (e.g., CPU cooler backplate). The cutout allows 6.5mm of clearance to the side panel.
The hard drives are mounted on a removable bracket just like on the NCASE M1 with it's fan/radiator/HDD mount assembly. I tried to remove as much aluminum as possible from the bracket to allow air to pass through to the GPU.
The cutout in the front panel assembly you've been seeing in some of the photos is to make it easier to insert or remove the SFX power supply since the area between the motherboard and power supply is likely to be crowded with cables. The cutout allows you to grip the top sides of the power supply to move it around to make it easy to move.
https://www.behance.net/wip/1556443/2662369