Superdense mITX build - 3d printed chassis

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   Well, since it's a scratchbuilt project, we can always make it beer... 

I prefer Club Mate, though :)

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sinusoid Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 22 May 2015 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote sinusoid Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Topic: Superdense mITX build - 3d printed chassis Posted: 28 May 2015 at 1:48am
	Well, since it's a scratchbuilt project, we can always make it beer... I prefer Club Mate, though :)

Illegalseagull Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 24 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 79	Post Options Post Reply Quote Illegalseagull Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 28 May 2015 at 1:11am
	Eh... ...is it beer?
	ASROCK Z97M OC Formula Intel i5 - 4690K @ 4.5ghz Stable Overclock

sinusoid Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 22 May 2015 Status: Offline Points: 14	Post Options Post Reply Quote sinusoid Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 28 May 2015 at 1:08am
	Oh come on, water? It's the 21st century, we can use something that has a relatively low freezeing point (-50°C), high decomposition temperature (316°C), is a natural lubricator, has low viscosity, and is a chemically inert insulator. Something that is, unlike water, perfect.

Illegalseagull Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 24 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 79	Post Options Post Reply Quote Illegalseagull Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 27 May 2015 at 7:23pm
	Lol Of course custom water loop... How did I not see this coming?
	ASROCK Z97M OC Formula Intel i5 - 4690K @ 4.5ghz Stable Overclock

sinusoid2 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 26 May 2015 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote sinusoid2 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 May 2015 at 7:00am
	Now a quick sneak peek of what's to come. 30000 hours MTBF, ceramic core brushless DC, fit for continuous operation, 15W nominal power, max. operation temperature: 110 deg. Celsius. Those are 1/2 inch threads you see there. Cost me half of the motherboard. These things are used as recirculation pumps in house heating, solar installations, etc. Of course we're gonna carve off the top and 3d print a more suitable chamber for the little beast of a turbine this baby houses :)

sinusoid2 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 26 May 2015 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote sinusoid2 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 May 2015 at 6:40am
	UPDATE: Cutting down the PSU cables Okay! So let's set up a workbench and get down to work: I covered the sensitive parts of the board with blue tape, since there's gonna be a hotair and solder involved. Last thing I want is to get a drop of solder onto the mobo or the PSU. Tried soldering and heat-wrapping the first cable. It turned out the cables are electroplated with something, and solder doesn't really like it. I thought this may be the case, so I trimmed the wire with some tolerance, to allow me to amend it. THe workbench got populated pretty fast. I used a dremel tool with a grinding stone to carve off the electroplating off the wires. Solder caught them brilliantly then. Heating the shrinkwrap and taking a photo at the same time. It's called safety at work -_- Then I clamped it and trimmed it, it looks like so: A closeup on the soldering. I know I should have soldered it differently, but meh. It's not gonna undergo any tensions, there is no way this is gonna come apart. Aaand we slowly progress, wire after wire... Aaaand we're done! I also trimmed down the additional powercable that's not utilized by the mobo: And that's how the board looks like now. I also trimmed down the 8 pin connector cables a little: Workspace shot: Aaand we're done! A summary pic of what's been removed from the board: That's how it looks like from the top now: And this is gonna happen next: I will cut the AC cable, move it to the connectors panel, and trim the little board with GPU and HDD connectors, then move it so I can access the GPU wires on the other side of the board (more about this later), and the HDDs are gonna fill up the empty spaces on this side of the mobo I think, so that's where their power cables are gonna be needed.

sinusoid2 Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 26 May 2015 Status: Offline Points: 3	Post Options Post Reply Quote sinusoid2 Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 26 May 2015 at 6:11am
	OK, so I apparently lost my password to the forum, and retrieval emails failed to arrive... and I can't see any email address for inquiries anywhere. Registered second account, waiting for the problem to be resolved. Anyway! @Xaltar - There will be more :) Still got a few surprises up my sleeve. Stay tuned! @ASRock-Official - Hey, thanks for making such awesome small-format boards in the first place! :D @parsec - re: connectors - I went the solder + heatshrink path over the weekend. Update in a sec. Would still have to solder the ends of those cables to use the connectors effectively, and this way I saved a lot of space. I initially wanted to desolder the ATX port and desolder the cables from the PSU, then match the two with a custom etched PCB board. But the height of surrounding elements (heatsinks on PSU and RAMs on the mobo) made me reconsider. I wouldn't be able to use the resulting space anyway. I wish I could find small factor PSU in the 600watt range, something like these: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/PICO-BOX-X3-ATX-300-DC-ATX-PSU-Power-Supply-300W-2-Port-DC-Input-12V/1920946905.html I could really cut down the size then. @Illegalseagull - Agreed. Though I'm not a big fan of SLI, you get compatibility issues with virtualizaiton (Xen), etc. Imvho it's better to get a top shelf card, or wait a few years :P. I like extreme processing power to density ratios. This thing here already has a better ratio than commercial blade servers AFAIK, and it's intended for 4.5GHz stable :) I'll be posting a comparison to a commercial dual-processor blade soon-ish, with photos and some volume calculations. At least that's the plan :) Now, the update!

Illegalseagull Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 24 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 79	Post Options Post Reply Quote Illegalseagull Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 25 May 2015 at 2:48pm
	very cool build..never seen anyone modding a psu before like this...I like it..will be following along, keep the pics coming Also, I want to say that I agree about so many people bashing the itx form factor...I really don't understand it. As much as SLI and having so many HDD bay expandability can be good things, the vast vast majority of people just don't need 4 dimm slots, 6 sata ports, 3 pcie slots, etc. So many people could enjoy a decent itx build, and I'm happy to see that mfgs are starting to turn out good cases that actually support larger psus and gpus for people that aren't hardcore modders...I'm interested to see how far you can pack it all down good luck! Edited by Illegalseagull - 25 May 2015 at 2:54pm
	ASROCK Z97M OC Formula Intel i5 - 4690K @ 4.5ghz Stable Overclock

parsec Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996	Post Options Post Reply Quote parsec Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 25 May 2015 at 12:49pm
	sinusoid, your idea of using those two wire connection blocks for the PSU cable is not bad at all IMO. If you keep those connectors on the PSU side of your chassis, it won't look anywhere near as bad as having the original cable in plain sight. Regarding the PSU wires being stressed when using those connectors, you just need to plan which wires will go to which specific connector on the connection block (which you must do anyway.) Whatever wires will go to the connectors the farthest from the middle of the block just need to be longer than the others. Your alternative is cutting, trimming, and spicing the wires together, soldering for the best connections. Then hiding the splice with heat shrink tubing. You could also get a 24 pin PSU extension cable that will become part of the new cable you will be using.

ASRock_Official Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List ASRock_Official Joined: 08 Apr 2015 Status: Offline Points: 2247	Post Options Post Reply Quote ASRock_Official Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 22 May 2015 at 4:20pm
	Nice Work sinusoid! a project definitely worth follow, keep on coming my friend:)