So all the external Thunderbolt 3 graphics card docks announced or released so far are stupidly big, I mean, you could build a full gaming computer in something like the DAN A4-SFX in less space!
To combat this and show them how we do things at SFF Forum, I offered to do the CAD work for free if someone would provide me with a Thunderbolt 3 to PCIe adapter to measure and pay for the sheet metal fabrication to make it all happen. Runamok81 on the forum has graciously offered to do just that, so now there’s a project thread going and an AKiTiO Thunder3 PCIe box (since the Node is out of stock) is currently in transit.
With the ball now rolling I kicked off the design process to figure out the rough layout and power supply solution with a livestream, so the community can watch how I work. It contains lots of rambling and struggling with CAD software that wasn’t playing nicely with OBS, but I think there’s some useful tidbits of information in there and I hope you enjoy this insight into the design process for a SFF case.
Stay tuned for more episodes in the future and keep up with the project in the forum thread here.