Concept A case to fit in a 5.25

[KristofferW]

Hi!
Might be an obvious question. I found something like a case for 5.25 inch odd bay found earlier, but it was a prebuilt system with way to old hardware for my taste.
Is it possible to 3d print or purchase something like this anywhere? Where I can fit a mini itx or a stx?

This is my first post on this forum, so if I'm breaking any rules, please do tell me. And I will correct it.

Edit:
Might mention, that I have the Corsair 900d which have 5 5.25 bays. And loads of space to upgrade, therefor I'd love to put in a mini-itx or stx system.

 

[SFF EOL]

Do you mean fit a ITX board in a 5.25" bay? If so you can't. The 'CD Drive' is just shy of 6" (15cm) but an ITX case needs 17cm and it is square. Yo'd go quite far back into a ATX case even if yoy mounted the ITX vertically.

Or have I misunderstood?

I just fitted my CD bays to take extra 2.5" SSDs, not that I've actually populated them yet so really they are storage drawers!

ETA

Just thought, you could add something smaller than ITX, but that might mean it is a NUC or an AIM based system. NUC you can Google, they are Intel barebones systems, and the AIM stuff is things like the Raspberry Pi- known as Small Board Computers. Some of the SBC do use Intel x84 chips but I think they are all out of stock at the moment, pretty sure the Latte Panda, which cost about £130 but was quite well featured is out of stock everywhere.



If what you are talking about is something like an external drive bay though, then either of these choices would fit with space to spare.



The Raspberry Pi3+ is widely available and costs £35/$35 but is also quite limited. USB2 only, where as the Latte Panda has/had SATA and M.2. Also the Pi is AIM based- it can make an OK Kodi box and a limited Linux based desktop.

 

[Bjornyyy]

Hi!
Might be an obvious question. I found something like a case for 5.25 inch odd bay found earlier, but it was a prebuilt system with way to old hardware for my taste.
Is it possible to 3d print or purchase something like this anywhere? Where I can fit a mini itx or a stx?

This is my first post on this forum, so if I'm breaking any rules, please do tell me. And I will correct it.

Edit:
Might mention, that I have the Corsair 900d which have 5 5.25 bays. And loads of space to upgrade, therefor I'd love to put in a mini-itx or stx system.

Could you maybe post a picture or link the build please? If we can get a visual we might be able to help you more.

 

[KristofferW]

Do you mean fit a ITX board in a 5.25" bay? If so you can't. The 'CD Drive' is just shy of 6" (15cm) but an ITX case needs 17cm and it is square. Yo'd go quite far back into a ATX case even if yoy mounted the ITX vertically.

Or have I misunderstood?

This answers my question. Well i wouldn't mind it sticking longer into my case, but I think it will be too big to fit properly. Sorry if i wasn't clearer in my question! I know about the pi etc. But was hoping to fit an ITX system much like Via Artigo(Via C7 NanoBGA2) but they used pico itx....

 

[KristofferW]

Could you maybe post a picture or link the build please? If we can get a visual we might be able to help you more.

I can sunday, sorry for being vague, will need to do some measurements aswell. But I doubt this will work in the way i imagined though.

 

[SFF EOL]

Looks like Mini-STX would fit as well (15cm), just, but I don’t know much about the form factor as we don’t seem to see it in the UK except for a few pre-built systems. The benefit is it is more like ITX to use, so a motherboard you fit a CPU, memory and storage to, whereas at the other extreme you have a SBC where everything is soldered on. What you lose with STX is discrete graphics.



Other’s here will know more about it I would imagine- those in the USA and Far East get access to this sort of stuff while in the UK it seems to be hit and miss, NUC is no problem but that is pre-built and expensive, SBC is fine if it is a Pi but otherwise comes from China via Germany and STX just seems to get short run imports.



Don’t completely discount SBC as if something like the Latte Panda comes back into stock it was/is quite well featured- it’ll run W10.



https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html

EDIT TO ADD:





Looks like the Latte Panda is back in stock! $149 for the best model without W10 ($100 more for W10 so you may want to shop around for W10). I’m skint at the moment otherwise I’d buy one, I had one but sold it on thinking they would stay in stock. The Latte Panda is sub picoITX at 88 x 70mm versus 100 by 75cm.





You could probably fit Pico ITX as long as you are happy to accept the limitations and the eye-watering cost. Over £1K for something that isn’t as powerful as a last generation AMD A8 APU.



A £200ish picoITX will be half as powerful as a J1900 ITX embedded system but about 4 times the price.



You’d really have to love that case a lot I think to justify moving to Pico. You could keep an eye on eBay and see if a pico board comes up, they do, but they are usually very old and gutless to the extent you should probably consider a SBC. Like I say a Pi3= will run as a half decent Kodi box or acceptable pre-PS1 games emulator- which at least gives you an excuse for building it.



The Pi isn’t very good in lots of other ways though, no on/off button, not RTC, not SATA or M.2 only USB 2. And don’t be fooled by 4 USB 2 ports, there is only one USB controller so devices share the bandwidth. That makes the Pi a really poor NAS type device, about 2 to 3 times slower than SATA2 (let alone SATA3)

 

[KristofferW]

Looks like Mini-STX would fit as well (15cm), just, but I don’t know much about the form factor as we don’t seem to see it in the UK except for a few pre-built systems. The benefit is it is more like ITX to use, so a motherboard you fit a CPU, memory and storage to, whereas at the other extreme you have a SBC where everything is soldered on. What you lose with STX is discrete graphics.



Other’s here will know more about it I would imagine- those in the USA and Far East get access to this sort of stuff while in the UK it seems to be hit and miss, NUC is no problem but that is pre-built and expensive, SBC is fine if it is a Pi but otherwise comes from China via Germany and STX just seems to get short run imports.



Don’t completely discount SBC as if something like the Latte Panda comes back into stock it was/is quite well featured- it’ll run W10.



https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html

EDIT TO ADD:





Looks like the Latte Panda is back in stock! $149 for the best model without W10 ($100 more for W10 so you may want to shop around for W10). I’m skint at the moment otherwise I’d buy one, I had one but sold it on thinking they would stay in stock. The Latte Panda is sub picoITX at 88 x 70mm versus 100 by 75cm.





You could probably fit Pico ITX as long as you are happy to accept the limitations and the eye-watering cost. Over £1K for something that isn’t as powerful as a last generation AMD A8 APU.



A £200ish picoITX will be half as powerful as a J1900 ITX embedded system but about 4 times the price.



You’d really have to love that case a lot I think to justify moving to Pico. You could keep an eye on eBay and see if a pico board comes up, they do, but they are usually very old and gutless to the extent you should probably consider a SBC. Like I say a Pi3= will run as a half decent Kodi box or acceptable pre-PS1 games emulator- which at least gives you an excuse for building it.



The Pi isn’t very good in lots of other ways though, no on/off button, not RTC, not SATA or M.2 only USB 2. And don’t be fooled by 4 USB 2 ports, there is only one USB controller so devices share the bandwidth. That makes the Pi a really poor NAS type device, about 2 to 3 times slower than SATA2 (let alone SATA3)

Yeah I looked into mini-six, seems the dimensions would fit perfectly. Asus has a few boards out here in Denmark, so I have options in an okay price range aswell.
Looked into a lot of SBCs before, the Latte Panda is quite the little beast, but I'd purchase the Alpha when it's more mainstream


Thank you guys for the help, I still can't find a case to fit in the 5.25 odd bay. But I will continue my search, the Via Artigo I found with pico-itx isn't sold anymore it seems.
But I have been looking into a panel with usb 2.0 and power button / reset button, that fits in a 5.25. So I can use that with the board installed inside the case.

 

[SFF EOL]

Have a look at this



https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07D27G7D9/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1



There are a few different versions, it is hard styrene plastic so easy to work (like ‘Airfix models’) and will hold two 2.5 HDD/SSD.



Some just clip in, some are bolted in, some are on rails with a lock. They will easily hold a SSD and a sub-ITX board. It is just ITX boards that are really too large for that space.





I think the Latte Alpha is back in stock and that has a USB C, 3 and 2. Easy to fit a faceplate on to the front of that and you have quite a powerful PC for the money- although the money is still a few hundred Euro.

 

[KristofferW]

Thank you @SFF EOL appreciate it! Im still looking into different solutions.

 

[nyxtom]

Hi!
Might be an obvious question. I found something like a case for 5.25 inch odd bay found earlier, but it was a prebuilt system with way to old hardware for my taste.
Is it possible to 3d print or purchase something like this anywhere? Where I can fit a mini itx or a stx?

This is my first post on this forum, so if I'm breaking any rules, please do tell me. And I will correct it.

Edit:
Might mention, that I have the Corsair 900d which have 5 5.25 bays. And loads of space to upgrade, therefor I'd love to put in a mini-itx or stx system.

If you go for an Intel NUC you should easily be able to get the specs you are looking for.

https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=437&area=en

Though it would be fun to modify a 5.25" bay and pop in a nuc Then slide that into your case