This is just on top of the SFF scale, I know but I believe there's quite some merit to it.
The sketchup file I created is not going to win any awards but it shows what my poorly chosen words fail to communicate
In opening, I am becoming disappointed with ITX. That there are only two memory slots is frustrating, perhaps you want to mount an extra M.2 in a PCIe slot, you want Thunderbolt or have something else to plug in there. Then there is only one LGA 2011 MB, it seems Ryzen won't have a lot of (any?) ITX originally... Mounting the M.2 disk on the back of the board causes thermal throttling -- while ASRock has, what, five different 200 series boards with two Ultra M.2 on the surface.
The cooling is always restricted with the small cases and the moment someone says "let's have a bigger case" they completely go off the rails and design a 30L case (Bitfenix Phenom ITX, WTF). Also, there is no need for drive bays any more, 3.5" disks on the desktop are pretty much obsolete, you can get a 4TB 2.5" drive for mass storage and use an m.2 SSD to boot. (Although I was able to leave an option for a 3.5" drive) I was able to keep the overall dimensions of the case is 330mm high, 205mm wide and 295mm deep -- 20L.
The case is like Fortress / Raven: video card output and I/O on top. This is not strictly mandatory but the whole thing works so much better this way. The motherboard is on the left, the videocards are in front, we have five slots for them.
I will describe each of the six faces of the case. So the front of the case is solid, there's nothing there. Easy! The top of the case features front left the five PCI cutouts, front right like a thin ribbon the USB, audio, ports and a power switch (not in Sketchup yet), the case is plenty wide for the videocards not the interfere with the ports. The back we have a beast of a 140x38mm fan (Silverstone FHP141). I am confident a 38mm thick fan fits here: while the thickness of the ports inside is not standardized, our the PCI plates are "in" like the NZXT Vulcan and not "out" like the Jonsbo U3. The latter arrangement still allows for a 25mm fan over the ports (which is not surprising, 2230 cards are used here for wifi and they do not look out of place which means the ports are taking more than 30mm of the motherboard) so the PCI flanges prescribe another 13mm, easily. The 205mm width comes from the 140mm fan here, I know there's a 4U case from Supermicro which managed to fit a 120mm fan but it's a unique product so we can presume if a 178mm case almost but does not quite fit a 120mm fan then a 198mm case would almost but not quite fit a 140mm fan, so I jumped to 205mm.
The back of the case from top to bottom has ~50mm blank, a thin 180mm fan (SST-FW181) and a 2.5" SSD screwed right to the back wall, with the 100mm edge left to right, the SSD data and power connection edge about 30mm from the right wall. There's enough space for a 15mm thick drive here as the fan is 18mm. This dictates the depth of the case: 244mm for the MB, 20mm for the 5th slot, 18mm for the fan and 6.35mm-6.35mm clearance as mentioned in the Protocase documentation.
Finally, on the bottom left of the rear wall we have a cutout like a water cooling inlet except it's not circular but semicircular, cut in half by the left wall.
As I mentioned the MB is on the left, starting from at least 65mm from the bottom.
The right hand wall, I think, could be solid or some breathing holes over the video card half. Also, perhaps, contradicting myself, there's no harm leaving a hole pattern for a 3.5" disk on the right wall, five slots are 100mm wide.
On the bottom, below the video cards, a 120mm fan, maybe the Noctua NF-F12 because it has both high pressure and high airflow. Then there's the 125mm edge of an SFX PSU which intakes from the bottom and exhausts to the left, ATX/SATA/etc cords going to the right.
I would ship a one foot C13-C14 left pigtail with the case and as I mentioned I would leave a cutout on the back wall where this cord can enter. Having a mounted C14 here is not going to be helpful because the placement of the power connector on the SFX PSU is not standardized so whatever length cord I would use from the mounted C14 it would either be too short or too long. This is a very odd placement, I know but there's enough space, the SFX PSU is only 100mm long, the plug adds perhaps 20mm, there's still a good 80mm for the cords. Possibly the SFX-L fits, I will see if this ever gets prototyped. Similarly, it occurred to me that putting a 7mm thick 2.5" SSD on the right here might work.
The SST-FW181 delivers 40.38 ~ 171.1CFM on the intake while the FHP141 delivers 42.8~171 CFM on the exhaust. How nice they are pretty much the same. The matching of these two fans in air delivery and case width is the drive behind the case. There's an incredible lot of air moving around the CPU socket if necessary -- if not, then the back fan could be switched off or removed even, the hot air will leave there anyways. The case is so wide any tower cooler will easily fit. Scythe Ninja 4 and friends will work well here, no need for a fan on the CPU cooler, the FW181 will cover easily the largest of coolers. (Perhaps there is enough space for a second 3.5" between the Ninja and the right wall, the numbers add up. If my numbers are correct, a full millimeter would be left.)
So there. Fits 11.5" video cards, feeds them with fresh air, fits the largest of tower coolers and provides a lot of airflow
Closing thought: perhaps between the SFX PSU and the back wall another 15mm thick 2.5" might fit. All this would be very neat: two 3.5" disks (one interfering with >157mm coolers), two 2.5" disks.
Edit: opsie, I see someone else had the same case name, probably it affected me, sorry, I will try to find a good name, perhaps Etesian?
The sketchup file I created is not going to win any awards but it shows what my poorly chosen words fail to communicate
In opening, I am becoming disappointed with ITX. That there are only two memory slots is frustrating, perhaps you want to mount an extra M.2 in a PCIe slot, you want Thunderbolt or have something else to plug in there. Then there is only one LGA 2011 MB, it seems Ryzen won't have a lot of (any?) ITX originally... Mounting the M.2 disk on the back of the board causes thermal throttling -- while ASRock has, what, five different 200 series boards with two Ultra M.2 on the surface.The cooling is always restricted with the small cases and the moment someone says "let's have a bigger case" they completely go off the rails and design a 30L case (Bitfenix Phenom ITX, WTF). Also, there is no need for drive bays any more, 3.5" disks on the desktop are pretty much obsolete, you can get a 4TB 2.5" drive for mass storage and use an m.2 SSD to boot. (Although I was able to leave an option for a 3.5" drive) I was able to keep the overall dimensions of the case is 330mm high, 205mm wide and 295mm deep -- 20L.
The case is like Fortress / Raven: video card output and I/O on top. This is not strictly mandatory but the whole thing works so much better this way. The motherboard is on the left, the videocards are in front, we have five slots for them.
I will describe each of the six faces of the case. So the front of the case is solid, there's nothing there. Easy! The top of the case features front left the five PCI cutouts, front right like a thin ribbon the USB, audio, ports and a power switch (not in Sketchup yet), the case is plenty wide for the videocards not the interfere with the ports. The back we have a beast of a 140x38mm fan (Silverstone FHP141). I am confident a 38mm thick fan fits here: while the thickness of the ports inside is not standardized, our the PCI plates are "in" like the NZXT Vulcan and not "out" like the Jonsbo U3. The latter arrangement still allows for a 25mm fan over the ports (which is not surprising, 2230 cards are used here for wifi and they do not look out of place which means the ports are taking more than 30mm of the motherboard) so the PCI flanges prescribe another 13mm, easily. The 205mm width comes from the 140mm fan here, I know there's a 4U case from Supermicro which managed to fit a 120mm fan but it's a unique product so we can presume if a 178mm case almost but does not quite fit a 120mm fan then a 198mm case would almost but not quite fit a 140mm fan, so I jumped to 205mm.
The back of the case from top to bottom has ~50mm blank, a thin 180mm fan (SST-FW181) and a 2.5" SSD screwed right to the back wall, with the 100mm edge left to right, the SSD data and power connection edge about 30mm from the right wall. There's enough space for a 15mm thick drive here as the fan is 18mm. This dictates the depth of the case: 244mm for the MB, 20mm for the 5th slot, 18mm for the fan and 6.35mm-6.35mm clearance as mentioned in the Protocase documentation.
Finally, on the bottom left of the rear wall we have a cutout like a water cooling inlet except it's not circular but semicircular, cut in half by the left wall.
As I mentioned the MB is on the left, starting from at least 65mm from the bottom.
The right hand wall, I think, could be solid or some breathing holes over the video card half. Also, perhaps, contradicting myself, there's no harm leaving a hole pattern for a 3.5" disk on the right wall, five slots are 100mm wide.
On the bottom, below the video cards, a 120mm fan, maybe the Noctua NF-F12 because it has both high pressure and high airflow. Then there's the 125mm edge of an SFX PSU which intakes from the bottom and exhausts to the left, ATX/SATA/etc cords going to the right.
I would ship a one foot C13-C14 left pigtail with the case and as I mentioned I would leave a cutout on the back wall where this cord can enter. Having a mounted C14 here is not going to be helpful because the placement of the power connector on the SFX PSU is not standardized so whatever length cord I would use from the mounted C14 it would either be too short or too long. This is a very odd placement, I know but there's enough space, the SFX PSU is only 100mm long, the plug adds perhaps 20mm, there's still a good 80mm for the cords. Possibly the SFX-L fits, I will see if this ever gets prototyped. Similarly, it occurred to me that putting a 7mm thick 2.5" SSD on the right here might work.
The SST-FW181 delivers 40.38 ~ 171.1CFM on the intake while the FHP141 delivers 42.8~171 CFM on the exhaust. How nice they are pretty much the same. The matching of these two fans in air delivery and case width is the drive behind the case. There's an incredible lot of air moving around the CPU socket if necessary -- if not, then the back fan could be switched off or removed even, the hot air will leave there anyways. The case is so wide any tower cooler will easily fit. Scythe Ninja 4 and friends will work well here, no need for a fan on the CPU cooler, the FW181 will cover easily the largest of coolers. (Perhaps there is enough space for a second 3.5" between the Ninja and the right wall, the numbers add up. If my numbers are correct, a full millimeter would be left.)
So there. Fits 11.5" video cards, feeds them with fresh air, fits the largest of tower coolers and provides a lot of airflow
Closing thought: perhaps between the SFX PSU and the back wall another 15mm thick 2.5" might fit. All this would be very neat: two 3.5" disks (one interfering with >157mm coolers), two 2.5" disks.
Edit: opsie, I see someone else had the same case name, probably it affected me, sorry, I will try to find a good name, perhaps Etesian?
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