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Chimera Industries Cerberus: The 18L, mATX, USA-made enclosure
- Thread starter PlayfulPhoenix
- Start date
I would be extremely cautious about using PCIe power connector splitters. I carefully crunched the numbers and concluded that splitting the SX600-G's connectors to get the 4x 6-pin I needed for dual stock GTX 980s was safe but that same setup won't necessarily be safe with say dual GTX 980 Ti's.
Instead I'd recommend using a PSU that comes with enough connectors out of the box, the SFX-L Lian Li PE-750 and SilverStone SX700-LPT for example. The upcoming SFX SilverStone SX650-G may have enough but I don't think the cable configuration has been confirmed yet.
The Corsair SF600 has two connectors on the PSU side but the stock cables it comes with each end in only a single 6+2 connector. Custom cables that instead go to 2x 6-pin or 6+8-pin instead should be safe. Dual 8-pin would be risky because cards that require that are typically power hogs and it'd be questionable whether a 600W PSU could adequately power two such cards.
The Corsair SF600 is the one I had my eyes on. I wind up basically being two 6+2 pin connectors short of being able to plug everything in with the cables that come with the SF600.
I hadn't looked at the cable configs for the Lian Li or Silverstone 700W+ units - they're quite a bit more expensive, since I have the opportunity to get the Corsair unit for less than $100. But I guess I'd be paying about the same amount after buying the custom cables for the SF600, at least if I went through CableMod.
I hadn't looked at the cable configs for the Lian Li or Silverstone 700W+ units - they're quite a bit more expensive, since I have the opportunity to get the Corsair unit for less than $100. But I guess I'd be paying about the same amount after buying the custom cables for the SF600, at least if I went through CableMod.
If you're referring to the EK Predator 240 it can fit on either the front or bottom. EK doesn't recommend the orientation required to fit the unit on the bottom though but I've seen people reporting that it works just fine like that in other cases, though it remains to be seen if long-term reliability suffers.
It fits on the front with a rear-mounted PSU but only with 1-2mm to spare.
Pics here: https://smallformfactor.net/forum/t...matx-usa-made-enclosure.454/page-29#post-9241
This is probably the most telling (and disappointing) stat as to the current state of SFF.
That's not to say that there hasn't been moves in the mainstream to SFX PSUs and SFF cases, but manufacturers (and consumers alike) still seem set on the idea of needing these behemoth cases and components with all the bells and whistles they will never use.
Frustratingly for my use-case scenario, there are still only ATX boards supporting TB3 so I'm holding out for the Cerberus-X.
I thought Gigabyte's Gaming series of motherboards which contain Intel's Alpine Ridge USB 3.1 controller support Thunderbolt 3. Two examples are the GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5 (micro ATX) and the GA-Z170N-Gaming 5 (mini iITX). Both of these have a Thunderbolt driver available to download for Windows 10.
There's a thread over on Hard and thus far, no one has successfully managed to get Thunderbolt 3 operating inspite of the driver updates :/
EDIT: The Alpine Ridge controller is no guarantee of support either as the Maximus VIII Impact demonstrated.
The fact that Intel licensed the Alpine Ridge controller almost exclusively to Gigabyte for eternity didn't help adoption in desktops!
Fortunately, with the release of the new MacBook Pro, we should see more TB3 peripherals hitting the market; audio interfaces in particular are where my interests lie.
Regarding the GA-Z170MX-Gaming 5, on further investigation it appears it supports the new Gigabyte Alpine Ridge AIC with a BIOS update (which is strangely MIA).
This is very promising as it has dual TB3 ports and HDMI pass through.
Skylake knocks me down to four cores but modern DAWs still don't seem to scale well beyond eight threads anyway.
This board is now a great candidate for the Cerberus!
/apologies for long post
(A little off tangent) I just had a look at ChargeTech's Plug (a portable AC power brick) indiegogo campaign, and can't help but imagine leaving one in an SFF case...
Damn all the gear fantasies, LOL
Damn all the gear fantasies, LOL
It looks like the Ncase M1 FrozenQ reservoir will fit at the 92mm back cut out, right? I saw that there was a poll about this, but unsure what the decision was.
It's uncertain, but I'm leaning to probably not at this point since so few people plan to use it.
What harm is there in supporting it? I'd say if it doesn't hurt, you should include it, especially considering the possibility that this kind of reservoir might become the de-facto standard for SFF cases if other designs use it as well.
The issue is the passthrough holes for the tubing/reservoir inlets.
The problem is if the full holes are there then I feel they should have grommets to cover them up for people who aren't using them. But that's another item to the BOM and while they're not super expensive or anything, it's not an insignificant price either and I think they're ugly and very few people will use the holes.
I was thinking partial cutouts that users could finish cutting out themselves, though Joshua is opposed to that. So we haven't decided for sure yet.
The problem is if the full holes are there then I feel they should have grommets to cover them up for people who aren't using them. But that's another item to the BOM and while they're not super expensive or anything, it's not an insignificant price either and I think they're ugly and very few people will use the holes.
I was thinking partial cutouts that users could finish cutting out themselves, though Joshua is opposed to that. So we haven't decided for sure yet.
If the rear bracket is still replaceable in the current design, you could make a simple design for a single flat-piece bracket that has the proper cutouts and put it available for download. Than anyone can have it made somewhere or even make it themselves.
Hm, I have that reservoir so I guess I am partial in adding a vote to support it. It was a clever idea for the Ncase, and I think it would be a nice addition to this case as well. Especially since I think custom water cooling is more viable in Cerberus than Ncase. But yeah, I understand the tricky decisions.
ok I have most of my build down but with the addition of the ekwb aio, i need a new psu. Can someone on this forum please give me a decently priced, sli capable, short cabled psu that works for an I5-6600K and 2 gtx 1070s?
I just realized something, are you still planning to get the MSI 1070 Gaming from the list you posted earlier? http://pcpartpicker.com/list/2HjvRG
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