Hello everyone. I’m introducing a new build concept to the community, this was mostly thought for custom water cooling but the concept can be expanded and applied into a variety of different configurations.
I’ve been designing this for the last 5 months and this is my dream SFF pc case that I haven’t built yet. I hope by the time you finish reading this thread, you will want to build it too.
I shared this with Josh (NFC) when I thought he had a similar design in a vid he published a few days ago, but mine is different. Wanted to share with Wahaha too but he encouraged me to post it in the forums instead.
This project began with me trying to solve what are, to my belief, the main disadvantages of SFF; these are the problems that I wanted to tackle:
1) Radiators dumping hot air into the case. In big towers this is not a problem since there is plenty of airflow, but in small cases this could be a problem. The ideal “state” of a radiator is the one we find in an open bench table: pulls air from one side, pushes the air right back into the ambient. Cero compromises.
2) The need to pull cool air or dump hot air from/through the bottom of the case. This to my belief is inefficient; personally I want a pc case that doesn’t have to deal with this necessity. Airflow is greatly compromised when recurring to this.
3) Since the next reasonable source of cool air is at the top, I want this source of cool air to be brought into the case, help cool the motherboard and to help extract hot air outside the case. Top panel should help with overall airflow and not be compromised with anything else. Vented side panels will contribute to the airflow generated by top fans.
The layout then consists of placing the radiator horizontally under the motherboard, PSU and GPU with a minor tweak: it will be placed on its “frame” rather than on its entire body:
If going the custom water cooling route, we take advantage of the reduced GPU thickness thanks to its water block, it’s going to be facing inwards and we then push the PSU against the GPU with plenty of space to spare:
Here is the design I’ve been working on (I am not a pro with fusion so I did what I could):
It’s height and the trimmed thickness while still being a sandwich layout is where the name comes from. As stated before this is a concept; building the spine will be challenging, tubes might need some extra work, psu plug might not fit there, not sure about SSD where it's placed atm, etc... but I believe overall measures are in check: 327 x 305 x 100 at 9.9 liters. The good thing is It can be reduced even further. So far the radiator is a Hardware labs GTX 240 (55mm thick rad) with NF-A12x25 + NF-A12x15 in push/pull. The thin fan is not there to incredibly increase performance, this push/pull layout has 3 functions:
1) Run fans at lower rpm achieving same thermals with lower noise.
2) Help exhaust hot air outside the case
3) It’s a sandwich layout, so there’s still some thickness to be “filled”. You can further trim thickness if you wish but obviously there is going to be a limit.
I am really happy with the design; I think all the issues I wanted to tackle are solved: no need to take air from the bottom, no compromises of airflow and a radiator pulling cool air from one side while throwing the resulting hot air completely outside the case. Top fans helps to cool both sides of the motherboard (second NVME will receive cool air too) and to exhaust air from PSU
There is a plethora of layouts to play with: 60 mm rad in push with 25mm fan reduces thickness by 10mm and Alphacool has some good multi ports rads that can further help and add to this type of concept. A GTX + push/pull with both 25mm fans on both sides can add thickness and balance to the case if you want an air cooled GPU (about 110mm). To my belief, going with an air cooled GPU is a waste of rad capacity and cooling performance, buy it would make total sense if you want/need the performance of a 3950x in a small form factor + an air cooled GPU. You can also step up to a 280 thick radiator with the same configuration at less volume than the Louqe or M1
I think this layout is the best and as I said before I hope people start building different designs of this concept.
Lastly...
@Wahaha360 hope this sparks your interest.
I’ve been designing this for the last 5 months and this is my dream SFF pc case that I haven’t built yet. I hope by the time you finish reading this thread, you will want to build it too.
I shared this with Josh (NFC) when I thought he had a similar design in a vid he published a few days ago, but mine is different. Wanted to share with Wahaha too but he encouraged me to post it in the forums instead.
This project began with me trying to solve what are, to my belief, the main disadvantages of SFF; these are the problems that I wanted to tackle:
1) Radiators dumping hot air into the case. In big towers this is not a problem since there is plenty of airflow, but in small cases this could be a problem. The ideal “state” of a radiator is the one we find in an open bench table: pulls air from one side, pushes the air right back into the ambient. Cero compromises.
2) The need to pull cool air or dump hot air from/through the bottom of the case. This to my belief is inefficient; personally I want a pc case that doesn’t have to deal with this necessity. Airflow is greatly compromised when recurring to this.
3) Since the next reasonable source of cool air is at the top, I want this source of cool air to be brought into the case, help cool the motherboard and to help extract hot air outside the case. Top panel should help with overall airflow and not be compromised with anything else. Vented side panels will contribute to the airflow generated by top fans.
The layout then consists of placing the radiator horizontally under the motherboard, PSU and GPU with a minor tweak: it will be placed on its “frame” rather than on its entire body:
If going the custom water cooling route, we take advantage of the reduced GPU thickness thanks to its water block, it’s going to be facing inwards and we then push the PSU against the GPU with plenty of space to spare:
Here is the design I’ve been working on (I am not a pro with fusion so I did what I could):
It’s height and the trimmed thickness while still being a sandwich layout is where the name comes from. As stated before this is a concept; building the spine will be challenging, tubes might need some extra work, psu plug might not fit there, not sure about SSD where it's placed atm, etc... but I believe overall measures are in check: 327 x 305 x 100 at 9.9 liters. The good thing is It can be reduced even further. So far the radiator is a Hardware labs GTX 240 (55mm thick rad) with NF-A12x25 + NF-A12x15 in push/pull. The thin fan is not there to incredibly increase performance, this push/pull layout has 3 functions:
1) Run fans at lower rpm achieving same thermals with lower noise.
2) Help exhaust hot air outside the case
3) It’s a sandwich layout, so there’s still some thickness to be “filled”. You can further trim thickness if you wish but obviously there is going to be a limit.
I am really happy with the design; I think all the issues I wanted to tackle are solved: no need to take air from the bottom, no compromises of airflow and a radiator pulling cool air from one side while throwing the resulting hot air completely outside the case. Top fans helps to cool both sides of the motherboard (second NVME will receive cool air too) and to exhaust air from PSU
There is a plethora of layouts to play with: 60 mm rad in push with 25mm fan reduces thickness by 10mm and Alphacool has some good multi ports rads that can further help and add to this type of concept. A GTX + push/pull with both 25mm fans on both sides can add thickness and balance to the case if you want an air cooled GPU (about 110mm). To my belief, going with an air cooled GPU is a waste of rad capacity and cooling performance, buy it would make total sense if you want/need the performance of a 3950x in a small form factor + an air cooled GPU. You can also step up to a 280 thick radiator with the same configuration at less volume than the Louqe or M1
I think this layout is the best and as I said before I hope people start building different designs of this concept.
Lastly...
@Wahaha360 hope this sparks your interest.
