Please ensure support for the Hdplex 250w GAN power supply in the A4 :-)
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DAN next project - A4-Nano/B4-SFX
- Thread starter dondan
- Start date
Btw, the Nano is very, very similar to the Cooj MQ5. Looking at that, some 10mm space between the PSU and ITX gpu would be cool. 1. The GPU could exhaust properly 2. it would allow for flex PSU with the 80mm fan mod.
I am giving my vote for the nano. I am currently running a 5600x + 3060 in a k39, but I have been keeping my eye out for something a little nicer. With some top fans and front IO. So this would be perfect. My main rig is also a Dan H20 and I love the design/quality. Hope you can make the nano reality!
Regarding the NANO, is there a specific reason to have the mobo and the gpu upside down compared to the Dan A4-SFX case?
I mean the mobo perhaps got to normal position as it was upside down in the A4-SFX actually, but that was pretty fine - could having the CPU cooler below, M.2 on above with the fans on top result in better overall temps? With vertical fins of the CPU cooler (AXP90-X36) the air would go nicely up to be exhaled out by the top fans through the M.2 and everything would receive airflow. With the current orientation, the M.2 does not receive the benefit of the top fans as it's under the cpu cooler.
As for the gpu, having the pcie slot below is probably better for stability and the riser cable would not get in the way of exhaling the air on top on the gpu side either. This can be solved by having the connecton of the bundled riser angeled 90' or even 180' though. For me, this is actually fine as with my model, having the gpu turned on it's head would mean the heatpipes would point upwards, but I'm not sure how this is with the majority of ITX cards (or if this even matters cooling-wise).
I mean the mobo perhaps got to normal position as it was upside down in the A4-SFX actually, but that was pretty fine - could having the CPU cooler below, M.2 on above with the fans on top result in better overall temps? With vertical fins of the CPU cooler (AXP90-X36) the air would go nicely up to be exhaled out by the top fans through the M.2 and everything would receive airflow. With the current orientation, the M.2 does not receive the benefit of the top fans as it's under the cpu cooler.
As for the gpu, having the pcie slot below is probably better for stability and the riser cable would not get in the way of exhaling the air on top on the gpu side either. This can be solved by having the connecton of the bundled riser angeled 90' or even 180' though. For me, this is actually fine as with my model, having the gpu turned on it's head would mean the heatpipes would point upwards, but I'm not sure how this is with the majority of ITX cards (or if this even matters cooling-wise).
@nightshift I believe the board is oriented this way because of the top fans. If the board were to be flipped, any riser cable used would be at risk of rubbing against the top fans. It is easier to simply route cables the other direction to avoid this conflict, necessitating the inverted GPU.
@dondan So does this mean there's no chance of the original B4 releasing? Shame, it would have been the smallest 280mm supporting vertical case 
These look great! The exhaust fans will make a huge difference with thermals too!Here are two renderings how the hardware is arranged
I'd love to see inbuilt G1/4 threaded ports in the sandwich plate for the B4 to make custom watercooling a bit cleaner and easier, even a 120mm radiator would work a treat if GPU and PSU are low enough for low profile rad + fan setup up top
I agree. I really didn't like how the 4000 series went so far with their monstrous abominations that self destruct upon installation with bending their own pcb under their weight and frying their cables while being the size of an ironing board.
Yet with the 4070 and below, they actually reduced the tdp and size. That HAS to be credited and is also important (at least as much for me), despite everybody and all youtube reviewers just looking at FPS numbers and nothing else. In addition, AAA gaming sucks. Since the past 5 years, it's either empty, grindy open world, or remake of a remake. The only reason for higher than 8GB vRAM are a handful of terrible games that are unoptimized ports. One came out for the Playstation 3 literally a decade ago, other is a vampire hunter kiddy game with Fortnite graphics. At least give me a proper reason before saying 8GB is not enough.
With all that said, I'm interested in the 16GB version, especially if there'll be ITX models of it too while also worry that it will have very limited production and will be out of stock everywhere.
As for the A4 Nano, why are the power button and the usb-c port above each other? It can carry on the A4-SFX design of both being at the bottom - one on each side.
I actually was thinking that adding 0.5L wouldn't be worth at first, however my mind has changed a bit after going through all the options.
There is one big issue with smaller cases, and that is them being turbulent/noisy, even after pushing all settings to the optimal. Going for ITX gpu is cool, especially with the new Nvidia 110 watt 4060s, however;
Current 170-180mm cards are much more niche and rarer than 200mm, so right from the start we are getting a much more limited selection to pick from.
200mm are usually a 2 fan GPU vs the single fan in the smaller cards, producing less heat and noise which I believe is crucial with the smallest builds, more commonly than not jet engine ovens.
Now the Nano has 2 exhaust fans, this is awesome, I am not sure what is your plan on the panel distance from the CPU side, however the ability to fit in a blackridge (47mm) would be I believe mandatory in order to prevent noisiness, eliminating turbulance - or a n9i with a 1 cm gap to avoid turbulence yet again.
An argument in favor of the smaller cards would be that if wattage does go down over time, especially in mid range cards, we will be seeing the 170mm more often than not, however the same speculation can be said for 200mm cards, which are already much more common, and there's so much reason for them to be prioritized in that format since they can be fit with 2 fans compared to a 180mm card or lower. Another big thing which is a double (positive) whammy in terms of noise, is that cards are usually a bit narrower (about 0.5-1.5 cm) the more length they have, this yet again allows for more panel clearance to prevent any turbulence. Lastly, I actually believe adding another 0.7L, not 0.5L would be the place where diminishing returns start to show, and having an option to go up to 210mm might be the most opitmal choice, and this is not based off the new 7600 which is 204 mm in length, but the fact that the bigger clearance can be useful, and potentially dodge a 210mm card bullet.
The Dan a4-sfx is pretty awesome, massive GPU coverage, SFX PSU, 47mm clearance. Aside the ZS cases Z4S V3 (unknown, not widely available), it's one of the best cases in the 6-10 liter range, which is huge albeit probably still niche, and I assume the one that has the largest market share, and again, that's for a good reason. The Nano wouldn't be that much special at 4.6, and while 2 exhaust fans will be awesome, and hopefully 47mm clearance, the cases that offer that (minus the exhaust fans) are still plenty in the 4.2-5L range, yet none of them brings 200mm into the case.
I understand that my post is heavily based on the GPU and just a tiny bit of talk on CPU clearance, however since you've mentioned that an addition of 0.5L would be feasible to achieve 200mm, I had to write this down.
In any case (pun intended), thanks for the great contribution in the SFF market @dondan.
I think 38mm is fine. To my experience with the Velka 3, there's not really a measurable difference between 37 and 47mm air coolers when both have direct access to fresh air. And while there are some that mentioned turbulence noise, I didn't encounter it. Looking at the case, there are still a 2-3mm left between the cooler and the side panels too even on the closest setting. Then again, the perforation on the side panels can probably impact noise too. For 65w cpu's 38mm is fine.
As for the gpu, there are also 198mm cards with two fans (like the Gigabyte 3060 Windforce OC 12G). But at the end of the day, all I need is one good model done right. It's true that small dual fanned gpu's are nice. Yet there's something satisfying in a sandwitch-style build where the mobo and the gpu are back-to-back and have the exact same length, especially if it saves some space too.
160w while runs a bit hotter yet it's still fine, while 110w has to be perfectly okay with a single fan.
However, there's a problem with this layout, that most of these cards (including 202mm dual fan versions) have their heatsink horizontally finned. So the air is going to get get pushed straight the psu or the flat front panel. It would be so awesome if ITX gpu's would be made with vertically finned heatsinks... I would be likely using an ITX gpu with vertical fins than a horizontally finned 210mm card, especially if the latter needs a bigger case.
Wasn't Black Ridge designed in cooperation with Alpenföhn for Dan A4-SFX? If that's the case, I hope it would be possible to do something similar for the A4-nano, since sub-39mm coolers aren't quite optimized.
Particularly I fantasize that it would be possible to reach out to Thermalright, and see if they could do a full copper release of their AXP-90 X36 (as they've released their X47, X53 and AXP-100 coolers in full copper versions), which is apparently the best cooler at its size: 37mm Coolers Tested - L9a vs. AXP90-X36 vs. HP-400S for Velka, Denisum, etc. : r/sffpc (reddit.com)
Seeing as it already defeats L9a while being aluminum, couldn't a copper redo make it even better? Hell, if Thermalright could slap the elusive Ty-100R on it it instead of the typical 92mm fans, it could probably rival even the better 47mm coolers.
In any case I have no idea about the practical logistics of this proposal, likely it's halfway impossible but I felt I had to voice my imagination anyway.
Particularly I fantasize that it would be possible to reach out to Thermalright, and see if they could do a full copper release of their AXP-90 X36 (as they've released their X47, X53 and AXP-100 coolers in full copper versions), which is apparently the best cooler at its size: 37mm Coolers Tested - L9a vs. AXP90-X36 vs. HP-400S for Velka, Denisum, etc. : r/sffpc (reddit.com)
Seeing as it already defeats L9a while being aluminum, couldn't a copper redo make it even better? Hell, if Thermalright could slap the elusive Ty-100R on it it instead of the typical 92mm fans, it could probably rival even the better 47mm coolers.
In any case I have no idea about the practical logistics of this proposal, likely it's halfway impossible but I felt I had to voice my imagination anyway.
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I like the new B4 SFX, hopefully it doesn't need right angled connectors and can support 240/280mm AIOs.
Nano looks awesome. My suggestion would be to include adjustable spine, so the case can be transformed in to
APU version with support for bigger cpu coolers. Powerful APU-s are coming next year, i think it would be practical to consider this.
Other people mentioned HDPlex GaN support, which should not be difficult.
APU version with support for bigger cpu coolers. Powerful APU-s are coming next year, i think it would be practical to consider this.
Other people mentioned HDPlex GaN support, which should not be difficult.
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@sneedster A common misconception: in the end the air is cooling, not the heatsink. Aluminium is better at dissipating heat to air than copper and the copper heatsink would just add mass that can be saturated. As soon as the copper is saturated the temps will be higher than with the Aluminium heatsink.
For bigger heatsinks the cheer size of the heatsink nullifies this effect due to the air cooling enough to prevnt saturation int he first place. But for these tiny as it can get heatsinks it matters as they saturate under load. Most likely the "adavantage" of the X36 in this test is just the fin orientation.
You can see in your linked test that there are basically no differences between the coolers - 1-2% could just be anything from measurement error, to thermal paste application, to room temperature.
For bigger heatsinks the cheer size of the heatsink nullifies this effect due to the air cooling enough to prevnt saturation int he first place. But for these tiny as it can get heatsinks it matters as they saturate under load. Most likely the "adavantage" of the X36 in this test is just the fin orientation.
You can see in your linked test that there are basically no differences between the coolers - 1-2% could just be anything from measurement error, to thermal paste application, to room temperature.
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