Enclosure Do quality sff matx cases exist now?

[Spiffyman]

I'm currently in the market for a new pc and wanted to go sff. I've actually patiently waited on the cerberus nearly 2 years during which time my pc died and I've been holding out on an old laptop. My patience is running out now and I'd like to build my pc this month. I require pcie passthrough so I can work on linux but play games on Windows so mITX is not an option.

It turns out that sff outside of mITX is an extremely rare niche. Silverstone seems to be the only mainstream company that does it, with their Sugo line: the sugo sg12b is 22.7L and is matx. However, they made some big compromises, namely the 80mm fans. Lesser known case companies have cases that look reasonable by have horrible airflow (such as only 1 possible fan placement which is a bad idea for a pc with 2 gpus).

There are 3 cases that seem to satisfy performance-friendly and small volume:
Caselabs Bullet BH4 at 23L
Kimera Industries Cerberus at 18L
Project Orthrus at 15L

All of those are nice, but none of them are available right now (case labs case was released a while back but shipping takes nearly 2 months). Seeing that there is such low availability of small non-mITX cases, I even expanded my search to <30L. However, the closest I found was the Fractal Design Define Mini C at 35L. It looks like cases are either large enough to encompass any criteria or small enough for very specific use cases. The middle area is completely ignored.

Does anyone know of <30L cases that are available now that can fit 2 gpus?

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

Jonsbo has a long line of m-atx cases under 30L - usually sold under Rosewill or Cooltek name. Many newer ones have multiple fans, like the UMX3, RM3 and VR2.

Silverstone also has the SG09/SG10 and you may find they have better airflow since they are equipped with a 180mm fan.

The Fractal Design Core 1100 is under 30L so you might consider that as well.

 

[Arboreal]

Silverstone's TJ08-E is spot on 30L, and a well regarded mATX case for dual GPU setups.
I've never seen an SG09/10, but they are impressive for their size, as @IntoxicatedPuma mentioned above.

 

[GentlemanShark]

Yeah, the Evolv mATX is great, but is pretty big. The Antec P50 is smaller and pretty solid as well. You could check out Colinreay's project as well.

 

[rediaf]

I'm also in the market for a smaller mATX case. I don't really need much drive space and only want to use one graphics card.

I've been reading up on the Thermaltake Core G3, it seems to have most of what I'm looking for, but sounds like it has some drawbacks around noise and cooling. Overall volume is around 23.6L.

 

[talkion]

there's the InWin 301 coming in Q2; you may want to check that out

 

[Spiffyman]

Colinreay's and Thermaltakes Core both are matx but only allow 1 gpu (due to the cool way in which the gpu is mounted). So those wouldn't work for me as I need 2 gpus. Which is too bad because mounting them that way seems smart (part of what I like with project orthrus is the space-savy way of mounting dual gpus).

It looks like the sg10 is the way to go, as I'm afraid of airflow issues and it has quite the airflow with its fans.

 

[GentlemanShark]

Colinreay's and Thermaltakes Core both are matx but only allow 1 gpu (due to the cool way in which the gpu is mounted). So those wouldn't work for me as I need 2 gpus. Which is too bad because mounting them that way seems smart (part of what I like with project orthrus is the space-savy way of mounting dual gpus).

It looks like the sg10 is the way to go, as I'm afraid of airflow issues and it has quite the airflow with its fans.

Sounds good, ever consider PCIe bifurcation?

 

[Spiffyman]

Is that when you have the gpu switch from vm to host when the vm shuts down?

If so, then yes I thought about it. But that require intel as it needs the integrated graphics for the host while the vm uses the gpu. i'd really like to go ryzen if possible. intel is the fallback if i end up deciding ryzen isn't for my use case.

 

[LocoMoto]

PCI-E Bifurcation is essentially splitting a PCI-E slot into more than one slot.
Like a 3.0 x16 slot into 2x 3.0 x8 slots.

https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/pci-e-bifurcation.1398/