Concept First Concept - Horizontal ATX with 2 240 Radiators

[smallfartfactor]

I've been lurking this forum for a very long time and seen lots of custom projects and have been theorizing about making my own for quite some time. I finally downloaded Sketchup and am in the process of making some very rough mockups of my idea. Unfortunately I don't even have the money for the desired PC parts at the moment so making a prototype is very far off.

The rough idea is inspired by a few of my favorite designs I've seen here, notable the DSE Breath and more recently the Salvo S700. I loved the top side IO and the idea of squeezing a full ATX and custom loop into SFF.

THE BASIC LAYOUT:

Few things,

This is a very rough mockup and I know the radiators are full size with no fans at the moment. Just using them as a standin for roughly the size of a thin radiator with fans.

As is, in a very rough state, I'm at about 28 liters. Not sure that really qualifies it for SFF. Any ideas on how to shave off some space? Immediate things come to mind are to to move the board to ITX and put the GPU parallel similar to the Skyreach et al. Another option would be to leave room only for single slot GPUs as it would ideally would have a waterblock anyway. But I'd like to add the option of having a second PCI slot available, otherwise there isn't that many good reasons to have an ATX board. Could explore some options with an external power brick but I'm not sure if they'd be able to power everything.

I have some very cool ideas for the materials and aesthetic of the case, which is my primary concern over size, I just don't want to be excluded from the SFF club because this forum has been such a valuable resource (and time suck).

Cheers

 

[owliwar]

I guess the first thing you could do is have the second radiator closer to the front rotate 90º, would shave a lot of room and since volume is a measure times 3 it might be enough

my other analysis here is that you have a overly long gpu for that case. if thheres 2 radiators then it would be possible to get a reference length gpu with waterblock. that could allow to improve the dimmensions as well


good exploration

 

[HZCH]

I used to contemplate a scratch build that would have a similar watercooler setup, but it sounds weird and might not help you:
- General layout is kind of a raven rvz-01 on sentry, but the GPU fans face the same side as the motherboard and the case is set up horizontally (like a standard office pc)
- motherboard is mini-itx board, GPU is standard ; everything is watercooler
- you put a 240mm rad in "front" of the case
- you put another rad behind the IO in the back of the case...
- the twist: the GPU and motherboard actually face down... the case is only as high (or thick) as the radiators, and the components facing the ground means you minimize damages due to leakage...
Anyway, I think that kind of layout (a rad in front, another one in the back; and the use of a mitx board) might downsize the liters... but I've never seen someone try that - and you "lose" a lot of place because of the back radiator placed after the IO panel.

Anyway, why not put your rads one the bottom and the top of your case? It would look like the case I envision, and you won't block the rads airflow...
What do you think?