From lurker to member

Hi,

Been lurking on the forum for about 6 months. Taken weeks of researching things and this website has been invaluable as a first time SFF and Water Cooler. I did a SUG02 M-ATX build at Uni years ago but it's only this year with months of lockdown that I got bored. Then I discovered M-ATX boards were pretty sucky and now finally (okay most people probably already knew this) itx was a viable route with custom cases and strong motherboards.

My build finished this week.

NCase M1 (Sadly it fell over on completion day and bent the top metal runner on the outer side - the thin one not the Mobo side!)
MSI MEG Z490I Unify
i9 10900k
32GB (2x16GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX Black, PC4-25600 (3200)
2x 1tb Samsung SSDs (I already had these spare so skipped NVMe for now)

I've used a tx240, a HWL Nemesis GTS 240, Iceman Pump/Reservoir (Annoyingly bought an external res but Apogee Drive was impossible to source), EK 3.2 PWM pump, Heat Killer IV CPU block with extra back plate and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Powered by Corsair 750, which came with sleeved power cables and bought some Corsair Premium Sleeved SATA cables

Build was inspired by Optimum Tech and uses ZMT and a lot of alphacool fittings but then I added EK, Koolance, Bitspower and others and built a monster as it uses only a bit of tubing and is mainly all fittings! It also weighs a ton so maybe I got carried away.

My GPU is a 980 Ti because I'm waiting to get a 3080. I nearly bought a secondhand 2080 Ti Hydro Copper but worried they won't fit and the 3080 look a lot more SFF friendly. The issue will be getting a version which uses a reference board that's compatible (capacitor type/height and not FE) with the new EK Waterblocks.

That's all and thanks for reading if you got this far.

Danglos
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,827
4,902
Welcome to the forum ! The way mATX has been reduced to "cheap ass boards that are extended mITX boards so they can be manufactured cheaper and with less features", has pissed off more than a few members here. I also liked the form factor but the industry (board and case manufacturers) didn't embrace SFF like we did. To them, mATX is what most OEM computers use and those need to be 1. cheap 2. basic 3. tried and true.

So we lost the enthusiast mATX form factor all together.
 
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