Gamecube PC Build (2.62 Liters) (It's back yo)

[ejectbutton]

I can't imagine why, this thing looks awful right now and isn't even inside the case. Case is pictured, though again, nothing goes in the case until it works.


Regardless, the GC build as of 11/16/17:

 

[Derverd]

Any progress?

 

[ejectbutton]

As it so happens, yes! Yesterday I got the graphics card working on the setup. The system fully functions!

However, as a warning to any future builders attempting a graphics card on an H110S2: The BIOS does not like the pcie adapter (EXP GDC Beast v9) or graphics card. I think it gets confused between onboard graphics and the new display adapter, but I dunno. Plugging in the adapter and then powering on the system resulted in a black screen regardless of whether you plug in the HDMI cable, the motherboard or card itself.I figure I should document this here since I had so much trouble finding any documentation on this so.. Here, I got around this by :

1: Plug in your STX board to an external power supply.
-Plug in your graphics adapter into the motherboard via M.2, and a standard ATX power supply into your graphics adapter.
(The adapter's site doesn't make this real clear, use a CPU 4 pin and the motherboard 24 pin cable for the adapter!)
-Switch the ATX psu off.
-Make sure your HDMI or DP cable is plugged into your motherboard, not the graphics card.

2: Boot the system normally.

3: Once in Windows, open your device manager. Open display adapters, and make sure the only one in there is your Intel onboard graphics.

4: Turn on your ATX psu. The graphics card should power on and appear under your display adapters! Do not power off at this point, you'll have to do the whole staggered power on thing again.

5: Download your drivers and install! Once your drivers are on, the system doesn't seem to reject the gpu on boot anymore, so the problem's fixed. Booting normally should work now. Plugging in your display cable to the GPU works as well at this point.
(At this point I switched to the picopsu so it can fit in my case)

6 (optional) : If your system behaves strangely or won't utilize the gpu after detecting it, try disabling the onboard graphics. I had to for mine.

PS: EXP GDC's site says 1050's and 1050ti's are too new and aren't supported. They totally work fine, no issue. Take anything they say with a grain (or entire shaker) of salt; the description and specs are outdated and in broken English everywhere I can find.

PPS: this only applies to ASUS's H110S2 STX board. I don't claim to know how it works anywhere else.

 

[jtd871]

The PCIe adapter appears to only have 2 8-pin connectors (1short side 1 long side) for power. How do you connect the PSU 24-pin to the adapter?!

EDIT: OK I see that there is a harness included with the adapter that takes the 24-pin and CPU 4-pin and converts it to the 8-pin on the long side.

 

[a3k4]

I signed up to say that I'm doing a similar build using an Intel NUC board because it's smaller than Mini-STX and slightly easier to find.

Here are some details about the Intel NUC Board NUC7i5DNBE. Still figuring out the rest of the parts.

I'm not doing a dedicated graphics card as I'll use it more as a media server than a gaming system but it seems Dolphin EMU works ok on the built in Intel HD Graphics 620. Plex doesn't really use the GPU for transcoding so it's not a big deal for me.

I'm considering hacking apart a blu ray drive and seeing if I can shove it in at the top. Haven't found any builds/tutorials of people who have done something similar yet.

Once I have more details I'm happy to share (either here or in a separate thread).

 

[ejectbutton]

Yo, I'm back, and it's done!
Okay, mostly. Have some polishing to do. But have a look!

 

[jtd871]

You, sir, absolutely rock.

 

[Mtthwmths]

Sweetness! Those stilts are hilarious! Amazing that you got the controller ports going! Have you thought about getting a 3d printed GC lid with some venting going on?

 

[Choidebu]

By god those stacked standoffs.

 

[Brian_Buckley]

Nice, looks great. I'm still planning on doing one of these myself but with a Ryzen APU instead. A 2400G or embedded V1000 should be similar in performance to a 1050ti but with way more headroom which should make it a lot easier to build. I'm hoping for ASRock to release its Mini STX AM4 board sometime soon but if not the Udoo Bolt would work well and even be smaller (just pricier). Also the Sapphire embedded system would work but that's not being sold to consumers right now.

With the extra vertical space I think I would try to put a low profile fan at the top with the circle at least partially open, plus possibly more ventilation from the bottom.

 

[Afterburner]

Sorry I’m a bit late to the party, made an account specifically for this thread. I’m currently trying to remake your build with near enough the same specs, but I don’t completely understand how to power situation would work? You’ve mentioned using the pico itx for the riser and then a power brick too, but I’m confused as to how the whole set up works? Feel like I’m missing the obvious but any chance you could dumb it down for me? Thanks in advance

 

[ejectbutton]

Sorry I’m a bit late to the party, made an account specifically for this thread. I’m currently trying to remake your build with near enough the same specs, but I don’t completely understand how to power situation would work? You’ve mentioned using the pico itx for the riser and then a power brick too, but I’m confused as to how the whole set up works? Feel like I’m missing the obvious but any chance you could dumb it down for me? Thanks in advance

Okay so I ended up finding out that power delivery off of the motherboard was sufficient for the 1050ti. The pico psu was used in some sense, however it was only the power delivery cable (the 7.4*5.0mm DC input cable) that came with it that ended up used. This cable was meant to deliver power from the external to internal psu. However, for my use, it was soldered to another cable that delivered power directly to the motherboard, as it already natively supports 19v and 12v input. This other cable was there specifically due to the barrel size, as I didn't have anything else that could physically fit in the slot on the motherboard. So, the power plug in the back of the system is bolted to the back of the case, then the cable runs up outside the case again to fit in the power plug, as seen in the album above. I had to drill out some of the handle right near the plug for it to fit.

That second cable was a lot like the link given, except a right angle connection. Unfortunately the original item doesn't seem to be available anymore..

In addition, late in the project I discovered a much better riser/adapter for pcie. This would be sata powered, so the internal psu could be avoided entirely. This ended up being incredibly important, as I probably should have mentioned previously. Without replacing the unwieldy pcie brick that the other adapter was, nothing would have fit. Same about the internal psu.

So, in essence, it's daisy chained. The external psu powers the motherboard, the motherboard powers the gpu. Hopefully that answers your question? I'll be updating the main post asap to reflect this. Oh and good luck to you! Hopefully this will help you avoid some pitfalls I fell into. I can't wait to see how it looks! Do post it when you're done!

 

[Afterburner]

Okay so I ended up finding out that power delivery off of the motherboard was sufficient for the 1050ti. The pico psu was used in some sense, however it was only the power delivery cable (the 7.4*5.0mm DC input cable) that came with it that ended up used. This cable was meant to deliver power from the external to internal psu. However, for my use, it was soldered to another cable that delivered power directly to the motherboard, as it already natively supports 19v and 12v input. This other cable was there specifically due to the barrel size, as I didn't have anything else that could physically fit in the slot on the motherboard. So, the power plug in the back of the system is bolted to the back of the case, then the cable runs up outside the case again to fit in the power plug, as seen in the album above. I had to drill out some of the handle right near the plug for it to fit.

That second cable was a lot like the link given, except a right angle connection. Unfortunately the original item doesn't seem to be available anymore..

In addition, late in the project I discovered a much better riser/adapter for pcie. This would be sata powered, so the internal psu could be avoided entirely. This ended up being incredibly important, as I probably should have mentioned previously. Without replacing the unwieldy pcie brick that the other adapter was, nothing would have fit. Same about the internal psu.

So, in essence, it's daisy chained. The external psu powers the motherboard, the motherboard powers the gpu. Hopefully that answers your question? I'll be updating the main post asap to reflect this. Oh and good luck to you! Hopefully this will help you avoid some pitfalls I fell into. I can't wait to see how it looks! Do post it when you're done!

Thanks for the reply, it’s completely what I needed to hear.
I did notice that the H110s2 has a sata power connector but was unsure at the time whether this would be enough, thank you for clearing that up

My plan is to use a sata power splitter so that I can use one end for the GPU adapter and one for storage, I believe the 330w psu I plan on using should be more than enough to support this, and hopefully means I shouldn’t need to mess around with itx PSUs etc. I was even going to further that by hollowing out a game boy player, sticking some 2.5” drives in it and threading some cables through to increase storage, though I’ll need to rest my original power solution works first...

 

[Afterburner]

UPDATE 1
Everything works! Several hours of pure trial and error and I finally have the system fully working with the dedicated graphics card, though as a heads up to anyone else attempting this project, there’s a few points I’ve discovered that you’ll wanna take into consideration:

- If you live in the UK like me, parts can be pretty hard to come across that are new, the only place I could find the H110s2 MB was on amazon and I got the second to last one, so you might have to hunt around

- if you don’t have the tools to cut away large amounts of the case (or don’t know anyone who can help you with it) honestly I wouldn’t attempt this build. As mentioned by @ejectbutton the floor of the case is a nightmare to work with and resulted in a new floor needing to be fixed on, you physically can’t fit everything in without doing this

- I honestly have no idea what made the GPU work, after several failed attempts ranging from hot-swapping while the system was on to cold restarts to CMOS resets, it randomly worked when I booted up the system. Be prepared to fall out with the pc trying to make it work

I plan on getting a friend to give the case a spray paint to really help it look the part, but before that I need to get everything to fit first. Funnily enough, the only part I’m having troubles with is the GPU riser, the rubber at the start of the cable doesn’t have enough bend to it to make it fit into the case. I actually broke my first adapter trying to make it fit so brute force isn’t an option, I was thinking of buying an angled 16x riser so that it might fit easier.

Any tips, help, or general questions are all welcome and appreciated too

As for pictures, truthfully I’ve never used a forum before so I’ve got no idea how to add them, though I’ll get on to that ASAP

 

[owliwar]

this post is amazing

 

[Ross Siggers]

I love this thread too! I didn't realise there were so many console builds that were in progress/completed on the forum, I really should put a build thread up. I have one already on the LTT forums.

@ejectbutton You did a lot of things similarly, or identically to how I am, and I didn't even find this thread until today...although I guess with available space, and STX board availability being what it is, it's not too much of a surprise. I used the same back-to-back layout, but with the CPU on the bottom and the GPU on the top instead.

Can I ask what riser you went with in the end? I followed a link in a previous post, but that one seens to have a pretty weedy cable. I think it's like the one I have atm which is only x1 speed. In the photos there's a much beefier one? Dm me!

 

[ejectbutton]

Yeah that's weird. Might have posted the wrong link. It's a little hazy now but it was more like this one. Should be 4x speed, but mine only ended up being able to do 2x so far. Haven't done much fiddling about with it though, maybe there's some config changes that can fix it?

Btw, nice of you to mention me in your thread. Very nice dreamcast build so far! You think there's any way to get the controllers to work with it? Curious to see how it turns out!

 

[Ross Siggers]

@ejectbutton I'll take a look, thanks The one I bought was advertised as high speed, but based on the price, and the form factor... I already knew it wasn't before I purchased it It's helped with mock-ups and fitting though. I'm checking the bandwith using GPU-Z, which I'd suppose is a fairly accurate method.

And thank you very much! Originally controllers was an idea, but they're not something I could see myself using. I love the DC, but the controller is primitive by today's standards; The last home console to have only one analogue stick, and it used hall effect sensors, which would probably make it uncooperative in windows. Personally, I use a DS4 via bluetooth these days.

If my cable management and packaging is good enough, I envisaged the front panel to be removeable, to access the rest of the hidden I/O on the front of the board. There's a USB-C on there I'd love to be able to use...

 

[Afterburner]

Quick heads up @Ross Siggers , been doing some digging and even if you get a 4x capable riser, I believe you’ll be stuck at 2x speed. Judging by the frankly appalling assistance I got from ASUS the m.2 slot on the h110s2, which is usually 4x, shares its pcie lanes with the sata ports, meaning using a data drive for storage will limit you to 2x speeds

Again the agent I connected to just didn’t understand my problem so I can’t be totally certain of this, but it seems likely. It’s pretty shocking that no-where is this documented either on their site or in the motherboard documentation. Given that most processors can handle 16 lanes it baffles me as to why there’s a 2x limit but nothing much we can do about it now. My gaming performance has been pretty mixed as a result of the low bandwidth though. Some games like black ops 3 run 1080p max settings at 60fps, other games like apex legends run awfully at even the lowest so it’s a mixed bag, let us know how you get on.

P.s love the look of your Dreamcast build, hope all goes smoothly

 

[Ross Siggers]

Quick heads up @Ross Siggers , been doing some digging and even if you get a 4x capable riser, I believe you’ll be stuck at 2x speed. Judging by the frankly appalling assistance I got from ASUS the m.2 slot on the h110s2, which is usually 4x, shares its pcie lanes with the sata ports, meaning using a data drive for storage will limit you to 2x speeds. ~snip~ Let us know how you get on.

P.s love the look of your Dreamcast build, hope all goes smoothly

This is very good to know, thanks buddy. I guess this has made a decision for me; I was trying to decide if I should stick to the WiFi card I have, or use a dongle for that, and have my storage ssd directly on the board. If it means I potentially have more lanes, then I think that's the way I'm going to have to go. I guess it clears up some of the excess wires inside the case as a by product too.

Also cheers dude! I'm really just struggling with the power delivery, everything else is either done, or a known quantity.

EDIT: Wait, you mean to say storage in one M.2 slot, would also effect the lane allocation to the other(gpu) slot? D: