Hello from the North

Hello,

I have been building my own PCs since my first i486 DX2. I was into water cooling before it was cool and the only thing you didn't have make yourself was the CPU block. Now that I'm older and don't really game too much so my builds have been more modest. I've been building on Mini-ITX for my main PC since 2009 and I've pretty much had the same BitFenix prodigy since my Haswell build. I got into crypto-mining a few years ago but nothing fancy there - everything is just hanging off of a wire rack under the stairs.

Anyway, looking for advice on an important build. Please let me know if I should start a new thread for but if it's okay to ask here, I was trying to source an SFF PC but my supplier for Dell, HP, and Lenovo are all backlogged and it looks like I need to build from bare metal.

I need to fit this build into a safe (USCAN B2018-C) which is bolted to the floor. It's interior dimensions are 19-3/4" H x 17-3/4" W x 12" D and I should have at least 2" of clearance.

Now... it seems easy enough finding a case that small... but I need to fit in a low profile PCIe card with a USB port on the lower section.
I've been looking at a few cases from SilverStone and InWin but I was hoping someone around here had any better ideas. I'm also open to suggestions with the motherboard.

Looking for...
  • PCIe x 2.0 atleast (Peak power draw is 18 Watts)
  • Any CPU with 4 cores
  • 12 GB RAM
  • Not too picky between NVMe or SATA but RAID would be nice.
  • Would like to minimize all the extra add-ons and would take a lower spec motherboard with higher quality than a gaming motherboard
  • This system will be offline 364 days of the year so NVRAM for the BIOS is critical
Hope to hang out more as I've also been jonesing to water-cool again... on SFF!!

Thanks!
 
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Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,827
4,902
Welcome to the forum ! Interesting use-case for SFF ! Be mindful of heat and power consumption as it will need to survive in a hotbox. So you want the most power-efficient setup and potentially see if you could use the safe as a heatsink itself. As it would end up cooking itself in an enclosed box. Even passive cases can dissipate heat in the environment but a case inside a safe can't. Even if you'll only power it on 1 day a year, it will need heat to be dissipated. Or you can consider sinking the heat in a mass of metal but that'll also depend on your total wattage.

For reliability I can recommend server hardware. SuperMicro and ASRockRack have server/industrial mITX boards. You might want to look at Intel Atom C3xxx systems for a low power 4-core solution.


Be sure to read up on the terms and rules of the forum. Mainly for buying and selling or other commercial activity on the forum as the access is limited and the rules are strictly enforced.

As a new user you're probably not able to edit posts or links just yet, so if a substantial error was made, click the Report-button in the post.

Hope to see you around, enjoy the wonderful world of SFF !
 
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tooboku

Minimal Tinkerer
Original poster
New User
Jul 19, 2021
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Thanks!
For reliability I can recommend server hardware. SuperMicro and ASRockRack have server/industrial mITX boards. You might want to look at Intel Atom C3xxx systems for a low power 4-core solution.

Be sure to read up on the terms and rules of the forum. Mainly for buying and selling or other commercial activity on the forum as the access is limited and the rules are strictly enforced.
I love SuperMicro! I got pretty serious into a build like that when Intel started putting SHA3 on the CPUs but then just went the GPU route. Definitely at the top of the list if I can purchase it through my normal reseller.
 
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tooboku

Minimal Tinkerer
Original poster
New User
Jul 19, 2021
4
4
... and after 2 minutes of searching.

SuperMicro A3SEV-4C-LN4.

This is exactly what I need. No more! No less! Now I just need to source it.

Thanks!!!!
 
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