So I finally found some time to downsize my brother’s PC. He said that he was gaming less frequently and the games that he still plays are older games that are quite easy to run, like Star Wars: Empire at War. So an APU was a more logical option, and he would be getting some desk space back when switching to the L5 from Lone Industries while also being a more logical choice for a general purpose PC.
The internals
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 2400G |
MOBO | ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac |
COOLER | Noctua NH-L12S |
FANS | 2x Noctua NF-A8 PWM |
RAM | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB 3000 MHz |
SSD | Samsung 860 EVO 1 TB |
PSU | HDPLEX 200W AC-DC |
PSU | HDPLEX 200W DC-ATX |
CASE | Lone Industries L5 |
Most of the parts came from the previous build, so some are a bit more than necessary for the new build. The main goal of the build was a PC that is silent under operation and also as compact as possible.
Adding an internal power supply
I really don’t like adding an external brick to a PC where this is not strictly necessary. Since this build is only using an APU, the space where the LP GPU would sit is left empty; an ideal place for the AC-DC converter.
First I would need to find a place to add the C14 socket to the case since the original intended mounting space for Pico PSU connector would of course not work. I wanted to place it in the grill behind the cooler, but seeing as that would collide with the actual heat sink the second best place was grinding a bit out of the bottom PCI slot.
So I grabbed a rotary tool and ground away a part of the bottom slot away to nicely fit in the plug. And to secure it when removing the plug from the socket I used some standard zip ties.
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After that it was time to drill some mounting holes in the bottom of the case for the AC-DC converter. I first tried mounting it to the bottom with some double-sided tape but that did not really feel secure enough when the glue would heat up under sustained load and heat build-up on the converter.
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After that I only needed to fit in the DC-ATX converter in the 24-pin connector, which was a bit tight with the fans in the front of the case but it just fit.
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Finalizing the build
And with the difficult part out of the way only a few things remained; the power button pins had to be bent a bit downwards to not interfere with the L12S, and some cable management had to be done so that there were no cables touching any fans or being in an inconvenient place.
So with all that done, here are some final pictures of the build!
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