Completed Lone Industries L5 - 4.6L Mini ITX

Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
Oh hey that's mine !
On a side note, I'm gonna be repurposing it as a NAS and was wondering about 2.5 mounting.
I can see the three screw holes where the pcie slots are, but I can't find what you mean on the website by "1 x 2.5" at top (max 7.5 mm thick) "

Hi, please see below:

 

jhautz

Caliper Novice
Jan 30, 2018
26
28
Hey Mr Lone. Just a quick post to say thanks. Great little case you made here. Really like everything about it (One suggestion for improvement). I got mine earlier this week and just finished the build. I didn't take pictures along the way so no internal photos, just the finished build sitting on my desk. But that isn't a big loss, I didn't really do anything other than what was intended on the inside.

I was planning to do a 65W Ryzen build. Either the 3600 or 3700x. But when I went to Microcenter to pick one up, they had a fresh shipment of the new Intel 10th gen stuff so I figured that would be fun to check out. I wound up going with the only 65W new Intel CPU they had. The i5 10400. 6 threads, 12 cores, 4.3ghz . Plenty of power for the use of this machine. Mostly general office and web browsing stuff with occasional Solidworks and Fusion 360 CAD modeling and some light gaming very occasionally.

Here are the specs: of the build:
  • Intel i5 10400 (65W, 6 core, 12 thread)
  • Noctua NH-L12S
  • Gigabayte Z490 AORUS ULTRA ITX ( I know, Z series isn't needed on the locked chip but its what they had and I wanted to try the new Intel for myself. I wasn't on any kind of tight budget and this leaves me headroom if I want to get one of the K chips in the future)
  • GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6 Low Profile (The just released updated version with DDR6 and 4 video outs.1 x Dual-link DVI-D 2 x HDMI 2.0b 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 )
  • 2TB Intel 660P nvme
  • 16GB Corsair LPX DDR4 3200 C16
  • HDPlex 200w DC-ATX
  • Dell New Slim Style 240W AC Adapter
  • (2) 80mm Arctic P8 PWM fans (crazy long stock wires. Had to shorten them for my own sanity)
A few quick comments. I know its not a popular choice right now, but so far I like the 10400 chip. Runs super cool and quiet and performs as good as my old 8700K, except alot cooler. With this setup in aida64 it never goes over 61 degrees no matter what I do. The CPU never gets hot, no matter what I do. Even hammering both the GPU and CPU at the same time and making the inside of the case really hot. Lots of headroom, I probably can go up to one of the K chips and be fine if I ever want too.

The GPU on the other hand.... Its a little fireball. Crazy high temps. Bumping up as high as 89 degrees running furmark with fans at 100%. (I will say the fans aren't as loud as I expected those little things to be, so that was a pleasant surprise. Which brings me to the only suggestion I would make for changes on this case. Please add more bottom ventilation. The holes that are there really only allow one of the gpu fans to breath. I personally would just cover the bottom panel in holes like you have, just 3X as many of them across the whole bottom of the case. I wound up linking the front fans to the mother board temp sensor that is right next to the GPU so as it heats up the front fans ramp up. I am considering a hole saw to put a clear open hole right below each of the fans, but haven't gone there yet. Anyone else run into this issue and have a good suggestion for a fix?

For now what I did to solve the GPU temps is to install MSI afterburner and knock the max power down to 90%. Even at 90% I was still able to bump the core clock up by 75mhz and the memory by 500mhz and its all still stable with no issues. Doing this doesn't seem to hurt the performance, but it knocks the max temp down to 73C. Still hot, but much more reasonable. As a matter of fact it actually increased the score on a few benchmarks I tried. The high temps were keeping the core clocks lower.

Had a good time building in your case and it fits perfectly in my little work space!





 
Last edited:

Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
Hey Mr Lone. Just a quick post to say thanks. Great little case you made here. Really like everything about it (One suggestion for improvement). I got mine earlier this week and just finished the build. I didn't take pictures along the way so not guts photos, just the finished build sitting on my desk. But that isn't a big loss, I didn't really do anything other than what was intended on the inside.

I was planning to do a 65W Ryzen build. Either the 3600 or 3700x. But when I went to Microcenter to pick one up, they had a fresh shipment of the new Intel 10th gen stuff so I figured that would be fun to check out. I wound up going with the only 65W new Intel CPU they had. The i5 10400. 6 threads, 12 cores, 4.3ghz . Plenty of power for the use of this machine. Mostly general office and web browsing stuff with occasional Solidworks and Fusion 360 CAD modeling and some light gaming very occasionally.

Here are the specs: of the build:
  • Intel i5 104009 (65W, 6 core, 12 thread)
  • Noctua NH-L12S
  • Gigabayte Z490 AORUS ULTRA ITX ( I know, Z series isn't needed on the locked chip but its what they had and I wanted to try the new Intel for myself. I wasn't on any kind of tight budget and this leaves me headroom if I want to get one of the K chips in the future)
  • GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1650 4GB GDDR6 Low Profile (The just released updated version with DDR6 and 4 video outs.1 x Dual-link DVI-D 2 x HDMI 2.0b 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 )
  • 2TB Intel 660P nvme
  • 16GB Corsair LPX DDR4 3200 C16
  • HDPlex 200w DC-ATX
  • Dell New Slim Style 240W AC Adapter
  • (2) 80mm Arctic P8 PWM fans (crazy long stock wires. Had to shorten them for my own sanity)
A few quick comments. I know its not a popular choice right now, but so far I like the 10400 chip. Runs super cool and quiet and performs as good as my old 8700K, except alot cooler. With this setup in aida64 it never goes over 61 degrees no matter what I do. The CPU never gets hot, no matter what I do. Even hammering both the GPU and CPU at the same time and making the inside of the case really hot. Lots of headroom, I probably can go up to one of the K chips and be fine if I ever want too.

The GPU on the other hand.... Its a little fireball. Crazy high temps. Bumping up as high as 89 degrees running furmark with fans at 100%. (I will say the fans aren't as loud as I expected those little things to be, so that was a pleasant surprise. Which brings me to the only suggestion I would make for changes on this case. Please add more bottom ventilation. The holes that are there really only allow one of the gpu fans to breath. I personally would just cover the bottom panel in holes like you have, just 3X as many of them across the whole bottom of the case. I would up linking the front fans to the mother board temp sensor that is right next to the GPU so as it heats up the front fans ramp up. I am considering a holes saw to open a clear open hole right below each of the fans, but haven't gone there yet. Anyone else run into this issue and have a good suggestion for a fix?

For now what I did to solve the GPU temps is to install MSI afterburner and knock the max power down to 90%. Even at 90% I was still able to bump the core clock up by 75mhz and the memory by 500mhz and its all still stable with no issues. Doing this doesn't seem to hurt the performance, but it knocks the max temp down to 73C. Still hot, but much more reasonable. As a matter of fact it actually increased the score on a few benchmarks I tried. The high temps were keeping the core clocks lower.

Had a good time building in your case and it fits perfectly in my little work space!






Thank you for posting your build, and for the suggestion for improvement!

That sounds like a great CPU. I might be able to make that change to the vents. My biggest concern is causing the panel to warp since the vent is right next to the edge. It would be extremely helpful if you are able to test and post your GPU temps with the cover off so that we can compare between the two results. Also, just to confirm, your case fans are setup to push air into the case from the front?

Thanks again!
 

jhautz

Caliper Novice
Jan 30, 2018
26
28
Thank you for posting your build, and for the suggestion for improvement!

That sounds like a great CPU. I might be able to make that change to the vents. My biggest concern is causing the panel to warp since the vent is right next to the edge. It would be extremely helpful if you are able to test and post your GPU temps with the cover off so that we can compare between the two results. Also, just to confirm, your case fans are setup to push air into the case from the front?

Thanks again!
Yes. Front fans pull air into the case.

I did a bench test with the motherboard and GPU setup on my test bench and tested to see the limits that I could overclock the GPU before I assembled everything and it only got up to the mid 60's overclocked to the limit and pushed flat out and the fans never went over 80%. Inside the case it adds a good 25-30 degrees I'm guessing.

I may try pulling the fans off of the GPU and putting a 80mm fan on it pulling right from the vent. Wire the plug on the fan so it plugs right into the GPU fan header. Getting rid of the fan shroud on the GPU it may open up a little more space for air to circulate down there as well.

Not sure how much space there will be to fit an 80mm fan. I'll have to play around with it the next time I get a chance.
 

Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
Yes. Front fans pull air into the case.

I did a bench test with the motherboard and GPU setup on my test bench and tested to see the limits that I could overclock the GPU before I assembled everything and it only got up to the mid 60's overclocked to the limit and pushed flat out and the fans never went over 80%. Inside the case it adds a good 25-30 degrees I'm guessing.

I may try pulling the fans off of the GPU and putting a 80mm fan on it pulling right from the vent. Wire the plug on the fan so it plugs right into the GPU fan header. Getting rid of the fan shroud on the GPU it may open up a little more space for air to circulate down there as well.

Not sure how much space there will be to fit an 80mm fan. I'll have to play around with it the next time I get a chance.

Thanks for the additional info. How are your temps under normal use? The temps your seeing don't really match up with my tests using a GTX 750 Ti, so I'll have to look into this further, and maybe get myself a newer card to test with. One other review mentions this card runs hot, but 60 without the cover isn't hot.

Depending on your GPU heatsink, you may be able to fit an 80x15mm fan. There are two possible mounting holes on the flange at the bottom, but it may be better/easier to mounting it directly to the heatsink using some other method (some have used zip ties).
 

Steezy

Case Bender
New User
May 20, 2020
2
3
Oh hey that's mine !
On a side note, I'm gonna be repurposing it as a NAS and was wondering about 2.5 mounting.
I can see the three screw holes where the pcie slots are, but I can't find what you mean on the website by "1 x 2.5" at top (max 7.5 mm thick) "
The SSD mounts on the two screw holes that are above the motherboard. The SSD is only secured on one side so the other side kinda just hangs there but i haven't ran into an issue yet.
 
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Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
The photos below show how I routed my cables. It's pretty straightforward. I think it's important to run the case fan cables behind the motherboard to keep them out of the way.

Specs:
  • L5 White/Black
  • AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
  • ASUS Prime A320I-K (was B450)
  • Corsair Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 3200
  • Samsung 970 PRO 512GB M.2
  • Gigabyte GT 1030 Passive
  • G-unique Arch Daemon
  • Adapter Tech 192W AC adapter




 
Last edited:

Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
An email from a customer today sparked an idea for mounting the HDPLEX 200W AC-DC (not DC-ATX) in the L5 for an APU build. It's a tight fit, but it should work. The distance from the surface of a PCI card to the bottom of the case is about 40mm. My thought is having G-Unique make a blank expansion card that the HDPLEX 200W AC-DC can mount to. Ideally, for a little more clearance one could fabricate most of it out of metal, and then only use PCB for the part that mounts into the PCI slot. This would gain another 1.5mm.



 
Last edited:

Kopavi

Cable Smoosher
May 22, 2020
8
7
My L5 arrived earlier than I thought! It feels and looks very well made. My previous SFF cases were Lian Li PC-Q50, TT V1 and Metis Plus so this is a very big downsizing for me. ?

  • Ryzen 3700x
  • MSI B450i
  • Ballistix Sport LT 2x16GB 3200c16
  • Intel 660p 2TB
  • MSI GT 1030 DDR5 2GB fanless
  • Mini-com picoPSU-160-XT & 192W AC-DC external brick
  • Noctua NH-L12S
  • 2x Noctua NF-A8
Build photos
Exceptionally clean build. That Pico psu sure opens things up and eliminates the need for cable management. Surprised more SFF builders don't go to this option more often but I also realize many are building systems that require more than the Pico delivers. Thanks for the close-up photos of the Pico.
 
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Reactions: Lone

Kopavi

Cable Smoosher
May 22, 2020
8
7
How good is a G-Unique Arch Daemon or HDPlex 200W compared to more conventional SFX PSU:s in terms of electrical properties? Over power protection, ripple, and other values? Does this depend on the power brick as well?
Couldn't find much about the PSUs you refer to, however this review of the Pico dating back to 2006 (which precedes the 150 and 160xt versions) tests the 120W Pico using two different bricks and provides quite a bit of testing information.
Tiny Silent and Efficient
 

jhautz

Caliper Novice
Jan 30, 2018
26
28
Thanks for the additional info. How are your temps under normal use? The temps your seeing don't really match up with my tests using a GTX 750 Ti, so I'll have to look into this further, and maybe get myself a newer card to test with. One other review mentions this card runs hot, but 60 without the cover isn't hot.

Depending on your GPU heat sink, you may be able to fit an 80x15mm fan. There are two possible mounting holes on the flange at the bottom, but it may be better/easier to mounting it directly to the heat sink using some other method (some have used zip ties).

Hi. Under normal gaming use the GPU is running at 99% almost all the time so the temps get up there. Under just daily work or web browsing its no problem since there is no load on the gpu.

Doing a bit more tuning on the power and frequency settings in MSI afterburner and I think I have it pretty well optimized. Getting similar benchmark scores as when the cover is off and running at stock settings and only getting about 7 degrees hotter than with the open case. This is now running about 80C with the case closed and about 73C with the case open. So really just a poor cooling card to begin with and that compounds the tight ventilation.

I took photos that show the fan positions on the card vs the vent holes in the bottom of the case. Probably just extending the hole pattern a coule inches toward the back of the case would let both fans on the 2 fan cards breath a bit better. As it is now when its closed the rear fan is only a few mm from the solid panel portion of the bottom panel.




I also am sharing some pictures of my front panel USB mod. (If you can call it a mod) Really just 2 white 1ft USB extensions running under the case and plugging into open ports in the back panel. I like having them there for plugging in jump drives and being able to plug an xbox controller easily. Super simple and just mounted under the case with double sided tape. But still looks clean and neat like they were meant to be there.




Also some lid off pics. I'm pretty happy with how my wiring turned out so I thought I would share.


 
Last edited:

Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
Hi. Under normal gaming use the GPU is running at 99% almost all the time so the temps get up there. Under just daily work or web browsing its no problem since there is no load on the gpu.

Doing a bit more tuning on the power and frequency settings in MSI afterburner and I think I have it pretty well optimized. Getting similar benchmark scores as when the cover is off and running at stock settings and only getting about 7 degrees hotter than with the open case. This is now running about 80C with the case closed and about 73C with the case open. So really just a poor cooling card to begin with and that compounds the tight ventilation.

I took photos that show the fan positions on the card vs the vent holes in the bottom of the case. Probably just extending the hole pattern a coule inches toward the back of the case would let both fans on the 2 fan cards breath a bit better. As it is now when its closed the rear fan is only a few mm from the solid panel portion of the bottom panel.




I also am sharing some pictures of my front panel USB mod. (If you can call it a mod) Really just 2 white 1ft USB extensions running under the case and plugging into open ports in the back panel. I like having them there for plugging in jump drives and being able to plug an xbox controller easily. Super simple and just mounted under the case with double sided tape. But still looks clean and neat like they were meant to be there.




Also some lid off pics. I'm pretty happy with how my wiring turned out so I thought I would share.



Nice job with the cable management, and photos. :)

Does your CPU fan blow into the case or out? With your CPU cooler oriented the way it is it's also blocked partially. I looked at moving the vent up, but it would have to go too high for my liking. Not sure how much this would effect cooling though. Might only be minor. Noctua says it cools better in that orientation (when vertical) anyway, so it might cancel out any gains rotated 180 degrees.

Another quick test you could try is to test GPU temps with the GPU vent completely blocked, and open, to see how much they differ. This would tell you whether the GPU is able to get some air, despite the case fans pressurizing the case.
 

DrLeroy

Noob Saibot
May 15, 2020
186
117
This is a very tempting replacement case for my home server currently in a Silverstone ML05 (r7 1700, quadro P600 strix b350 board 32gb ram and m.2 storage) looks like it could save me a decent amount of desk space. whats the shipping costs like to Australia on these?
 

smitty2k1

King of Cable Management
Dec 3, 2016
967
492
Hi. Under normal gaming use the GPU is running at 99% almost all the time so the temps get up there. Under just daily work or web browsing its no problem since there is no load on the gpu.

Doing a bit more tuning on the power and frequency settings in MSI afterburner and I think I have it pretty well optimized. Getting similar benchmark scores as when the cover is off and running at stock settings and only getting about 7 degrees hotter than with the open case. This is now running about 80C with the case closed and about 73C with the case open. So really just a poor cooling card to begin with and that compounds the tight ventilation.

I took photos that show the fan positions on the card vs the vent holes in the bottom of the case. Probably just extending the hole pattern a coule inches toward the back of the case would let both fans on the 2 fan cards breath a bit better. As it is now when its closed the rear fan is only a few mm from the solid panel portion of the bottom panel.




I also am sharing some pictures of my front panel USB mod. (If you can call it a mod) Really just 2 white 1ft USB extensions running under the case and plugging into open ports in the back panel. I like having them there for plugging in jump drives and being able to plug an xbox controller easily. Super simple and just mounted under the case with double sided tape. But still looks clean and neat like they were meant to be there.




Also some lid off pics. I'm pretty happy with how my wiring turned out so I thought I would share.



Wow that all looks great! I agree the GPU could use some more venting in the next revision.
 

GuilleAcoustic

Chief Procrastination Officer
SFFn Staff
LOSIAS
Jun 29, 2015
2,967
4,390
guilleacoustic.wordpress.com
Did anyone try to use the bottom fan as intake and the top one as exhaust ? This could help to get heated air out of the case faster ... or maybe it would get trapped between the fan mounting plate and the case front plate, and thus would end up being recycled by the bottom fan. I'd be curious to know ...
 

Yugo555

Average Stuffer
Mar 13, 2020
71
26
Did anyone try to use the bottom fan as intake and the top one as exhaust ? This could help to get heated air out of the case faster ... or maybe it would get trapped between the fan mounting plate and the case front plate, and thus would end up being recycled by the bottom fan. I'd be curious to know ...

That’s exactly what I was thinking today. Then I thought the CPU fan may cause sort of intervention to the air flow and let the hot air pocket stack somewhere in the case. Just an imagination :)
 

Lone

King of Cable Management
Original poster
Lone Industries
Feb 25, 2015
731
1,248
loneindustries.com
Did anyone try to use the bottom fan as intake and the top one as exhaust ? This could help to get heated air out of the case faster ... or maybe it would get trapped between the fan mounting plate and the case front plate, and thus would end up being recycled by the bottom fan. I'd be curious to know ...

When I run a single case fan, warm air will come out the open spot. How much warm air is recycled I'm not sure though. You could attach a simple baffle to the fan mount.