Completed MJOLNIR: The minimalistic – but not boring – 9.7L Case

[steelfractal]

How did you know?? Thank you very much!!

 

[AlexTzone]

Lol I bet you figured it out from the cropped Suzuki Peak Pikes I posted a while ago

 

[steelfractal]

Lol I bet you figured it out from the cropped Suzuki Peak Pikes I posted a while ago

nope you told me yourself also i haven't seen any gusses from you since then

I always have the christmas tree up until my birthday on February 19:th x)

 

[AlexTzone]

nope you told me yourself also i haven't seen any gusses from you since then

Haha oh yeah that's true!! Truth be told, the Christmas tree is still up, and I'm setting up a proposal to Denize that we keep it until May in order to celebrate shipping of NANOQ; however, I don't think this proposal has high chance of getting granted

I'm waaay out of my league with you guys there, but I'm keeping an eye on it, going to collab with Denize father and brother next time we meet, see if we three can figure out the latest pic

 

[AlexTzone]

Heey guys, now you can log in here and keep track of your order & confirm address: https://thor-zone.com/mini-itx/nanoq/login/

 

[AlexTzone]

I see, but they do look ugly like that.

Actually good catch, as we have started production and went through all drawings with the factories, we noticed that the PSU rail slots are M3 clearance with #6-32 countersunk, we adjusted it so they are purely #6-32, meaning the screws will sit a bit deeper in and not stick up that much.

 

[turboleak]

Actually good catch, as we have started production and went through all drawings with the factories, we noticed that the PSU rail slots are M3 clearance with #6-32 countersunk, we adjusted it so they are purely #6-32, meaning the screws will sit a bit deeper in and not stick up that much.

I love you man.

 

[Notional]

I'm trying to figure out how to do a build before I buy the case.

I think it was a horrible choice to put the fan/AIO radiator at the bottom of the case:

• It intakes air instead of exhausting heat.
• Pumps on AIO's will fill with air, resulting in noise and decreased lifespan.
• As far as I can tell, the tubes will have to run over the RAM, meaning the motherboard compartment will require more space at the cost of the GPU. Especially dire in the Nanoq S.

Turning it upside down will result in other issues:

• The power button be at the N in Nanoq instead of the actual power symbol (afaik).
• GPU will now hang upside down.
• Tubes still have to run across the memory.

With radiator at top, the tubes can run on top of the PCIe slot just above the memory.

How are you guys going to route the AIO tubes in the Nanoq S? I assume it would require less all non rgb memory.

Addemdum: Alex, would it be possible to shift the PSU further forward in the Nanoq S? With some ITX mobos, some of the internal IO sticks out to the side, rather than up. Usually Sata ports or similar.

 

[AlexTzone]

I'm trying to figure out how to do a build before I buy the case.

I think it was a horrible choice to put the fan/AIO radiator at the bottom of the case:

• It intakes air instead of exhausting heat.
• Pumps on AIO's will fill with air, resulting in noise and decreased lifespan.
• As far as I can tell, the tubes will have to run over the RAM, meaning the motherboard compartment will require more space at the cost of the GPU. Especially dire in the Nanoq S.

Turning it upside down will result in other issues:

• The power button be at the N in Nanoq instead of the actual power symbol (afaik).
• GPU will now hang upside down.
• Tubes still have to run across the memory.

With radiator at top, the tubes can run on top of the PCIe slot just above the memory.

How are you guys going to route the AIO tubes in the Nanoq S? I assume it would require less all non rgb memory.

Addemdum: Alex, would it be possible to shift the PSU further forward in the Nanoq S? With some ITX mobos, some of the internal IO sticks out to the side, rather than up. Usually Sata ports or similar.

I see what you mean; however, after testing it a while back inside the shell we noticed that having the rad on top in the standard layout would have decreased rad+fan compatibility in the S from 42mm to roughly 39mm (due to the IO shield, which has to have some space between the bottom of the case and the mobo per standard, it’s hard to explain in text but we can utilize 100% of these 3 mm’s for the rad+fan if it’s on the bottom).

As for your concerns regarding the flipped configuration:
- The power-button will indeed be located under the “N” but it doesn’t affect performance or the looks, only where you click.
- No need to worry about the GPU hanging upside down, regardless of how it’s oriented it will be secure with the updated 3-point GPU mounting.
- Tubes will run across the memory or underneath it, depending on how long your tubes are. Low profile memory is advised but it’s absolutely possible with tall memory as well. Also possible to have the rad the other orientation, so the tubes come out on the motherboard side, but will require and AIO with quite flexible tubes.

Not possible to have the PSU further out I’m afraid, what motherboard did you have in mind, I can check if there will be issues

 

[Notional]

Not possible to have the PSU further out I’m afraid, what motherboard did you have in mind, I can check if there will be issues

What a shame. 2 extra screw holes in the metal bars would make it possible for more flexibility.

I'm specifically thinking about the ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-I which has a vertical daughter board with sata connectors sticking out to the side, right into the PSU:

 

[turboleak]

What a shame. 2 extra screw holes in the metal bars would make it possible for more flexibility.

I'm specifically thinking about the ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-I which has a vertical daughter board with sata connectors sticking out to the side, right into the PSU:

That's probably the worst ITX board on the market ( it has the x670E chipset ) .
The x670 is basically two b650e chipsets chained together, using the exact same 4 PCI-E lanes that come from the CPU. on a b650 board you have the b650 chipset connected to 4 CPU PCI-E lanes, on the x670 you have one b650 connected to 4 PCI-E lanes and then that same b650 uses another 4 of it's PCI-E lanes ( that could be used to connect devices for instance ) to connect to another b650 chipset for the sake of a few extra shared PCI-E lanes. Just plain stupid in almost every scenario even with EATX boards where you want to have alot of connectivity.
- All the chipset PCIE-lanes are going going to be shared across those same 4 CPU PCI-E lanes, no matter if you have one or two b650's
- there is very little use case for so much connectivity even on an EATX motherboard where you actually have space to use the extra PCI-E lanes, more so because it's has that 4 CPU PCI-E lane bottleneck. It makes sense on boards that have two three or four PCIE slots so as long as you accept that all except the main PCIE x16 slot ( that one wires directly to the CPU ) will all go trough the same 4 lane PCI-E CPU connection.

And in this particular case, on an ITX board, it's just plain stupid because you are simply adding extra shared PCI-E lanes that go unused ( they are not wired to anything ). The Asus B650E-I is a much better board, because the single b650 chipset is used fully, it's only one chipset, so less heat, less electric interference and less board space used. for for adding nothing they had to remove the sound card from the board and come up with a sound appendice.. I wonder what was on their heads when they designed the board? maybe catering to consumers that think that just because 670 is bigger than 650 then it's better.. who knows...

to finish the rant, sata devices on a modern itx build should be banned and a case for summary prosecussion and prison.

 

[Notional]

That's probably the worst ITX board on the market ( it has the x670E chipset ) .
The x670 is basically two b650e chipsets chained together, using the exact same 4 PCI-E lanes that come from the CPU. on a b650 board you have the b650 chipset connected to 4 CPU PCI-E lanes, on the x670 you have one b650 connected to 4 PCI-E lanes and then that same b650 uses another 4 of it's PCI-E lanes ( that could be used to connect devices for instance ) to connect to another b650 chipset for the sake of a few extra shared PCI-E lanes. Just plain stupid in almost every scenario even with EATX boards where you want to have alot of connectivity.
- All the chipset PCIE-lanes are going going to be shared across those same 4 CPU PCI-E lanes, no matter if you have one or two b650's
- there is very little use case for so much connectivity even on an EATX motherboard where you actually have space to use the extra PCI-E lanes, more so because it's has that 4 CPU PCI-E lane bottleneck. It makes sense on boards that have two three or four PCIE slots so as long as you accept that all except the main PCIE x16 slot ( that one wires directly to the CPU ) will all go trough the same 4 lane PCI-E CPU connection.

And in this particular case, on an ITX board, it's just plain stupid because you are simply adding extra shared PCI-E lanes that go unused ( they are not wired to anything ). The Asus B650E-I is a much better board, because the single b650 chipset is used fully, it's only one chipset, so less heat, less electric interference and less board space used. for for adding nothing they had to remove the sound card from the board and come up with a sound appendice.. I wonder what was on their heads when they designed the board? maybe catering to consumers that think that just because 670 is bigger than 650 then it's better.. who knows...

to finish the rant, sata devices on a modern itx build should be banned and a case for summary prosecussion and prison.

Reason is that that board has 2x full speed USB4 connectors as well, so it's full on IO. This will help with thunderbolt kvm/dock making working with work laptop easier for future use.

That being said, I am tempted to wait for zen5 and the ITX boards to follow with x690/x770 or whatever they will call them, which has mandatory USB4 ports.
I would just love to play Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 on a new pc, so it's cutting it close.

Sata SSD's are just fine for music libraries, pictures, important backups, etc. Issue is that any right angled connectors can cause problems in the Nanoq S.

 

[turboleak]

Reason is that that board has 2x full speed USB4 connectors as well, so it's full on IO. This will help with thunderbolt kvm/dock making working with work laptop easier for future use.

That being said, I am tempted to wait for zen5 and the ITX boards to follow with x690/x770 or whatever they will call them, which has mandatory USB4 ports.
I would just love to play Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 on a new pc, so it's cutting it close.

Sata SSD's are just fine for music libraries, pictures, important backups, etc. Issue is that any right angled connectors can cause problems in the Nanoq S.

Full USB4 speed is 80gbits/sec or 10gigabytes/sec. The 4 PCI-E 5.0 lanes of the B650 spent to connect the other B650 ( and thus make a x670 ) do 16 gigabytes/sec, so they could have added a full USB 4 port or added a PCI-E switch and two full USB 4.0 ports sharing those 4 lanes. They are simply using the extra b650 as a PCI-E switch and that is very ineficient from a space and power perspective.

I do get your point, I'm just kind of mad that they could have made an even better b650 board than the B650E-I is, but instead they made their "premium" board a very very sub par product in my opinion just because they for some reason opted for the x670 "chipset" that is simply a bad design of a chipset solution as it simply daisy chains two b650's to increase the PCI-E lane count at a cost of alot of heat, energy consuption, electromagnetic interference and PCB space without addressing the fact that all those lanes will then have to go trough the same CPU link bottleneck.


I too am hopping that their next generation boards will be better and maybe we can have a worthy sucessor of their crosshair impact series, unfortunatly what I read about the next chipsets is not encouraging. It seems they are just the current ones, rebranded with an added ASMEDIA chipset for USB4 connected to some already existing PCI-E lanes of the B650 and then calling it the B750. They may even throw a PCI-E switch this time into the solution lol.

If you are considering a NANOQ for your build I would defenitely wait for Zen5. Zen5 is probably going to be released around summer this year, so lets say, you get your NANOQ in June, Zen5 should be out around that time, and even if you wait a bit, like one or two months, that would be worth it, at least for me.

and about sata, the thing with sata on an ITX build are the cables. I'm running an 8TB NVME on my B650E-I. I guess that's plenty of storage for anyone, and no messy cables or sata device to care about.

EDIT: I was curious about what USB4 the board has and it's actually 40gbit, so I guess three PCI-E 5.0 lanes would do. They could actually have wired the two USB 4 ports using a PCI-E switch connected to three of the four PCI-E lanes they wasted connecting the second B650 and there would still be a PCI-e lane to spare.

 

[Notional]

Full USB4 speed is 80gbits/sec or 10gigabytes/sec. The 4 PCI-E 5.0 lanes of the B650 spent to connect the other B650 ( and thus make a x670 ) do 16 gigabytes/sec, so they could have added a full USB 4 port or added a PCI-E switch and two full USB 4.0 ports sharing those 4 lanes. They are simply using the extra b650 as a PCI-E switch and that is very ineficient from a space and power perspective.

I do get your point, I'm just kind of mad that they could have made an even better b650 board than the B650E-I is, but instead they made their "premium" board a very very sub par product in my opinion just because they for some reason opted for the x670 "chipset" that is simply a bad design of a chipset solution as it simply daisy chains two b650's to increase the PCI-E lane count at a cost of alot of heat, energy consuption, electromagnetic interference and PCB space without addressing the fact that all those lanes will then have to go trough the same CPU link bottleneck.


I too am hopping that their next generation boards will be better and maybe we can have a worthy sucessor of their crosshair impact series, unfortunatly what I read about the next chipsets is not encouraging. It seems they are just the current ones, rebranded with an added ASMEDIA chipset for USB4 connected to some already existing PCI-E lanes of the B650 and then calling it the B750. They may even throw a PCI-E switch this time into the solution lol.

If you are considering a NANOQ for your build I would defenitely wait for Zen5. Zen5 is probably going to be released around summer this year, so lets say, you get your NANOQ in June, Zen5 should be out around that time, and even if you wait a bit, like one or two months, that would be worth it, at least for me.

and about sata, the thing with sata on an ITX build are the cables. I'm running an 8TB NVME on my B650E-I. I guess that's plenty of storage for anyone, and no messy cables or sata device to care about.

EDIT: I was curious about what USB4 the board has and it's actually 40gbit, so I guess three PCI-E 5.0 lanes would do. They could actually have wired the two USB 4 ports using a PCI-E switch connected to three of the four PCI-E lanes they wasted connecting the second B650 and there would still be a PCI-e lane to spare.

Yeah, I don't want to hijack this thread, although potential builds are somewhat relevant.

This particular board is a little different, afaik. One of the promontory chips are not used in extension, but rather for its signal booster. That would be the daughter board chipset that only connects to a PCIE5x4 m.2 port. With the chips running 4x4 usually, this one seems... strangely implemented.

I didn't know USB4 went to 80/120. Nice. But we are back at the useless 2x1, 2x2, 3x2 nonsense. So they are USB gen 3x2 = 40Gbps.

Zen5 should be shown in June, but I doubt we will see it before late Q3 to early Q4. And sadly the x3D version will be far away *sigh*. Give me simple fast systems. I don't need 400 USB ports, but I do want a few very fast ones. Fewer cables, simpler builds, nicer all around.

I get the cable nonsense with sata, but you can always find a space to put one with adhesive. Like on the PSU back or something.
Worst case scenario is to put it in an external USB thing. 8TB nvme is a bit too rich for me.

 

[Notional]

Case ordered! Now for AMD and NVidia to release new stuff and fast. VAMOS!

 

[AlexTzone]

Case ordered! Now for AMD and NVidia to release new stuff and fast. VAMOS!

Huge thanks for the support and I truly can’t wait to ship Which color / config did you go for?

 

[Notional]

Huge thanks for the support and I truly can’t wait to ship Which color / config did you go for?

I love windows (temp glass) to my hardware, but with how hot gpu's are today, I think it was finally time to move on.

I got the Moonstone S with handles and RGB for a little spice

I have a black alu case now, and it just always looks dusty. The blue grey is very beautiful, but doesn't go with the black front plate I think.

Then moonstone sold me with this guys' image:

 

[AlexTzone]

I love windows (temp glass) to my hardware, but with how hot gpu's are today, I think it was finally time to move on.

I got the Moonstone S with handles and RGB for a little spice

I have a black alu case now, and it just always looks dusty. The blue grey is very beautiful, but doesn't go with the black front plate I think.

Then moonstone sold me with this guys' image:

That’s awesome, I think that pic perfectly represents how moonstone looks in natural lighting. Technically it’s silver, but something about the thickness of the shell as well as how the bead blasted / anodized surface reflects the light makes it appear almost white in such scenarios. Regarding dust, you will definitely appreciate the difference, Denize has one in Moonstone and it basically always looks clean.

Very happy that more people decided to get Moonstone this time around, it’s basically tied with Graphite (even beating it for NANOQ S).

 

[tafinel]

That’s awesome, I think that pic perfectly represents how moonstone looks in natural lighting. Technically it’s silver, but something about the thickness of the shell as well as how the bead blasted / anodized surface reflects the light makes it appear almost white in such scenarios. Regarding dust, you will definitely appreciate the difference, Denize has one in Moonstone and it basically always looks clean.

Very happy that more people decided to get Moonstone this time around, it’s basically tied with Graphite (even beating it for NANOQ S).

Future moonstone owner here

 

[sjparker]

Hi @AlexTzone

Do you have the lengths required for custom PSU cables for the case NanoQ S?

Thanks