My hand made case

IDrinkHotTeaAtTheBar

What's an ITX?
Original poster
Mar 18, 2019
1
5
Hello everyone! I thought you would like to see my hand made case! This was a long project of mine and I'm very proud of the result.
Specs: 13,26 liters, or 11 if you don't count the bottom part that is made solely for cables.
I tried to make a different layout, with the PSU on the back of the motherboard and the GPU on a riser behind both of them. This gives about 70 mm of clearance for the CPU cooler and supports cards that are very tall and up to 24-25 cm long. I made this with the intent to use an Arctic Accelero Twin Turbo II and a Noctua L12s. A big benefit to using a riser and putting the gpu under the motherboard is that you now have all the cables comig from the same side of the case: PSU, GPU and motherboard rear IO. You can also rotate this layout all upside down or on the side to have the cables exiting from where you want. Another benefit is that you now have a "cable compartment" over the psu where you can easily put random cables.
Airflow is pretty good, temps are about 5 degrees warmer for the cpu with the side closed when compared to an open bench. One problem that i did not consider is that the Noctua cooler is much more dense and restrictive than the Accelero. This means that there is not a lot of negative pressure from the top fan on the cpu intake to help draw air inside. It is not a problem when the gpu is idling, but with some load it starts its two fans and the top fan can't suck much air from the cpu side since the flow path on the GPU side is much less restrictive. I still think that if I change a cuople of cuts I cuold run this case with only the top fan and a negative pressure configuration. But this is for another project, maybe in the future
Let me know what you think and if you have suggestions!

Edit: I just retested my temperatures without the top filter, ryzen 1600 oc to 1.27 v, 3.6 ghz, 120w soc power reported by hwinfo64, tested with prime95
With side panel and cpu filter : cpu 77°C
With side panel and cpu filter, gpu fans 30%, with furmark : cpu 80°C, gpu 52°C
With side panel and cpu filter, cpu fan not running : cpu 84°C
With side panel and cpu filter, gpu intakes phisically blocked : cpu 75°C
Without side panel: cpu 84°C
So the top exaust is actually helping quite a bit to help increase airflow to the cpu cooler. Also top airflow is drastically improved without the dust filter but i probaby have to put it back on because of dust entering my pc when it is shut off





Imgur link:imgur.com/a/Qp3C5ST
 
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