My Little SFF Family. Literally.

omardesu

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Original poster
Feb 14, 2019
89
66
Reposting from my reddit thread.



SFF is a curse... But also satisfying...

I had only finished my Dan A4 (4.0) last year in April/May originally with a 9700K and 1070 Ti. When the Velkas (1.2) were available for pre-order in October, I picked up a Velka 3 w/out any parts for it yet as I was going to wait for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A few days later, it occured to me that I could upgrade the 1070 Ti, so it pushed me to try to change my Velka 3 order into a Velka 5... However, instead of trying to make it complicated, I went ahead and pre-ordered a Velka 5 also and the Velka 3 shell would have just sit until more ITX/mini sized GPU's came out. But.... due to my impulsive nature, I ended up sourcing the parts in Nov-Dec. And unable to wait, I actually had ordered an In-Win Chopin to house a simple SFF to hold me over until I was able to get my Velka's which arrived just before Christmas (this will explain the Velka 3 CPU choice below).

Here's the main partout:

Dan A4-SFX v4.0
  • i7-9700K
  • Nvidia 2080 Super FE (added painters tape to the bottom of the card to prevent hot air going into the radiator, so far so good with temps during gaming ~75C)
  • ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac
  • Asetek 645LT with u/losercard mod
  • Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 2x8GB 3200 MHz
  • Corsair SF600 Gold
Velka 5 v1.2
  • R5 3600X
  • EVGA 1070 Ti Gaming
  • ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac
  • Alpenfohn Black Ridge v2
  • Kingston VLP 2x8GB 2666 MHz
  • Corsair SF450 Platinum
Velka 3 v1.2
  • R5 3400G
  • Gigabyte 1660 Super Mini ITX OC
  • ASUS ROG Strix B450-I Gaming
  • Noctua NH-L9a chromax.black (last minute buy)
  • HyperX Ballistix Sport LT 2x8GB 3200 MHz
  • Taobao Modular PSU (I've linked it as I'm sure people will be interested)
Issues/Notes:
  1. Alpenfohn Black Ridge AM4 mounting bracket quality issue. This is why I bought the L9a chromax.black last minute so I could mount it in the Velka 5 while I waited for replacement parts from Alpenfohn (they informed me it shipped a few days ago). However, I ended up buying a cordless Dremel for $50 and fixed the bracket myself. The chromax.black made it into the Velka 3 leaving me with a spare L9i/a.
  2. u/losercard mod I didn't finish until a few days ago as I didn't have the threaded inserts for the 3D prints. Note to those who are going to do this mod, be careful when putting the inserts on the side of the PSU bracket as the material is pretty thin there, and I actually ended up splitting both though the plastic seems to have hardened enough around the insert so it's sturdy enough.
  3. I had to cut the connector lock thingy on the EPS connector at the PSU to make space for the power button on the Velka 3.
  4. Added an L9a backplate for the Black Ridge for some extra support. I haven't seen anybody doing such, so I figured I'd add it in to distribute some load.
  5. If anybody wants to know the lengths for custom cabling with the Velka 5 and Corsair SF PSU's, just send a message as I recorded them in an excel sheet.
After doing all these builds, I must say that OCD does have its benefits in SFF PC's. And i'm probably going to be SFF'ed out for now as the only thing I'd upgrade in the future would be a CPU and GPU for the Velka 3. But when my travel monitor would be 75Hz at most, I don't need the extra performance at the moment...

Here are the more detailed PCpartpicker links for those who are interested:

Dan A4 - Velka 5 - Velka 3
 

evenather

Chassis Packer
Oct 6, 2019
16
5
Reposting from my reddit thread.



SFF is a curse... But also satisfying...

I had only finished my Dan A4 (4.0) last year in April/May originally with a 9700K and 1070 Ti. When the Velkas (1.2) were available for pre-order in October, I picked up a Velka 3 w/out any parts for it yet as I was going to wait for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. A few days later, it occured to me that I could upgrade the 1070 Ti, so it pushed me to try to change my Velka 3 order into a Velka 5... However, instead of trying to make it complicated, I went ahead and pre-ordered a Velka 5 also and the Velka 3 shell would have just sit until more ITX/mini sized GPU's came out. But.... due to my impulsive nature, I ended up sourcing the parts in Nov-Dec. And unable to wait, I actually had ordered an In-Win Chopin to house a simple SFF to hold me over until I was able to get my Velka's which arrived just before Christmas (this will explain the Velka 3 CPU choice below).

Here's the main partout:

Dan A4-SFX v4.0
  • i7-9700K
  • Nvidia 2080 Super FE (added painters tape to the bottom of the card to prevent hot air going into the radiator, so far so good with temps during gaming ~75C)
  • ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac
  • Asetek 645LT with u/losercard mod
  • Corsair Vengeance Pro RGB 2x8GB 3200 MHz
  • Corsair SF600 Gold
Velka 5 v1.2
  • R5 3600X
  • EVGA 1070 Ti Gaming
  • ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac
  • Alpenfohn Black Ridge v2
  • Kingston VLP 2x8GB 2666 MHz
  • Corsair SF450 Platinum
Velka 3 v1.2
  • R5 3400G
  • Gigabyte 1660 Super Mini ITX OC
  • ASUS ROG Strix B450-I Gaming
  • Noctua NH-L9a chromax.black (last minute buy)
  • HyperX Ballistix Sport LT 2x8GB 3200 MHz
  • Taobao Modular PSU (I've linked it as I'm sure people will be interested)
Issues/Notes:
  1. Alpenfohn Black Ridge AM4 mounting bracket quality issue. This is why I bought the L9a chromax.black last minute so I could mount it in the Velka 5 while I waited for replacement parts from Alpenfohn (they informed me it shipped a few days ago). However, I ended up buying a cordless Dremel for $50 and fixed the bracket myself. The chromax.black made it into the Velka 3 leaving me with a spare L9i/a.
  2. u/losercard mod I didn't finish until a few days ago as I didn't have the threaded inserts for the 3D prints. Note to those who are going to do this mod, be careful when putting the inserts on the side of the PSU bracket as the material is pretty thin there, and I actually ended up splitting both though the plastic seems to have hardened enough around the insert so it's sturdy enough.
  3. I had to cut the connector lock thingy on the EPS connector at the PSU to make space for the power button on the Velka 3.
  4. Added an L9a backplate for the Black Ridge for some extra support. I haven't seen anybody doing such, so I figured I'd add it in to distribute some load.
  5. If anybody wants to know the lengths for custom cabling with the Velka 5 and Corsair SF PSU's, just send a message as I recorded them in an excel sheet.
After doing all these builds, I must say that OCD does have its benefits in SFF PC's. And i'm probably going to be SFF'ed out for now as the only thing I'd upgrade in the future would be a CPU and GPU for the Velka 3. But when my travel monitor would be 75Hz at most, I don't need the extra performance at the moment...

Here are the more detailed PCpartpicker links for those who are interested:

Dan A4 - Velka 5 - Velka 3

Amazing job, in all three of them

From where did you ordered the custom cables?