Hello! Welcome to this mostly theoretical concept idea.
After seeing this on reddit the other day it really made me consider just how small one might be able to go with an external pump/rad setup as shown. The thought behind it was to have a motherboard/cpu that has a monoblock to avoid the need for a fan in the main chassis for the vrms. Some would argue that it's still needed for PCIe M.2 Storage and to that I'd say too bad!
This really isn't anything i plan to follow up on heavily, but once the seed was planted in my head I couldn't rest until the idea was out. I threw a rough sketch/layout concept together on paper and then proceeded to piece together a very rough outline of parts in Fusion 360.
From my brief investigating into this form factor there appears to be a few caveats that I'd have to work with/around. Perhaps they are more personal design requirement but I shall try to explain as best I can.
Flex ATX
This seems to me the best option to me regarding power a semi powerful setup such as the one presented. The goal would be a 95 to 100 Watt CPU and 250 to 300 Watt GPU. If this ever comes to be then it will most likely be an AMD 5000 series CPU and a 3070 equivalent. This should keep in line with the Wattage's I could find in the Flex ATX form factor. Which is approximately 500W, 400W to be on the safe side. I can't say there is much to choose from aside from taking a gamble on a "XYZ" from China. I won't be considering an external power brick as I've had one of those go up in smoke once upon a time and won't risk a repeat haha.
Front Distro Plate/Resevoir
I figure that if this is going to be a little show piece it may as well look the part. Who doesn't want a solid block of water on the front panel of their PC? It'll look amazing and does actually offer some utility. There will be fill and drain ports on the Distro Plate to make filling/bleeding a little easier. They are currently shown to be on the top and bottom of the front, however as I'm writing this I'm thinking having them on the inside will be more discrete. The internal side will also have ports for the GPU and CPU to branch out to, in order to hopefully make the tubing routes slightly easier, but mostly to validate the front Distro Plate :')
Short PCB GPU
The 3080 and 3090 founders have a very short PCB as do a couple of the AIB cards. This will be capitalized on in future revisions of the chassis to make the length shorter than it currently is.
Quick Connects
You can see in the back of the chassis, there is two holes. They are the current placeholder for the quick connects that will be used to interface with the external rad. Also toying with the idea of running a multi cored cable out a meter or so with a 7 ish pin plug. This would be used for power and PWM to the Pump and the Fans that will be on the external Radiator. Just a thought at this point and requires further investigation into suitable plugs/sockets.
Width
The width as is currently wider than I'd like and I suspect a future iteration will have the GPU offset from center to allow for more room on the CPU side for ram clearance. It also just dawned upon me that (assuming EK is used) that the EK blocks can use the rotary fitting interface which negates the need to allow a lot of room for the GPU portion of the chassis, further supporting an offset GPU "chamber".
It's a little bigger than need be at the moment but I will be working on shrinking that down over the next few weeks. If anyone has links to a 3D model of an ITX mobo with a monoblock and a short PCB GPU with waterblock then I'd appreciate if you could shoot me a DM.
So there you go! It's out of my brain after stewing on it all weekend. Anything I've missed? Let me know
Thanks for reading.
After seeing this on reddit the other day it really made me consider just how small one might be able to go with an external pump/rad setup as shown. The thought behind it was to have a motherboard/cpu that has a monoblock to avoid the need for a fan in the main chassis for the vrms. Some would argue that it's still needed for PCIe M.2 Storage and to that I'd say too bad!
This really isn't anything i plan to follow up on heavily, but once the seed was planted in my head I couldn't rest until the idea was out. I threw a rough sketch/layout concept together on paper and then proceeded to piece together a very rough outline of parts in Fusion 360.
From my brief investigating into this form factor there appears to be a few caveats that I'd have to work with/around. Perhaps they are more personal design requirement but I shall try to explain as best I can.
Flex ATX
This seems to me the best option to me regarding power a semi powerful setup such as the one presented. The goal would be a 95 to 100 Watt CPU and 250 to 300 Watt GPU. If this ever comes to be then it will most likely be an AMD 5000 series CPU and a 3070 equivalent. This should keep in line with the Wattage's I could find in the Flex ATX form factor. Which is approximately 500W, 400W to be on the safe side. I can't say there is much to choose from aside from taking a gamble on a "XYZ" from China. I won't be considering an external power brick as I've had one of those go up in smoke once upon a time and won't risk a repeat haha.
Front Distro Plate/Resevoir
I figure that if this is going to be a little show piece it may as well look the part. Who doesn't want a solid block of water on the front panel of their PC? It'll look amazing and does actually offer some utility. There will be fill and drain ports on the Distro Plate to make filling/bleeding a little easier. They are currently shown to be on the top and bottom of the front, however as I'm writing this I'm thinking having them on the inside will be more discrete. The internal side will also have ports for the GPU and CPU to branch out to, in order to hopefully make the tubing routes slightly easier, but mostly to validate the front Distro Plate :')
Short PCB GPU
The 3080 and 3090 founders have a very short PCB as do a couple of the AIB cards. This will be capitalized on in future revisions of the chassis to make the length shorter than it currently is.
Quick Connects
You can see in the back of the chassis, there is two holes. They are the current placeholder for the quick connects that will be used to interface with the external rad. Also toying with the idea of running a multi cored cable out a meter or so with a 7 ish pin plug. This would be used for power and PWM to the Pump and the Fans that will be on the external Radiator. Just a thought at this point and requires further investigation into suitable plugs/sockets.
Width
The width as is currently wider than I'd like and I suspect a future iteration will have the GPU offset from center to allow for more room on the CPU side for ram clearance. It also just dawned upon me that (assuming EK is used) that the EK blocks can use the rotary fitting interface which negates the need to allow a lot of room for the GPU portion of the chassis, further supporting an offset GPU "chamber".
It's a little bigger than need be at the moment but I will be working on shrinking that down over the next few weeks. If anyone has links to a 3D model of an ITX mobo with a monoblock and a short PCB GPU with waterblock then I'd appreciate if you could shoot me a DM.
So there you go! It's out of my brain after stewing on it all weekend. Anything I've missed? Let me know
Thanks for reading.
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