The case and the fans have arrived so it's time to put it all together. I will be benching the power consumption, but that got delayed because of corona reasons.
Pics: unboxing (kind of) and size comparison with Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny M715q
The build quality is solid, although after I've assembled everything the bottom of the case doesn't want to push back neatly leaving a small gap, but I'll debug it later.
Noctua is wonderful, there is still space to the case and it doesn't obscure the RAM anymore, so I'm finally on 32 Gb. The CPU fan is absolutely silent, it starts being audible under load, but otherwise I don't hear it. Same cannot be said for the 40 mm one. I mounted it within the front panel and it is kind of louder than I would have expected, also the motherboard seem to be spinning it back and forth, not sure what's up with that. Edit: nope, that's the CPU fan. compiling a few packages There were no space constraints in the front pouch, in fact I could have gone with 40x20 mm instead and probably will as it actually is blowing right on the picoPSU so a bit of static pressure resistance might help.
I mounted the 40x10 on the silicon mount thingies, anyone knows if they are reusable (I didn't cut them yet)?
Overall it was pretty straightforward although one issue I ran into was that there was a bi of plastic decoration thing on the motherboard that obscured the mounting hole for the power plug connector. As the motherboard is of higher resale value of course I ended up cutting 1-2 mm of the connector's plastic with hot scissors it order for it to fit there.
Pics: Motherboard and fans mounted, problem with the connector
Final thoughts:
- Fits in the backpack cleanly, although the paint seems to be a bit scratchy.
- The 192W power brick is absolutely monstrous, it feels like it weights about the same as the final assembly. Which I know is untrue but still.
- The top mount can be installed, but OpenUPS2 will indeed compete with the fan for space as it was pointed out to me in this thread. Guess I'll have to improvise and make my own with a low profile portion near the edge.
