Hello all!
I am new to the SFF community and I have started on a "little" project. My past computers have been well... Not so compact having mostly ATX full towers with EATX sized motherboards. After helping my friend build in a Skyreach 4 mini, I wanted to build my own SFF system. My goal is to make a computer that is smaller than a ream of paper (8.5" x 11" x 2" roughly) that has a desktop processor along with dedicated graphics. I want to go with a R9 Nano because I think that they are very cool cards but I am starting to realize that their power requirements are tremendous. Additionally, My budget for parts is around $1,500 and I really cannot afford to go over that by much.
The motherboard that I found is an AAEON EPIC-KBS9. This board has just enough for it to be practical in my opinion. Being equipped with a PCIe 4x slot, 4 usb ports, and a mPCIe slot for a wireless adapter, I don't think that there are any smaller options out there but I am probably wrong. As far as I can tell, the motherboard only needs a 12V connection and the rest is converted on-board.
Here's a link to the motherboard: https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/epic-boards-epic-kbs9.
The problems that I think need to be overcome as of now are:
CPU cooler may not be powerful enough (65w sku skylake/kabylake)
Finding someway of powering the unit because I think that a HDPLEX is too big and I cannot find a powerful enough pico PSU.
If anyone has any ideas on where to get power supplies, a better motherboard or cooling solution, or any other ideas I would love to hear them. So far I have put about 8 hour of work between research and some basic CAD to try and figure out what is possible. Even if I don't end up building this system, I wanted to at least put out what I have found for other's usage. If anyone would like to see what my progress is in making a case I would be happy to share with you or if someone wanted to simply combine efforts to make things a bit easier. The name "Firebox" came to me when I realized that with an i7-7700 and a R9 nano would consume a ton of power. I do think the R9 nano has to go most likely due to it's power draw but I want be in the GTX 1060 performance range if possible.
Here is what I have so far in terms of parts:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7TcrP3
Thank you!
- Keaton
I am new to the SFF community and I have started on a "little" project. My past computers have been well... Not so compact having mostly ATX full towers with EATX sized motherboards. After helping my friend build in a Skyreach 4 mini, I wanted to build my own SFF system. My goal is to make a computer that is smaller than a ream of paper (8.5" x 11" x 2" roughly) that has a desktop processor along with dedicated graphics. I want to go with a R9 Nano because I think that they are very cool cards but I am starting to realize that their power requirements are tremendous. Additionally, My budget for parts is around $1,500 and I really cannot afford to go over that by much.
The motherboard that I found is an AAEON EPIC-KBS9. This board has just enough for it to be practical in my opinion. Being equipped with a PCIe 4x slot, 4 usb ports, and a mPCIe slot for a wireless adapter, I don't think that there are any smaller options out there but I am probably wrong. As far as I can tell, the motherboard only needs a 12V connection and the rest is converted on-board.
Here's a link to the motherboard: https://www.aaeon.com/en/p/epic-boards-epic-kbs9.
The problems that I think need to be overcome as of now are:
CPU cooler may not be powerful enough (65w sku skylake/kabylake)
Finding someway of powering the unit because I think that a HDPLEX is too big and I cannot find a powerful enough pico PSU.
If anyone has any ideas on where to get power supplies, a better motherboard or cooling solution, or any other ideas I would love to hear them. So far I have put about 8 hour of work between research and some basic CAD to try and figure out what is possible. Even if I don't end up building this system, I wanted to at least put out what I have found for other's usage. If anyone would like to see what my progress is in making a case I would be happy to share with you or if someone wanted to simply combine efforts to make things a bit easier. The name "Firebox" came to me when I realized that with an i7-7700 and a R9 nano would consume a ton of power. I do think the R9 nano has to go most likely due to it's power draw but I want be in the GTX 1060 performance range if possible.
Here is what I have so far in terms of parts:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/7TcrP3
Thank you!
- Keaton
