Prototype Project Orthrus - Smallest SLI mATX case (V2)

[LukeD]

@Jackrabbit72380

The ST80F-TI is an ATX power supply. It is not compatible with the case.
The SX800-LTI is SFX-L power supply. And is compatible with the case: LINK

From the silverstone website:
Combined +12V ~ 792W

So pretty close to 800 Watts of continuous 12v

 

[Supercluster]

@Ellimist @Biowarejak[/
USER] /Snip

I don't want to call @EdZ a liar, however, his numbers are misleading, since they do not account for overclocking (which can add ~50% power consumption), and are on the conservative side, therefore making his base assumption invalid.

Also, this power supply (800 LTI) is not of the highest quality and you wouldn't want to run it on the limit if you could avoid it (not to mention the abomination of noise it makes when pushed).
Some people on this forum think that 800W is a "holy grail" for sff even though it really isn't that much. I've been reading many of these power requirement suggestions and discussions and feel inspired to support the oposite of the conservative estimations regularely proposed.
I fully support your idea of adding an assist power supply as an experiment, however, this way you add potential sources of failure to your system, which is something you might want to consider.

Since you mention future bottlenecks I will quote some higher power components but the articles have lists so you can educate yourself. Whatever someone may say, maxing out the component power consumption is not that hard in real world applications.
7900X is a reasonable processor to be used even with the mITX board and it can pull easily over 220W, 250W+ peak. Even the 7960X and 7980XE can be used but then the overclock limitation would be the board VRM which wouldn't like over 400W (but I guess you would melt the poor single 8 pin connector and the cable before that) and 7980XE can pull over 600W peak.
Moving on to GPU's. The non reference 1080Ti's can pull about 350W each when overclocked and 350 x 2 was about 700 back in school. Now, consider that a few months from now AMD releases a high power card you might want to upgrade to, the current Vega cards can pull a fabulous 450W when overclocked (with modded bios etc.).

The answer to your concerns is therefore dependent on how much you like pushing your hardware. If you enjoy the higher end of the overclocking spectrum, 800W is almost absurdly low.

The resources on which I base the previous paragraphs:
CPU power consumption
GPU power consumption

 

[xSanchez78]

@Supercluster damn ok that's some interesting yet unfortunate info. I do plan to push the clocks as far as I can on my GPU's because I'm devoting the water cooling to them and air cooling my CPU, and I also hopefully plan to atleast slightly overclock my CPU if temperatures allow me to. However I don't think I'll be able to with these power restrictions, and adding that little 300 watt HDPLEX thing not only most likely won't fit in the case after looking at it further but also probably won't be the safest or most elegant solution either. So I'm left not knowing what I should do...

 

[Biowarejak]

Just remember guys, SFF is always about balance. Always. You can get away with power-hungry, fire-starting components, but when that god-tier rig throttles into a potato you'll wish you'd built two separate systems.

Right now, 800 watts is the hard-limit. If you're there, you've grossly miscalculated your needs - be it in the case or the hardware you've chosen. Otherwise, you're just pushing your luck.

Just my 2c, Peace.

 

[Ellimist]

Isn't the aim of this case though about that balance. I would argue that with SLI 1080Ti's using reference design that the CPU is going to be the problem not the graphics cards. This would lead me to want to overclock the CPU and leave the graphics cards stock to get the best balance for performance.

Also by delidding the CPU and then tuning your overclock you should be able to get alot less power draw than overclocking on stock TIM to provide some really awesome performance from this case design.

 

[LukeD]

SFF is always about balance, ... that's what we are so passionate about ... squeezing every last millilitre out of our designs and cramming everything as best as we can.

In terms of picking top of the line components ....
currently a 165 watt CPU and 250 watt dual GPU setup is about as max as you can go in this case.
Soon 2080's will be released and if history is anything to go by, they will more than likely drop to 180-190 watts. So you could get a nice OC on your CPU at that stage, and on your GPU's ... once the 2080ti's come out we're back to running stock speeds. Unless Silverstone release and SFX-L 900-1000 Watt PSU

Having said that, if you use an ITX board in the case and you bifurcate, you could do this .... The bifurcation riser and HDplex will fit won't be super pretty but it will fit . You will forfeit the dual 2,5" hdd mounting bay on the side of the case however ...... balance remember ?

 

[xSanchez78]

@LukeD that looks good but a couple things

1. How would both the riser card and the HDplex fit?
2. Could you possibly provide a mounting point for the HDplex's power input?

Other than that, if it does all fit, looks shouldn't be an issue for me atleast. If you look up a couple messages I wrote something about using one side transparent and one side aluminum so in my case I'll be fine with this decision. I was planning on maybe trying to make the motherboard side look good with RGB ram and SSD's, but since I'm not getting the SSD mounting point when using the HDplex, I might as well go back to the idea of covering that side up.

 

[Jackrabbit72380]

Will the PSU have the fan facing down or up in that picture? I wonder if you could replace the 120 mm fan in the Silverstone PSU with coair's new LL Series 120 mm fan for better RGB lighting. Then you could select a different color for each side of the case by using the inner and outer rings.

 

[LukeD]

So some interesting developments thanks to a mate of mine "BigD" who's a big fan of the project and constantly keeps looking up new watercooling solutions for m e

He found this little interesting terminal which would theoretically allow to turn a bits power block into like the one i have custom made from EK. Standard off the shelf parts would make it cheaper.
I'm 99% sure this would work on the top gpu.
I'll have to check the bottom one for clearance.

BP-VGAMDLAC-CL

And then i found the new TitanV blocks from Bitspower fit perfectly into the top slot of orthrus.
I'm secretly hoping the 2080 cards will be able to use this water block

 

[Ellimist]

Any updates on when we can expect to buy one of these badboys?

 

[LukeD]

I'll make an announcement early April.

 

[xSanchez78]

@LukeD wow if that bitspower terminal actually fits in both slots, that would be awesome because we could have legitimate un-modded water blocks that fit just like your custom ones and not have to worry about leaks or the work involved in making them ourselves, or finding other solutions altogether.

Do you mind taking a look at my last comment though and leaving some feedback?

 

[HeroXLazer]

I'll make an announcement early April.

I'll make an announcement early *TOMORROW*.

 

[LukeD]

I was thinking April 1st actually

 

[junkstory]

I'll make an announcement early April.

niceee

 

[HeroXLazer]

I was thinking April 1st actually

Seriously...

 

[Jackrabbit72380]

So the picture you just posted is showing to diffrent types of waterblocks correct?
I'm still curious to see how the soft and hard tubeing would go using the arctic storm mini's?

After watching this video with nfc_josh I'm beside myself when I found out the core I-9 was not good for gameing until he ran some software.
I 'm planning on working in 3dsmax doing some 3D modeling animation work I'm going to be using Photoshop maybe some video editing but definitely some gaming and I mean 4K gaming so in that regards if this is not the best processor for gaming which one should I get?

 

[xSanchez78]

There is a reason I'm using the i7-7820X rather than an i9, because it still has decent clock speeds for 8 cores. The i9's are bad for gaming because their clock speeds are low. The software he ran was Intel's turbo boost max software, which disables all but 2 cores and allows those two cores to reach the "turbo boost max" specification, which the i7-7820X's is 4.5 Ghz. That's why this processor I feel is a perfect balance between workstation and gaming but people's preferences may vary. The best gaming processor would be the i7-8700K, but you won't get a mini ITX with more than 2 DIMM's for over 32gb of ram, you won't get extra PCIe lanes for m.2 drives or other expansion cards, and it won't be best for any CPU demanding programs like 3dsmax. The processor I chose should be the best inbetween processor, but people's opinions may vary.

 

[potoooooooo]

Have you considered reaching out to EK to see if they would consider making a terminal like that? They might be willing, SFF is becoming more and more popular.

 

[xSanchez78]

For those who might want a threadripper build in this case, look what just came out!

First microATX x399 motherboard ! Cooling shouldn't be an issue - you can AIO cool the CPU and air cool the GPU's and you should be fine if you aren't planning to push the GPU clocks too far, but as of our recent power supply discussion, there may not be enough power for all this hardware combined. Other than that, a threadripper build with this motherboard and case would be really cool!