Completed S401: Salvo Studios <8L mITX Steel Unibody Chassis w/ GPU & CPU fans in same direction

[vanbeveren]

Yes, if I decide to build an S402 I'll plan on including vents on the now solid panel so 120mm radiators can be used.

While I'm on the subject, I've prayerfully decided that after I sell out of S401s, I'm going to take some time off from the case business. My goal would be to try and have something new this fall/winter like I did with the S401 but I'm definitely not going to have as many made. I'm getting very burnt out - it's nearly midnight and I still have orders to pack for shipping out tomorrow. I also have e-mails to answer and pictures to post but I'm too tired to do so now.

If that weren't enough, my work has been extremely stressful lately. Enough so that I lost it with my boss last week and in the 12+ years I've worked there, I've always been in better control of my emotions. Two kids, being active in my local church, and running this business on the side has taken its toll. I do intend on making another design available but as the S700 is not viable, it will probably be the S402 or S500 depending on my mood. I'm nearly sold out of S401s (have about 3 left that are packed with 10 more waiting on more parts to arrive before they are finished). Once those are gone, I'm probably going to be a little more scarce on this forum until I can get other things addressed in my life that have taken a backseat these past several months. Regardless, I'll still have the custom panels to sell, as well as some of the accessories (fans, disk stackers, spacers, etc.). Some of the accessories I don't intend on restocking though will be the Demciflex filters and removable handles as I lose money on each one of these I sell.

Sorry to hear about the struggles man - I think we've all been there and life can really suck sometimes.
Please absolutely take care yourself and your job and your life way above any of this stuff.

Cheers!

 

[vanbeveren]

Reading through old posts here..

Was has been the consensus at this point on fans/orientation?

I'm using an open air GPU cooler but will be doing a mix of horizontal and vertical usage.
(primarily horizontal though)

PSU/MoBo on top or bottom best for Vertical?
(in terms of stand/handle)


Re: Case fans:
Are the case fans useful or not worth it for horizontal?
If using case fans, are those best pulling air in the sides or pushing it out the sides?

Thank you all!

 

[vanbeveren]

@grsychckn

Really loving your long build video on YouTube by the way - going through that right now to be ready and see what nuggets I can glean..

 

[grsychckn]

Reading through old posts here..

Was has been the consensus at this point on fans/orientation?

I'm using an open air GPU cooler but will be doing a mix of horizontal and vertical usage.
(primarily horizontal though)

PSU/MoBo on top or bottom best for Vertical?
(in terms of stand/handle)


Re: Case fans:
Are the case fans useful or not worth it for horizontal?
If using case fans, are those best pulling air in the sides or pushing it out the sides?

Thank you all!

I have to make this quick but from my experience, the case fans near the CPU exhausting make several degrees difference. Especially if the fins on your CPU cooler direct the air towards the chassis fans. It works even better if you can cut some thick card stock and make a shroud around the 60mm fans to help extract that hot air from the CPU.

If you buy the 60mm fans from my website, I only recently discovered that they can't be installed as intake because the mounting holes on one side of the fans are larger and won't work with the standard fan screws. I sourced these fans at different times and I believe the very early ones did not have this problem but the current ones will require an extra long fan screw that you can purchase here.

 

[vanbeveren]

@grsychckn Thank you!

I've sort of mentally settled on just the top 2 fans being installed as normal exhaust.

When in vertical or horizontal that would seem to make sense, whereas with the GPU on the bottom in vertical I'm not sure I see the same exhaust benefit since a fan there would just exhaust in a way that heat wraps right up around to be taken in again by the GPU open air cooler fans themselves.

Am I thinking right on that?

 

[annasoh323]

Sorry, won't be able to help you on the video card fan question since I have a shrouded cooler. My vague recollection from previous testing done by others (grsy perhaps?) the bottom fan helped a few degrees for an open cooler. Based on clearance from the feet to the desk when vertical and expected airflow, I don't think that much air will get recycled back in since there should be enough space for fresh ventilation. I think exhaust works best in any orientation as long as your cooler fans are all downdraft (i.e. towards their respective components). If you flipped your fans, then intake would make sense (to me).

Re: vertical, I would say just go with whatever fits your cable management scheme better and which way you want things to face. I suppose... if you wanted to get a little fancy, you could shroud whichever cooler is on the bottom to prevent the air from rising into the top component and hope that the 60mm fans exhausting out the bottom will be able to create enough draw down and out the bottom of the case. Still haven't tried that yet (my desk cables are setup for mobo top).

 

[Piewalker]

Also, here are some more pictures of the i9-990k + 2080 Ti I'm building for a customer. He wanted to "Noctua all the things". Waiting on custom length PSU cables and then some cable management.

@grsychckn
I'm not seeing the images in any browser. Can you make them public? Interested to see both the wood panel and the 2080 Ti build.

 

[grsychckn]

@grsychckn
I'm not seeing the images in any browser. Can you make them public? Interested to see both the wood panel and the 2080 Ti build.

This is a problem with my webhost. I already contacted them and they are working on it. The images stopped working as soon as this year's payment went through...

 

[vanbeveren]

Got going on a hardware transfer build on the S401 that arrived yesterday.
Just doing some testing with the little 60x15 fans..

Do those of you that use those lock them to a fixed low RPM in the BIOS?

I can't BELIEVE how annoying and loud they are when they spin up about 50% and beyond.
lol
I truly would rather listen to a real jet engine outdoors nearby - might be quieter.. lmao

I was just sort of testing those out but there's no way I'm installing those permanently short of locking them to a fixed low RPM.
At that point though I wonder if they even provide any benefit to the CPU cooling?

This is an i7 8700 (non k) build, so no overclocking, that will ultimately have an LP53 + Noctua for cooling.
Anyone have thoughts on if those 60mm fans, even at fixed low rpm, are worth it or not for this?

This CPU was in a Node 202 with a Big Shuriken on it before and only had that for cooling and did great, so I'm thinking it might be fine given the better airflow of the S401 - but I don't have experience with going from Big S to LP53 for cooling - I hope it's not a huge downgrade.

 

[annasoh323]

Got going on a hardware transfer build on the S401 that arrived yesterday.
Just doing some testing with the little 60x15 fans..

Do those of you that use those lock them to a fixed low RPM in the BIOS?

I can't BELIEVE how annoying and loud they are when they spin up about 50% and beyond.
lol
I truly would rather listen to a real jet engine outdoors nearby - might be quieter.. lmao

I was just sort of testing those out but there's no way I'm installing those permanently short of locking them to a fixed low RPM.
At that point though I wonder if they even provide any benefit to the CPU cooling?

This is an i7 8700 (non k) build, so no overclocking, that will ultimately have an LP53 + Noctua for cooling.
Anyone have thoughts on if those 60mm fans, even at fixed low rpm, are worth it or not for this?

This CPU was in a Node 202 with a Big Shuriken on it before and only had that for cooling and did great, so I'm thinking it might be fine given the better airflow of the S401 - but I don't have experience with going from Big S to LP53 for cooling - I hope it's not a huge downgrade.

BIOS control depends on your motherboard. I know I could do some nice fan curve work in my Gigabyte Z270N-WiFi board. I set the curve to ramp to max speed slightly after the CPU cooler fan maxes out, I believe. I'm using overall quieter (and less powerful) fans plus I'm using a blower video card, so no matter what, I've got a certain noise profile.
In determining relative effectiveness of the fans, I've just stuck my hand above it to see how hot the airflow is and in general, I do believe they are efficacious. I can get a decent stream of air coming up and out and when the CPU is hot, the air is hot too. I don't know how much air I'm dumping down via fin direction. I've also not tried disconnecting them since those cables are the most annoying in my build.

 

[SilverJS]

Is the whole website down...? Not working for me this morning. Case still available?

Cheers!

 

[grsychckn]

Is the whole website down...? Not working for me this morning. Case still available?

Cheers!

Yes, for me it's domain renewal season and my credit card expired so I've had to update my payment information. In this case, I didn't know about the payment problem until it failed. It's fixed now so the site will be back up soon.

 

[SilverJS]

Ah - but you're out of stock, I see? (Web site works now, BTW.)

 

[grsychckn]

Ah - but you're out of stock, I see? (Web site works now, BTW.)

Yes, I currently do not have any S401 units I can ship. I have about 11 left that are missing stands and the PSU bracket which I've already contracted out for production and am currently waiting on their completion so I can sell these cases. I expect to have them ready to sell/ship in the next two weeks or so. I'm going to update the website with this information today.

After this last batch sells, I will not have any more cases to sell until I create a design I want to manufacture. My time line would be to have something ready late fall/winter.

 

[vanbeveren]

I have to say - and I totally knew this going in - I really wish there were an alternate side panel option for purchase that is a bit more closed with strategic cutouts.

I'm not sure what I was thinking here - but I'm not in love with seeing (and hearing noises from) the inside all the time.

 

[annasoh323]

I have to say - and I totally knew this going in - I really wish there were an alternate side panel option for purchase that is a bit more closed with strategic cutouts.

I'm not sure what I was thinking here - but I'm not in love with seeing (and hearing noises from) the inside all the time.

What were your components again? Did you fiddle with the fan curves already? I'm not too sure what your proposed cutouts would entail and how they would help since any system fan in any case requires some kind of venting. I would anticipate that ducting would help the fans work more efficiently but could introduce additional turbulence issues if done in certain ways. Do you have any videos/pics of your setup?

Personally, I've been enjoying improvements over my old RVZ02 since the extra openness allows better breathability and the extra fans help the CPU. The graphics card is still kind of needy but until my wallet decides it's ready, it'll have to do.

 

[vanbeveren]

@annasoh323

This is a 1080ti and 8700 (non-k) build.
I'm very much in process here as I had a Big Shuriken 2 on this CPU, but an LP53 just arrived and I'm going with that + Noctua w/ 3D printed adapter.

Def no final judgements here yet.

One frustration that is likely unique to me is the god damned LED's on the GPU that I can't turn off when using in MacOS (this is a dual boot hackintosh). I have them turned off in Win10 at least - but I'm in MacOS more than half of my time and at night it's driving me insane... Starting to wonder about physically disabling the LED's on the card maybe.

I know some LOVE lights all over - I can't stand it. Drives me nuts - lol

Worst case I'll re-sell the case - no crisis or anything - this is pretty first world problem stuff for sure! ha

 

[vanbeveren]

On the plus side here.

Good GOD is this thing a TANK!
I totally love that part. With the handle on top - oh wow is it sweet!!

Anybody modded/added anything to the stands in terms of rubber coating or some type of pad?
On carpet it's no issue, but I have some situations on nice concrete floors, wood floors and a tv console where I'd be VERY worried the case would scratch the surfaces..

 

[annasoh323]

@annasoh323

This is a 1080ti and 8700 (non-k) build.
I'm very much in process here as I had a Big Shuriken 2 on this CPU, but an LP53 just arrived and I'm going with that + Noctua w/ 3D printed adapter.

Def no final judgements here yet. One frustration that is likely unique to me is the god damned LED's on the GPU that I can't turn off when using in MacOS (this is a dual boot hackintosh).

I know some LOVE lights all over - I can't stand it. Drives me nuts - lol

Worst case I'll re-sell the case - no crisis or anything - this is pretty first world problem stuff for sure! ha

If you did go with the worst case option (heh) what would you go with instead? It sounds like you would possibly be better served by a larger case with more traditional airflow options. But which specific 1080Ti do you have? That's also going to have a huge impact.

On the plus side here.

Good GOD is this thing a TANK!
I totally love that part. With the handle on top - oh wow is it sweet!!

Anybody modded/added anything to the stands in terms of rubber coating or some type of pad?
On carpet it's no issue, but I have some situations on nice concrete floors, wood floors and a tv console where I'd be VERY worried the case would scratch the surfaces..

That's a good thought about the feet - hadn't considered that. Let us know if you find anything.

 

[vanbeveren]

But which specific 1080Ti do you have? That's also going to have a huge impact.

EVGA SC Black
11G-P4-6393-KR