UPDATED POST (w/ Pics)
So the pictures never worked originally, been along time since I posted stuff to forums etc
So here's an Imgur album with all the photos in
Enjoy!
So I built my first SFF machine last and wanted to share my somewhat finished situation, besides a few slow progressive futures mods/ additions. Since I built this PC, all things SFF has been a big part of my overall PC experience. I'm sure you guys will understand, there's just something about having all that power and amazing setup in such a small package!
I am open to future suggestions/ improvements for my build and overall portable setup and hope that this stands as some sort of guide to anyone looking to do a similar project.
So here we go ;
It began with laptops tbf, but always loved PC's. My dad bought me several PC's throughout my childhood and I just took them apart, fiddled with every setting till the PC broke, re-install windows and start again. Gradually collected parts and would adapt systems we bought off the shelf, trying to improve them a little bit. Finally when I had my own money, for ease of use and portability (and also trying to convince myself somehow a really good laptop would help with school and college) I bought a Samsung Q210. Absolutely specc'd out this thing was awesome, cant remember exact specifications but I remember it being bigger in most numbers than anyone else had and that was awesome plus it was 13" so mighty small. Then had one or 2 others, then a Lenovo Y510P, again maxx'd out and bought through the catalogue at the time :/
This was my first introduction to PC gaming, 2 x GT755M was more than enough to get you going.
For the record my main PC is a 34" ultrawide (Dell for the time being, a higher refresh monitor would also require a 1080Ti or new gen) AMD Ryzen 1700X, 3000Mhz 16GB Corsair LPX, Samsung 970 Evo, MSI Armor 8GB 1080 (I can hold 2000Mhz on this?). After yearsss of wanting to build a PC from ground up and have it exactly how you want, early last year (2017) I finally caved. I had some Bitcoin and the price was diving so I spent it all at Aria PC and bought most the components, then low and behold I had to buy the rest with my own money or else is was all a waste of time, damn!
It is an awesome PC and again, an ongoing thing, as I am sure everyone's is. It started off with a RX580 (Asus 8GB) originally as I am a little bit anti-Intel (or maybe actually pro AMD, or just like the idea of a once underdog company, or what other people would see as underdog, making awesome products that others think are crap, like Apple users
)
Ps Intel clearly make awesome products, and apple.
I work away for work quite alot, and consoles got sold once the main PC was built because I had a means of gaming, a better means in my eyes, and just had no use. There I am, console-less and staying away with an awesome PC sitting at home doing nothing. By this time I had already began watching a lot of people on YouTube with their PC enthusiasm and build vlogs. The likes of Bitwit, Jayz2Cents, Linus and team and hardware Cannucks. So naturally SFF builds popped up and I watched them. Then boom a spontaneous purchase of a 1080 to go in the main PC to keep up with the 1440 Ultrawide, damn! So I had a spare RX580 knocking around, thought might as well build a PC and save wasting that card. . .
So after watching a ton more videos of SFF builds I carefully came to a conclusion for a build that would suit me, and that would maybe be my first bit of advice for a SFF build if it's your first, make sure you take your time and plan it a little bit. If you didn't it wouldn't be the end of the work I don't think but I think it does help.
So I began sourcing PC components and this time a budget was an important aspect, I had spent a load on my main PC, even with some of it technically being free (Bitcoin) that I now couldn't afford to shell out for everything that I wanted.
So PC specifications are as follows and are still current;
AMD Ryzen 1300X clocked to 3.9Ghz (Cooled with Noctua-NH-L9a) ( P.s. this got too hot- See mod below)
Some random SK Hynix DDR4 memory 8GB single stick at 2133Mhz
A WD blue 256GB SATA m.2 SSD- OS (Was for original PC but discovered NVMe for that)
an old Laptop HDD 500GB for games
Gigabyte AB350-N MoBo
Asus 8GB RX580
All this is boxed in the Fractal Design Node 202 which I settled on, reasons for this are because I seen Bitwit fit it into an airline case for handheld luggage. So here I am using their supplied PSU.
Here is the build setup below;
I recently bought the AOC 21.5" G2260VWQ6 to complete this setup
With this monitor came some issues that needed solving. How am I going to transport this safely? How do I use the monitor without hauling the base around and taking up the smallest footprint?
I work for a laser cutting machine manufacturer so can easily produce bits for myself when required and my background is in engineering.
I have made a monitor bracket that hooks over the PC and supports the monitor.
I bought some thumbscrews from amazon that matched the profile I had in my head. Unfortunately I don't have access to equipment that would allow me to do this sort of stuff myself anymore.
This bracket works great, the base for the Node 202 still does enough of a job to keep the whole setup sturdy although I am inclined to make a nice steel place base that covers a larger footprint to the front, but this would also interfere with the mouse mat and keyboard on smaller desks. As with all stuff I have made, if someone would like the design to make themselves are maybe needs help making or sourcing anything, then I would be more than happy to help.
Next I made an aluminium cover the for the monitor and bought some Velcro from Amazon to fix the monitor in firmly.
This stops the screen from being damaged when packed away. This, along with the Node 202 fits justtttt snug in that bag with room for everything else.
As my CPU and GPU are overclocked and with this being an SFF build heat is/ was a problem. When I had some big overclocks my temperatures would soar, even now with The Witcher is gets what I would consider toasty (70c). Looking at the Noctua CPU cooler, the small fan is too far away from the opening in the case to be pulling in 100% fresh air (In my opinion. I feel it was quite easily recirculating quite a lot of warm air within the case. So I slightly modified the grill in the case to fit a 120mm fan. It was a minuscule mod requiring only mm's taken from two opposing slits. the fan for this was 15mm Noctua as at this point I got puled into their performance by the temperature reduction they gave my main build, so would be perfect for a SFF.
So above you can see the 15mm fan and the CPU cooler fit perfectly in this case (Only 100% if you have a Gigabyte AB350-N MoBo and Node 202 I guess)
The same also applied to the GPU chamber, again I felt this was not being fed cool air. So again 2 x 15mm fans (Although one is actually 25mm as they sent the wrong one) but note 2 25mm fans with an ASUS Rx580 does fit.
Here I also cut a bracket out of stainless that gets sandwiched between the two fans and holds the GPU in perfect position as to avoid sag when hauling the bag and prevent contact with the 25mm fan. If anyone would like to see this MOD please let me know.
All of this fits into this bag from Amazon, If you'd like the product link me know. This bag is perfect for this build, maybe 5mm taller would help prevent my monitor shroud from pressing into the bag a bit too much. Note this is also 'Cabin Aprroved' but this obviously depends on the airline, I'd also be super nervous packing this onto a plane as it has no padding.
Personal experience with this build shows me that the components are very well matched, 1080P gaming typically does not max out 8gb of ram on medium to high on most stuff, the RX580 (8gb) sits pretty much at 100% whilst the CPU is close and vice versa with most titles. So to me anything more would be a waste, I also quite like the fact that the components seems so well matched, like one isn't always working much harder than the other. I've clearly had bottle necking when downloading and doing something else in the background like unzipping, but for gaming it is great.
Besides the huge drawbacks on portability though, I am seriously looking at the Dan Case A4. I recently watched Bitwits video of the case and it is truly stunning, even if priced on the high side, or maybe this is an altogether separate future build altogether? What do you guys think? I originally wrote S4 mini here, I meant A4 but now I have reminded myself of the S4's existence I am undecided.
Any other ideas for modification or ways of improving the setup?
The next few things on my to do list, probably in the order of priority are;
- 2 x 4GB sticks of 3600Mhz RAM
- Anodise the aluminium monitor case
- SSD for storage
-NVMe SSD for OS
Future future updates;
-CPU
-GPU
What would you guys prioritise?
This is my first post in this forum and I will be reading some others posts when I get time and I hope that you guys can help me out in the future and me help you guys to!
Chris
So the pictures never worked originally, been along time since I posted stuff to forums etc
So here's an Imgur album with all the photos in
Enjoy!
HTML:
<blockquote class="imgur-embed-pub" lang="en" data-id="a/m7rkXYu"><a href="//imgur.com/m7rkXYu">SFF Node 202 Build</a></blockquote><script async src="//s.imgur.com/min/embed.js" charset="utf-8"></script>So I built my first SFF machine last and wanted to share my somewhat finished situation, besides a few slow progressive futures mods/ additions. Since I built this PC, all things SFF has been a big part of my overall PC experience. I'm sure you guys will understand, there's just something about having all that power and amazing setup in such a small package!
I am open to future suggestions/ improvements for my build and overall portable setup and hope that this stands as some sort of guide to anyone looking to do a similar project.
So here we go ;
It began with laptops tbf, but always loved PC's. My dad bought me several PC's throughout my childhood and I just took them apart, fiddled with every setting till the PC broke, re-install windows and start again. Gradually collected parts and would adapt systems we bought off the shelf, trying to improve them a little bit. Finally when I had my own money, for ease of use and portability (and also trying to convince myself somehow a really good laptop would help with school and college) I bought a Samsung Q210. Absolutely specc'd out this thing was awesome, cant remember exact specifications but I remember it being bigger in most numbers than anyone else had and that was awesome plus it was 13" so mighty small. Then had one or 2 others, then a Lenovo Y510P, again maxx'd out and bought through the catalogue at the time :/
This was my first introduction to PC gaming, 2 x GT755M was more than enough to get you going.
For the record my main PC is a 34" ultrawide (Dell for the time being, a higher refresh monitor would also require a 1080Ti or new gen) AMD Ryzen 1700X, 3000Mhz 16GB Corsair LPX, Samsung 970 Evo, MSI Armor 8GB 1080 (I can hold 2000Mhz on this?). After yearsss of wanting to build a PC from ground up and have it exactly how you want, early last year (2017) I finally caved. I had some Bitcoin and the price was diving so I spent it all at Aria PC and bought most the components, then low and behold I had to buy the rest with my own money or else is was all a waste of time, damn!
It is an awesome PC and again, an ongoing thing, as I am sure everyone's is. It started off with a RX580 (Asus 8GB) originally as I am a little bit anti-Intel (or maybe actually pro AMD, or just like the idea of a once underdog company, or what other people would see as underdog, making awesome products that others think are crap, like Apple users
)Ps Intel clearly make awesome products, and apple.
I work away for work quite alot, and consoles got sold once the main PC was built because I had a means of gaming, a better means in my eyes, and just had no use. There I am, console-less and staying away with an awesome PC sitting at home doing nothing. By this time I had already began watching a lot of people on YouTube with their PC enthusiasm and build vlogs. The likes of Bitwit, Jayz2Cents, Linus and team and hardware Cannucks. So naturally SFF builds popped up and I watched them. Then boom a spontaneous purchase of a 1080 to go in the main PC to keep up with the 1440 Ultrawide, damn! So I had a spare RX580 knocking around, thought might as well build a PC and save wasting that card. . .
So after watching a ton more videos of SFF builds I carefully came to a conclusion for a build that would suit me, and that would maybe be my first bit of advice for a SFF build if it's your first, make sure you take your time and plan it a little bit. If you didn't it wouldn't be the end of the work I don't think but I think it does help.
So I began sourcing PC components and this time a budget was an important aspect, I had spent a load on my main PC, even with some of it technically being free (Bitcoin) that I now couldn't afford to shell out for everything that I wanted.
So PC specifications are as follows and are still current;
AMD Ryzen 1300X clocked to 3.9Ghz (Cooled with Noctua-NH-L9a) ( P.s. this got too hot- See mod below)
Some random SK Hynix DDR4 memory 8GB single stick at 2133Mhz
A WD blue 256GB SATA m.2 SSD- OS (Was for original PC but discovered NVMe for that)
an old Laptop HDD 500GB for games
Gigabyte AB350-N MoBo
Asus 8GB RX580
All this is boxed in the Fractal Design Node 202 which I settled on, reasons for this are because I seen Bitwit fit it into an airline case for handheld luggage. So here I am using their supplied PSU.
Here is the build setup below;
I recently bought the AOC 21.5" G2260VWQ6 to complete this setup
With this monitor came some issues that needed solving. How am I going to transport this safely? How do I use the monitor without hauling the base around and taking up the smallest footprint?
I work for a laser cutting machine manufacturer so can easily produce bits for myself when required and my background is in engineering.
I have made a monitor bracket that hooks over the PC and supports the monitor.
I bought some thumbscrews from amazon that matched the profile I had in my head. Unfortunately I don't have access to equipment that would allow me to do this sort of stuff myself anymore.
This bracket works great, the base for the Node 202 still does enough of a job to keep the whole setup sturdy although I am inclined to make a nice steel place base that covers a larger footprint to the front, but this would also interfere with the mouse mat and keyboard on smaller desks. As with all stuff I have made, if someone would like the design to make themselves are maybe needs help making or sourcing anything, then I would be more than happy to help.
Next I made an aluminium cover the for the monitor and bought some Velcro from Amazon to fix the monitor in firmly.
This stops the screen from being damaged when packed away. This, along with the Node 202 fits justtttt snug in that bag with room for everything else.
As my CPU and GPU are overclocked and with this being an SFF build heat is/ was a problem. When I had some big overclocks my temperatures would soar, even now with The Witcher is gets what I would consider toasty (70c). Looking at the Noctua CPU cooler, the small fan is too far away from the opening in the case to be pulling in 100% fresh air (In my opinion. I feel it was quite easily recirculating quite a lot of warm air within the case. So I slightly modified the grill in the case to fit a 120mm fan. It was a minuscule mod requiring only mm's taken from two opposing slits. the fan for this was 15mm Noctua as at this point I got puled into their performance by the temperature reduction they gave my main build, so would be perfect for a SFF.
So above you can see the 15mm fan and the CPU cooler fit perfectly in this case (Only 100% if you have a Gigabyte AB350-N MoBo and Node 202 I guess)
The same also applied to the GPU chamber, again I felt this was not being fed cool air. So again 2 x 15mm fans (Although one is actually 25mm as they sent the wrong one) but note 2 25mm fans with an ASUS Rx580 does fit.
Here I also cut a bracket out of stainless that gets sandwiched between the two fans and holds the GPU in perfect position as to avoid sag when hauling the bag and prevent contact with the 25mm fan. If anyone would like to see this MOD please let me know.
All of this fits into this bag from Amazon, If you'd like the product link me know. This bag is perfect for this build, maybe 5mm taller would help prevent my monitor shroud from pressing into the bag a bit too much. Note this is also 'Cabin Aprroved' but this obviously depends on the airline, I'd also be super nervous packing this onto a plane as it has no padding.
Personal experience with this build shows me that the components are very well matched, 1080P gaming typically does not max out 8gb of ram on medium to high on most stuff, the RX580 (8gb) sits pretty much at 100% whilst the CPU is close and vice versa with most titles. So to me anything more would be a waste, I also quite like the fact that the components seems so well matched, like one isn't always working much harder than the other. I've clearly had bottle necking when downloading and doing something else in the background like unzipping, but for gaming it is great.
Besides the huge drawbacks on portability though, I am seriously looking at the Dan Case A4. I recently watched Bitwits video of the case and it is truly stunning, even if priced on the high side, or maybe this is an altogether separate future build altogether? What do you guys think? I originally wrote S4 mini here, I meant A4 but now I have reminded myself of the S4's existence I am undecided.
Any other ideas for modification or ways of improving the setup?
The next few things on my to do list, probably in the order of priority are;
- 2 x 4GB sticks of 3600Mhz RAM
- Anodise the aluminium monitor case
- SSD for storage
-NVMe SSD for OS
Future future updates;
-CPU
-GPU
What would you guys prioritise?
This is my first post in this forum and I will be reading some others posts when I get time and I hope that you guys can help me out in the future and me help you guys to!
Chris
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