Starting my Ryzen ITX All Purpose Box (help)

[blackhaus99]

I've ordered everything for my all purpose box. I will be using this for Video Editing, Light Gaming, Plex server and to run some data analytics tools (MySQL, Oracle, R, Python, various Apache tools) that I'm teaching myself.

Case - Streacom F7C Alpha (non-Optical)

• After not geting the Lone Industries L4 in the last run I settled on this case. The dimensions are 9.44"(W) x 9.84"(D) x 3.46"(H). I'll be retiring my 2-bay synology NAS and putting the 2 hard drives inside the case in a Raid 1 configuration. It's not as small as I wanted but is only marginally bigger than the NAS (9"x7"x4").
• Arctic F9 92MM case fan. 43CFM at 23dBA

MB - ASRock AB350 ITX
CPU - Ryzen 1700 with Wraith Spire cooler
Memory - G.Skill 32GB DDR4-2400

• I used the memory compatibility guide on ASRock's website and purchased the exact part number that was listed.
• I wanted faster memory but I couldn't find any of the listed part numbers on Amazon or Newegg

Storage

• Samsung 850 EVO 500GB M2
• 2 - Toshiba 7200 RPM 3GB Drives. These will be configured in Raid 1

GPU - Gigabyte GTX 1050 Ti 4GB Low Profile

• I'm not a huge gamer, basically only when then nephews come over. I plan to plug this into the living room TV and use Xbox One controllers for these occasions.

Power - HDPLEX 400W DC-ATX & Dell 330W AC Adapter.

• I know this is probably overkill, but I didn't want to be penny wise and pound foolish.

OS - Windows 10 Pro

All the parts will have arrived by early next week at which point I'll start the build. Let me know what you think of the build.

 

[Tek Everything]

As someone who has built in this case, I have a couple thoughts.

1. The Streacom F7C Alpha can only accommodate single slot low profile cards
2. You can't fit the Wraith Spire and drive cage in the F7C to my knowledge.
3. The HDPlex 400 and Dell 330W are definitely overkill for this build... but more importantly the 400W would be a tight fit, especially if you are planning on using the drive cage. You could get the HDPlex 160W, or a Pico 160xt. They would save you money and valuable space.

This case is fun, but tough to build in due to it's various limitations. I ended up mounting my hard drives to the front wall with double sided tape and removing the drive cage all together. You also may want to consider adding a 80mm fan or two to increase airflow.

I did this build a long time ago, but you can check out the process here:
http://tekeverything.com/compact-mini-itx-build-i7-4790s/

 

[blackhaus99]

Thanks for the feedback. From what I read in the build guide of the F7C Alpha on the streacom website, the 2 mechanical hard drives can go on the upper side of the tray and not effect the choice of cpu cooler. I'm not planning on using the lower side of the drive tray as the only other storage is the m.2 drive.

I see what you mean on the video card. Streacom's build guide didn't mention that it had to be single slot, only that it had to be low profile. It's very hard to tell from their pictures. I'll double check with them. At least I got the video card from Amazon, hopefully I can return it if I need to.

I have 1 92mm 43cfm case fan already, are you suggesting a fan in addition to this?

 

[blackhaus99]

Streacom confirmed a single slot gpu I'd needed so I just ordered an MSI geforce 1030.

 

[Tek Everything]

The dual fan slots only support fans up to 80mm.

The real issue with using the drive cage is that it restricts airflow to top down coolers and creates turbulence/noise. Let us know how it all turns out.

 

[blackhaus99]

It seems the HDPLEX 400 is not going to fit in the Streacom F7C Alpha case I purchased. There is a ledge that the PS is intended to be installed on and in that location, the PS is too tall. At least HDPlex is being cool and letting me exchange for the 160W model.

More annoying is the confusion on the height of the Wraith Spire cooler. The heatsink plus fan is almost 70mm, not 54mm like I've seen posted online. At this height I cannot use the drive cage at all. I've since ordered the Noctua cooler. Oh well, live and learn. Good times.

 

[blackhaus99]

I got my hdplex 160 which fit in the case nicely. I connect everything up and I get no power to the system. They sent me a second hdplex and still nothing. I've rma'd the motherboard. Hopefully a new board will get my system running. Any other ideas on what could be the problem?

 

[sansoo22]

My build with the HDPlex 160 is dead in the water right now as well. I'm on an Intel platform and tried 2 different boards. The Gigabyte would power on but never post. And the Intel board power cycled every 5 seconds. Both hooked to a crappy Athena power PSU fired right up. I did successfully get an old Asus micro atx board with an AMD A6 to fire up with the HDPlex 160 so I'm assuming the hdplex isn't faulty.

I'm a code monkey and not an engineer so take this with a grain of salt but my assumption is some boards are sensing something on one of the PSU rails that tells it if it is safe to post or not. I know my current Gigabyte gaming board does something similar on the PWM connectors. If it doesn't sense all 4 pins it just defaults to 100% RPM making the use of a sata powered PWM splitter pointless.

I've been emailing Larry at HDPlex the last couple days and will be loaning my Intel board to him for testing. I'm still out a working build but hopefully my sacrifice will help the SFF community out in the long run. Larry is even footing the bill for shipping so even tho the product didn't work for me I wouldn't discourage anyone from doing business with HDPlex.

What I think we need is a sticky with known board, CPU, RAM combos that work with the HDPlex 160. I scoured the Googles for a list like this and came up empty.

 

[blackhaus99]

This is good albeit discouraging information. I sent back my board so I'll know soon if the board is bad or not. I've never heard anything about these sorts of incompatibilities.

 

[blackhaus99]

It's hard to believe it's been nearly 2 months since I ordered everything and now my system is finally up and running. Here is my synopsis of the pitfalls and challenges I went through

1. The first Asrock AB350 itx board was defective. It took about 3 weeks to get a new one from the manufacturer
2. I had several challenges with the Streacom FC7 alpha case I'm using:
   1. The manual says the system supports multiple 3.5 and 2.5 inch hard drives. What the manual doesn't mention is that 3.5 drives can only be installed on the underside of the drive cage. On the top side, the lid to the case cannot be put back on. If the case was half an inch taller, the 3.5 inch drives could be installed on top. With the drives on the lower side of the cage there is about half an inch of clearance above the top of my Noctua cooler, but one hard drive was sitting directly on top of the hdplex 160.
   2. When using an external GPU (in my case a GeForce 1030), the hard drive on that side of the drive cage has to be installed in a forward enough position to allow room for the sata cables to fit in front of the video card. That meant the other side of the drive was directly in contact with the exhaust fan. In this position, the screw holes on the hard drive did not line up with the cage, so I had to use double sided tape to fasten it to the drive cage.
   3. My CPU idle temperatures were extremely high with the 2 hard drives installed, about 130F. Under moderate load, the system went up to about 170F.
   4. Thus ended my goal of using this system to retire my NAS. After taking the 3.5 inch drives out and removing the cage, the idle on my CPU is about 100F.

 

[blackhaus99]

I didn't intend to post the partial list. Here is the remainder.

Windows Installation - I had an unused/never activated OEM license of Windows 8.1 Pro. I intended to install it and upgrade it, free upgrades to windows 10 are still available. However installing windows 8.1 was very troublesome. Blue screens during install and failed installations. When it did manage to install itself, the windows 10 upgrade would blue screen while running and revert to windows 8. I decided to purchase a new license of windows 10. After installing the system seemed stable....

After getting windows 10 installed and all updates applied, Prime95 stress tests would generate blue screens. Sometimes it would run over night, other times it would blue screen within seconds. These weren't heat problems, I hadn't yet started using 3.5" internal drives, I was only using my M.2 SSD. The only way I could get the system stable was to set my ram to DDR2133. I specifically purchased ram from g.skill using a part number that is listed on ASROCK's website as compatible. My system is not stable at the DDR2400 it's rated for.

I also get the occasional blue screen on an NVidia driver dll. I'm using the latest 385.41 driver, so perhaps an update will help.

At this point I would call the system 98% stable. Hopefully some more updates will be released soon that will allow my ram to run at its rated speed and fix the gpu driver blue screens.

Any thoughts?

 

[sansoo22]

My issues with the HDPlex 160 was a bad unit. Long story short, shipped the board to Larry and it all worked fine but he didn't test my HDPlex unit as we had a miscommunication. So on a different unit he had no issues and we thought maybe it was one of the HP adapters I was using. I ordered 2 used 230w adapters off ebay. So this time i ponied up the money for a brand new Dell 240w charger and still had the same power cycling issue. Larry was then kind enough to ship me a replacement PSU and all was gravy. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Its been a long journey just to get my build operational.

 

[blackhaus99]

So I tracked down my issues to bad ram. When i removed one module the system was stable. I rma'd them and got a new pair. I was still getting blue screens with the new Ram but when I slowed the ram down to 2133 and installed the Nvidia 387 driver the system has been stable without crashing for 10 days. I'm not happy that I can't run the Ram at the 2400 it's rated for but maybe some more updates will make this speed stable.

 

[Choidebu]

Have you updated the bios? These early ryzen boards all have ram compatibility problems, which is continually fixed with subsequent bios updates

 

[blackhaus99]

Yes I have updated the bios

 

[stree]

and the AMD chipset drivers?