Streacom F1C WS build ft. dedicated GPU

[alexep7]

After months of waiting, snatching special deals left and right, and going back and forth with ideas, I finally ordered all my parts. My initial plan (well, not really initial but we'll start here) was to get a G4560 + GTX 1050 Ti inside a Custommod Mini, but due to problems with my particular case which meant delivery had to be delayed, I decided to cancel the order and went instead with what is probably my favourite looking case ever (at least online): The Streacom F1CWS. Obviously, this 2.99L case is not meant to take a GPU, but...we'll see if I can do something about that
The 1050 Ti, I sold - at a profit, mind you - as I realized I didn't really need it because I don't play games much.

This was intended to be a cheap build - the goal being to cram as much power as I could that would fit into my personal needs into a tiny and good looking case such as the F1C WS. The whole thing ended up costing me less than 600€, which was less than I was expecting. So, without further ado, here are the parts:

MSI B250i Gaming Pro AC - 100€
Pentium G4560 - 60€
HyperX 16Gb (2x8) DDR4-2666Mhz CL13 - 90€
Thermaltake Gravity i1 CPU Cooler - 10€
WD Blue 250Gb m.2 SATA SSD - 80€
Crucial MX300 275Gb m.2 SATA SSD - 0€ (already owned)
SATA III to m.2 adapter - 2€
MSI GT 1030 LP 2Gb OC - 80€
Streacom F1CWS - 110€
EZDIY x16 PCIe Riser - 25€
Realan 150W picoPSU + 150W generic 12V brick - 40€
Total: 597€

I'm planning on upgrading to a 35W used CPU in the future when prices go down - a 7700T, or an 8700T if it ends up being compatible with the board - even though I have never felt the G4560 to be limiting for my use.
I overpaid for the GPU - personally I think a ~50€ price would be perfect for this card - but taking into account that it's by far the best true single-slot, half-height, half-length card on the market right now, and that it consumes only 30W of power (!!!) I don't really mind the price I paid. Now you may ask: why not get the slightly larger version of this case, the F7C, in which this GPU would fit like a glove? Well, I happen to think the F7C looks considerably uglier than the F1C. Plus, this one is smaller, so why not?

I'm going to be cutting the back of the case so it has space for the GPU i/o, similar to what this guy has done with his. Not sure how I'm going to hold it in place, but I'll figure something out. Even if I have to end up getting a 3D printed part.

I'll share some pictures within the next few weeks as I receive the case and the GPU.

 

[alexep7]

So I got the case and the GT 1030 already, the riser seems to be either late or lost in the mail. The seller has actually removed the product page from Amazon and my order still says "getting order ready" despite having ordered it last week so if I have to bet I'll say they don't have it in stock and messed up. If I don't receive it by next week I'll have to ask for a refund and buy another riser from somewhere else...Aaaaaanyway, here's some pictures:


The case is quite bigger than I was expecting, but I'm coming from uSFF so it might be just me I'm glad I didn't buy something like an SG13 or a Node 202 if I think this is big! It is gorgeous though, and very very well built. If I have one complaint it's the power button that feels a bit flimsy, but it's no big deal.

You can't see it, but the 2nd m.2 SSD, on the SATA to m.2 adapter, is stuck to the front of the case with, of course, some magical double-sided tape. This saves me quite a bit of space compared to a 2.5" drive, which definitely could not be crammed in that spot. Quite a burdain to deal with just one SATA cable when building in a case like this though, can't imagine what it is like to build in small case with several SATA drives. Anyway, I managed to tuck the cables away to the side nicely, I think. Hopefully it won't interfere with the riser.

On the 2nd and 3rd pictures you can see what my idea is to hold the GPU in place - using...you guessed it, double-sided tape. I'll have to thank the double-sided tape gods for this whole build! The F1C Evo, not the WS variant, has a slot for an optical drive - and the HDD bracket looks slightly different than mine, with a concave indent that would allow me to place the GPU on top of it and then close the lid easily. But in this version, because there's no need for an optical drive, the bracket is flat. That's why I decided to try this: place the GPU under the bracket with some (or a lot of) double-sided tape. The tape is actually on the heatsink, around the fan. This allows the fan to rotate without touching against the metal of the case and making noises, as well. I don't think the cooling capacity of the GPU or the CPU will be affected, as we're talking about a notoriously cool G4560 (which is being cooled by a CPU cooler than uses a 3-pin fan, so it's at 100% all the time) and a 30W graphic's card - still, I'll be buying a couple of 40mm fans to place on the sides of the case as intake/exhaust fans because I feel it might help cooling the m.2 drives when the case gets hot. Also, it looks to me to be pretty secure, and even if it falls while travelling, for instance, it won't be damaging to anything because it's so close to the cables and everything else. I'll be making some tests though, and maybe think of other solutions if it turns out to not work well.

I forgot to see if I could put some small heatsinks on the main m.2 drive which is under the motherboard, but I'll do it later. Hopefully there's enough space there.

I'm planning to cut the vents above the motherboard sometime this week. I'll post some pictures then, hopefully with the PCI-e riser in place as well.

 

[msystems]

Now you may ask: why not get the slightly larger version of this case, the F7C, in which this GPU would fit like a glove? Well, I happen to think the F7C looks considerably uglier than the F1C. Plus, this one is smaller, so why not?

Haha exactly. Good luck! Maybe find something sturdier than double sided tape though

Velcro?

 

[alexep7]

Well, here's the good news: the riser came in the mail today, it works and everything is crammed inside the case right now.

Now the bad news: it turns out 10cm is way too long for me, I'll have to order a 5cm cable when I can. Thing is, such a short cable at an affordable price I can only order from China and it can take a whole month to get here, and at this point in my life I have no idea in which part of the world I'll be in a month. So I'll have to leave that for later and use this one with the GPU slightly out of place and the cable completely bent in at least 3 places. It works for now, at least.

Also, the case is a furnace. I had noticed it already without the GPU, but now it's much worse: after a 20 minute gaming load, both CPU and GPU temperatures where in the high 80s and the case was very hot to the touch. A shorter riser will help a little as the current one is obstructing air flow a bit, but I don't imagine the difference will be very noticeable. I got a 40mm case fan set as exhaust but it doesn't really help when temperatures are that high. My motherboard unfortunately only has pins for 1 case fan, otherwise I'd probably have managed to cram another one in there. Oh well.

So for now what I'm going to do is take the lid off whenever I want to play any game and keep it on for any other situation. Thankfully it's attached by magnets so it's easy to take off. In the future I might consider drilling a few holes on it and perhaps adding a fan, as I've seen people doing with this case, but I feel really bad ruining the looks of such a beautiful case...

I'll post some pictures later tonight.

 

[msystems]

This one worked for me

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sintech-PCI...d-5cm-high-speed-Flexible-Cable-/221770562888
It took a while to arrive, but not a month.

It looks like the GPU card is almost obstructing the CPU cooler... How much clearance is there?

I'm not sure what you can do to get the temps down without getting too crazy, but if you dont mind cutting the case a bit, what about making a nice clean cut-out above the GPU fan, that would surely help because the fan is blocked.

If you want to be more bold, you could cutout the lid over the entire GPU heatsink area. Then you could mount that protruding through the cutout area. It would look pretty decent I think because the finish on the cooler is already black anodized, to match your case. Doing this would increase the clearance below for the CPU fan also.

Edit:

Ok, I just realized your picture is showing the HDD bracket, and that's not the lid. You should definitely cut through that thing, because no one will see it....

Then I don't know how much clearance you will have left, from that bracket to the lid, but you could do something like this with an ultra slim 120mm fan:

Another idea:

Why even tape the card to the bracket. It would be so easy just to cut a slat for the PCIe ribbon to run through your HDD bracket, so you can place the card on top of the HDD bracket. Then cutout an intake hole on the lid of the case for the GPU fan. If you do it right, it will look good. I think you need some kind of hole on top, the air has nowhere to go.

 

[alexep7]

This one worked for me

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Sintech-PCI...d-5cm-high-speed-Flexible-Cable-/221770562888
It took a while to arrive, but not a month.

It looks like the GPU card is almost obstructing the CPU cooler... How much clearance is there?

I'm not sure what you can do to get the temps down without getting too crazy, but if you dont mind cutting the case a bit, what about making a nice clean cut-out above the GPU fan, that would surely help because the fan is blocked.

If you want to be more bold, you could cutout the lid over the entire GPU heatsink area. Then you could mount that protruding through the cutout area. It would look pretty decent I think because the finish on the cooler is already black anodized, to match your case. Doing this would increase the clearance below for the CPU fan also.

Edit:

Ok, I just realized your picture is showing the HDD bracket, and that's not the lid. You should definitely cut through that thing, because no one will see it....

Then I don't know how much clearance you will have left, from that bracket to the lid, but you could do something like this with an ultra slim 120mm fan:

Another idea:

Why even tape the card to the bracket. It would be so easy just to cut a slat for the PCIe ribbon to run through your HDD bracket, so you can place the card on top of the HDD bracket. Then cutout an intake hole on the lid of the case for the GPU fan. If you do it right, it will look good. I think you need some kind of hole on top, the air has nowhere to go.

I saw that exact riser on ebay, but right now I'm not sure where I'll be in the time frame that they give for the estimated delivery time and I'll be leaving my current house at the end of the month, so I'll have to delay the purchase for a bit.

Regarding the temperatures, I've come to the conclusion that I will indeed have to open a hole on the lid. Making a cutout just on top of the GPU fan or the heatsink won't look good though (the GPU is slightly to the left, so it'd be asymmetrical), so I think I'll do it like in that second picture if I can. I don't think there's enough space for a slim fan though, but as you say, the problem is that the air has nowhere to go, so simply opening up a vent on top would surely help. Right now the GPU fan is literally blowing air to the lid that sits about 1mm above it.

The HDD bracket I ditched altogether. It turns out it's not as useful as I was hoping and it would restrict even more airflow in the case, so right now I'm using the case without the HDD bracket. There's no space for the GPU to be on top of it as it is just under the top lid, there's maybe 2mm between the lid and the bracket and that's why I had initially chosen to place the 1030 under the bracket. Right now I'm just leaving the GPU sitting on top of the cables and putting the lid on top, with some thick double sided tape on the GPU heatsink to serve as a "buffer" between it and the lid, otherwise the lid might interfere with the GPU fan. Of course with a smaller riser I could let the 1030 sit a little better and avoid the weird angle it is at and the tape as well.

For the record, temperatures at idle or under a non-gaming load, with the lid on, are perfectly fine - 30~35º for the CPU and 40~45º for the GPU. It's just when I do something more intensive that it starts to get out of hand.
Some pictures (sorry for the shitty quality)

Here is what I it looks like from the inside:

From the back (never mind the angle of the GPU, ahah - that's due to the riser):

So, for the future:
- Get a smaller riser (5cm)
- Mod the top lid so air can get out of the case
And also:
- Get a custom 3D printed "platform" the GPU can safely sit on and the riser card screwed onto. I'll be taking advantage of the screw holes that are already in the case intended for the HDD bracket, so that shouldn't be too hard.

 

[msystems]

I agree

Just a hole above that GPU fan then, and adding a proper platform so the airflow is better beneath the card should help enough to make it work.

 

[alexep7]

I have since got a shorter riser cable and it is much better now
At about 28C ambient:
CPU Idle: 30C
GPU Idle: 35~40C

CPU load: 60C
GPU load: 80C

I'm still not comfortable with the GPU temperature under load, but it's better than what it was before.

 

[Jello]

Any updates on this?

 

[alexep7]

Any updates on this?

Not really, since temperatures aren't really that high now I've been delaying modding the lid. I still take it off if I'm playing an intensive game, but that rarely happens anyway.
The custom "mount" I wanted to do for the GPU isn't really needed either as the GPU will sit perfectly with the new riser. It's so small and lightweight that it won't sag to the opposite side of where the riser is.
Here are some photos. Sorry for the quality, a shitty camera and a shitty photographer will do this.
EDIT: I also got some bigger feet for the case.

 

[alexep7]

So, a little update followed by a question. I replaced the Thermaltake Gravity i1 with a Noctua L9i (thanks @bledha !). It makes a huge difference, it seems I no longer have to drill the top of the case because temperatures are under control now. And it is so much quieter!


However, I am having an issue with the fan speeds. I'm not able to adjust the fan speed manually. It seems to change according to temperature, but once it gets to a high speed it won't go down as much as I'd like it to. I wasn't able to do it before either but my previous cooler had a 3-pin connector. The l9i has a 4-pin PWM connector though, so I should be able to set its speed manually with speedfan or something, or at least see at which speed it's running at. But I can't. Speedfan shows absolutely nothing on the fan section, it's like there are no fans connected. I noticed this happened with the 40mm fan I have in the case as well, which is also a 4-pin but isn't adjustable for some reason, but I shrugged it off at the time because it wasn't really important. Is there anything I need to change in the BIOS for the option to appear in Windows or is there something wrong with the motherboard?

EDIT: The crappy MSI BIOS allows me to change the fan from PWM to DC. It's set as PWM as default, but it's not adjustable in Windows neither in PWM nor in DC mode. In the BIOS the only thing I can do is set both CPU fan and case fan to 100% or reset back to "default" speed, no option to change it any other way...

 

[scf]

EDIT: The crappy MSI BIOS allows me to change the fan from PWM to DC. It's set as PWM as default, but it's not adjustable in Windows neither in PWM nor in DC mode. In the BIOS the only thing I can do is set both CPU fan and case fan to 100% or reset back to "default" speed, no option to change it any other way...

Don't get it. If BIOS allows to switch to PWM then there shouldn't be a problem?

 

[jtd871]

The mobo BIOS apparently doesn't support custom fan curves. Maybe upgrade to the H270i?

 

[alexep7]

I'm an idiot, the BIOS does support fan curves, I just saw the graph and assumed I couldn't change it. It's just speedfan that shows nothing. HWiNFO sees the fans though, so I assume it's my motherboard that's not compatible with Speedfan.