Completed The MI-6 Microtower Case: Performance in 6.7L

sid21177

Cable-Tie Ninja
Mar 19, 2019
170
27
So getting closer to another run of the MI-6 SE case. The plan is still to also offer the short and tall lofts. I'm cleaning up loft drawings to get them out for final quote. Then we can move forward! The ordering window will open at the end of June, if not earlier.

-F

Will we be able buy one without a riser cable ??
Have you considered a 2.5" only version of the 3.5" bracket ??
 

firewolfy

Master of Cramming
Original poster
Nov 12, 2015
424
836
Will we be able buy one without a riser cable ??
Have you considered a 2.5" only version of the 3.5" bracket ??

Sure, I could make one without the riser cable. The 3.5" bracket will be unchanged for this next run. You could modify if on your own: drill 4 more holes in it to mount a 3rd 2.5" drive.
 

rfarmer

Spatial Philosopher
Jul 7, 2017
2,669
2,792
Well decided to use my MI-6 to help out a friend, told him no one needs to use a crappy old slow computer. Pulled the guts from my HTPC and I am using my DeskMini 110 for that now.

Intel i3 - 8100
Asrock H370M-ITX/AC
Gelid Slim Hero
2 x 4GB Crucial 2400 MHz
XFX RX 550 4GB
Corsair SF450
XPG SX6000 128GB M.2 PCIe NVMe
Hitachi 500GB 2.5 HDD





No speed demon but it is a decent little comp, runs cool and quiet. He doesn't game so the 550 should be fine.
 
Last edited:

DrAwesome95

Caliper Novice
Jun 25, 2018
27
9
FYI...The seller I got my RX580 from listed another new pull.

Bit of a side-track from MI-6 specific topics but
I've currently got a 1070 Aero, what are the odds there will be a worthy upgrade in the near future.
Don't really want to get an RTX 2070 Aero because I'd rather not waste my money on ray tracing cores.
Considering the Vega Nano was virtually non existant, I dunno if there will be a Navi Nano at all
 

Prothea

Average Stuffer
Aug 26, 2018
72
61
Bit of a side-track from MI-6 specific topics but
I've currently got a 1070 Aero, what are the odds there will be a worthy upgrade in the near future.
Don't really want to get an RTX 2070 Aero because I'd rather not waste my money on ray tracing cores.
Considering the Vega Nano was virtually non existant, I dunno if there will be a Navi Nano at all
Current information about Navi suggests two versions with different TDP/TBP, so we may see SFF options on the lower power variant, which is rumored to be 5% greater performance than the 2060. But it's all just conjecture.
 

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,735
2,809
Bit of a side-track from MI-6 specific topics but
I've currently got a 1070 Aero, what are the odds there will be a worthy upgrade in the near future.
Don't really want to get an RTX 2070 Aero because I'd rather not waste my money on ray tracing cores.
Considering the Vega Nano was virtually non existant, I dunno if there will be a Navi Nano at all


Yeah...same boat here. 2070 just doesn't offer the performance for the money. I was hoping for a 2080 as it offers a pretty big jump in performance, but that's looking less likely right now.

Honestly I think 2070 is the highest performance you can get right now.
 

huddy

Caliper Novice
Aug 22, 2018
30
29
I almost bought a powercolor vega56 it's the other day but decided to hold out and see what Navi offers. Perhaps if the initial SKU's have a 150-175 TBP option, we will see an aero it's model or similar. If that doesn't work out. I will just stick with a 1060.

I am concerned that we may end up without any solid X570/B550 boards that have room for the larger downdraft coolers that fit into the MI-6. I am keeping my fingers crossed for now and will likely fall back to a B450 board if the newer boards don't meet this criteria.
 
  • Like
Reactions: thel3igo

DrAwesome95

Caliper Novice
Jun 25, 2018
27
9
I am concerned that we may end up without any solid X570/B550 boards that have room for the larger downdraft coolers that fit into the MI-6. I am keeping my fingers crossed for now and will likely fall back to a B450 board if the newer boards don't meet this criteria.

I'm glad it's not just me worried about the trend of giant 'heatsinks', I/O covers and daughter boards being jammed onto an ITX form factor - I get you need to make use of all those extra PCIe lanes somehow but, not at the expense of cooling. Bad trade IMO.
Also, you may loose out on PCIe 4.0, but hey, B450 still has the tiered storage protocol thingy and also its most likely a firmware block, so there is still hope AMD might unlock it somewhere down the track.
 

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,735
2,809
I'm glad it's not just me worried about the trend of giant 'heatsinks', I/O covers and daughter boards being jammed onto an ITX form factor - I get you need to make use of all those extra PCIe lanes somehow but, not at the expense of cooling. Bad trade IMO.
Also, you may loose out on PCIe 4.0, but hey, B450 still has the tiered storage protocol thingy and also its most likely a firmware block, so there is still hope AMD might unlock it somewhere down the track.


This has become a real problem. While I have no issues with actual VRM heatsinks, but I hate those decorative cover blocks that do little to nothing but take up space. Give me real fins and real heatpipes. The other issues is the attached IO shields. They interfere with everything. Is it really so hard to pop an IO Shield in? To make an MSI 2060 fit with the Asus ITX Z390 I had to dremal away part of the GPUs back plate because their IO shield was blocking the cards STUPID plastic backplate.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Prothea

huddy

Caliper Novice
Aug 22, 2018
30
29
Given the TBP of Navi 10's, I'm not optimistic to quickly have any Nano/Aero ITX models at launch so I decided to get an Aero ITX 1070. I didn't really want to go with team green, but the price was solid and it's going to be a great pixel crunching card for my photo editing. I can always come back to AMD if some newer Radeons come out with lower TBP later with good linux driver support.

My countdown timer is set for 7/7 now. I'm just a motherboard, 3700X, and 2x M.2 SSD's away from a build!
 

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,735
2,809
Just for reference for those wondering about ITX sized GPUS that will fit in an MI-6:

GTX 1070 has a 150 Watt TDP
GTX 1080 has a 180 Watt TDP

RTX 2070 has a 185 Watt TDP
RTX 2080 has a 225 Watt TDP

Navi 5700 has a 180 Watt TDP
Navi 5700XT has a 225 Watt TDP

Radeon VII has a 295 Watt TDP

RX 580 has a 185 Watt TDP
RX 590 has a 225 Watt TDP

Vega 56 has a 210 Watt TDP
Vega 64 has a 295 Watt TDP

Radeon R9 Nano has a 175 Watt TDP
Radeon R9 Fury X has a 285 Watt TDP (AIO Cooling)


With the exception of the water cooled R9 Fury X, we haven't really seen any 2 slot ITX side GPUs above 210 Watts. The 210 Watt unit was a Vega 56 Nano but most reviews indicated that at stock settings it was running a 100mhz slower core clock than most Vega 56s, which would probably lower the TDP into the range of 190 to 200. I may be wrong, but I don't recall seeing any RX580s or RX590s in mini form. I have an RX 570 mini from Sapphire and it runs quite warm and loud compared to my MSI Aero 1070.

Of the new generation of GPUs, I would expect to see the RTX 2060, RTX 2070, and possibly the Navi 5700 as ITX candidates. Perhaps we could see the Navi 5700XT and RTX 2080 if a combination of 3 slot vaporchamber coolers, faster and louder fans, and possibly AIO are used. I know EVGA has released a 1660TI 3 Slot mini cooler, but that's too big for the MI-6.

Anyone fit any 2 fan units in like the Zotac Mini 1080ti?

Essentially, you can have 2 of these 3 characteristics: Fast, Small, Quiet.
 

ignsvn

By Toutatis!
SFFn Staff
Gold Supporter
Bronze Supporter
Apr 4, 2016
1,729
1,672
In my country we have Asus Phoenix 1660Ti & Gigabyte 1660Ti.

Both are single fan, 2 slots, 120W.

Should be right at home in MI-6.
 
Last edited:

Weredawg

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Apr 5, 2017
119
162
Just convinced my wife to let me build a PC and in this case no less! Last time I built a PC, which was also my first build, was in 2011 and that machine was sold entirely by 2013. Haven't had any consoles since 2013 either. This case will fit right at home in my little 3 tier shelf under one of my Polk Hampden speakers, which is coincidentally almost the same size as this case; wider but not as deep.

Signed up for notifications so I'll be ready to order when this batch is good to go :)
So ready to upgrade from my 2015 ThinkPad laptop and its i5-5200U and GT940M
 
  • Like
Reactions: ignsvn

huddy

Caliper Novice
Aug 22, 2018
30
29
In my country we have Asus Phoenix 1660Ti & Gigabyte 1660Ti.

Both are single fan, 2 slots, 120W.

Should be right at home in MI-6.

I really was hoping for an MSI Aero ITX 1660 TI but those don't seem to be available in the USA and the coolers have a machined aluminum block instead of the heatpipe/finned cooler on the 1060/1070/2060. I couldn't bring myself to spend the time tuning the Vega 56 Nano to be undervolted either, although I might be willing to in the future.

Just convinced my wife to let me build a PC and in this case no less! Last time I built a PC, which was also my first build, was in 2011 and that machine was sold entirely by 2013. Haven't had any consoles since 2013 either. This case will fit right at home in my little 3 tier shelf under one of my Polk Hampden speakers, which is coincidentally almost the same size as this case; wider but not as deep.

Signed up for notifications so I'll be ready to order when this batch is good to go :)
So ready to upgrade from my 2015 ThinkPad laptop and its i5-5200U and GT940M

Congratulations! What a great upgrade that will be. I'm upgrading from a 2009 Core 2 Quad build so it's definitely time. I could fit 3.5 MI-6's in the volume of my current Lian Li V851. I pulled my case out last weekend to marvel about how small and nice it was.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Weredawg

ignsvn

By Toutatis!
SFFn Staff
Gold Supporter
Bronze Supporter
Apr 4, 2016
1,729
1,672
I really was hoping for an MSI Aero ITX 1660 TI but those don't seem to be available in the USA and the coolers have a machined aluminum block instead of the heatpipe/finned cooler on the 1060/1070/2060. I couldn't bring myself to spend the time tuning the Vega 56 Nano to be undervolted either, although I might be willing to in the future.

This is where Asus (and usually Zotac) is lacking. For GTX xx60 class, they rely on solid aluminum heatsink without heatpipes.

EVGA, MSI & Gigabyte usually use heatpipes.
 

DrAwesome95

Caliper Novice
Jun 25, 2018
27
9
With the exception of the water cooled R9 Fury X, we haven't really seen any 2 slot ITX side GPUs above 210 Watts

Its sad, but I am begging to question the longevity of building in 2 slot sff cases.
I haven't invested in the CCD MI-6 yet but don't really want to be stuck with a 1070 for the foreseeable future.
Same goes for other SFF platforms like the Dan A4, the Ghost S1 and similar.
Vapour chambers might be a thing, if there are enough willing to buy one
 

Revenant

Christopher Moine - Senior Editor SFF.N
Revenant Tech
SFFn Staff
Apr 21, 2017
1,735
2,809
Its sad, but I am begging to question the longevity of building in 2 slot sff cases.
I haven't invested in the CCD MI-6 yet but don't really want to be stuck with a 1070 for the foreseeable future.
Same goes for other SFF platforms like the Dan A4, the Ghost S1 and similar.
Vapour chambers might be a thing, if there are enough willing to buy one


Well the 2070 would be the max you could get right now. It benchmarks above a 1080.

The real question is what display are you using? Are you using a high refresh rate display (over 60hz)? What resolution? GSync?

If you're using a 60hz display, at 1080 to 1440P, then a 2070 is almost overkill for gaming. Add Gsync to the mix and it might be.

If you're running a 4K display, well, then just shove as big a GPU in as possible.