Update #4: Pics because its happening
General fitment of the hardware:
So here are some photos of the A300m in the GC shell, I still have a decent amount of trimming to do, but I'm waiting until positioning of parts is more finalized as I don't want to remove material that I may want later. Right now the shell doesn't close because the posts that the four main case screws thread into are still full length so the extra thickness of the motherboard wont let it close all the way. As for cooling I'm going to replace the logo jewel on the disk reader lid with black wire mesh as that part sits directly over the fan on the L9a (for the most part).
CAD of the GPU cooler:
Rough Vega Nano PCB
Preliminary Cooler design
Heat pipes and cold plate. The cold plate is an exact copy of the one that came on the card, I will be adding more to get direct contact with the mosfets as the standard cooler had a secondary cooler underneath the main fin stack for the VRM. I also haven't decided whether or not I should go with soldered copper fins or press fit aluminum, for low production (1 maybe 2 if I screw up) the cost difference is negligible, my main concern is ease of assembly. Most heat pipes can be soldered to with solder that melt below 250C, but doing all the soldering with an iron would be a nightmare because there are >130 fins and 7 hole per fin so ..... >910 individual solder joints, or I could experiment with solder paste and essentially coat the pipes, slide all the fins on (with removable shims, probably washers I'm cheap and lazy), and then bake it in a oven. Or go with aluminum press fit following a similar process, bake the fin (make the holes larger), refrigerate/freeze the heat pipe assembly, and then quickly slide all the fins on with removable spacers, let cool. And thus I run it to the hardest and most expensive part of one off projects, prototyping.
This is a rough layout of all the parts, minus the dynamo 360 and Gamecube controller usb adapter. The cooler on top is a basic model of the L9a using just the exterior dimensions.
I may end up going to flat heat pipes or smaller diameter so that I could achieve tighter bends. From reading the specs sheets of different heat pipes and personal experience, a "safe" bend is anywhere in the range of Center line bend radius = 2.5 to 3 * Diameter --> 8mm heat pipe ~ 24mm radius. But with a comparable (equivalent heat transfer) flat heat pipes you could potentially bend them along the wider face and with 10mm x 4.5mm pipe --> 4.5mm "diameter" ` 13.5 mm radius bend. I'm going to order some bar stock to turn some mandrels and various heat pipes to do some testing, may take awhile though. (money and school).
There is still a lot of work to do and stuff may change. I'm so happy that there is interest in my project.
Hope:
Maybe, just maybe if there are enough of us interested in using the A300m in similar ways (ie. 2600 with a dGPU), we can convince Asrock to give us semi official support in the form a beta BIOS that allows the use of non APU parts. So maybe, y'all could ask asrock for help with it (even if you don't intend to do it) to make it appear that there is an market larger than just me wanting to use their product in more ways than currently supported.