The Reem.
The intention of this build is to replace the dvd player and play games. This was originally to put in a z97 asrock itx/ac board with 4690k and gtx 950 (210mm long) I have laying around after upgrading to z370. It also needs to fit a dvd drive, and have a front usb port. It needs to be cheap. This is for making old things into something to fit a use case.
I had a a4 box organiser (320x220x47) that seemed to be about the right size. I put the motherboard and GPU into that and went “huh!” and thought it would be pretty easy. Id just cut some holes, put in some stand offs and whack the parts in.
Here it is with some hardware in it (Just took these for the purpose of the photo. Also, the original lid got destroyed. Same design as further down though, but with a chunk cut out for the io shield.)
Mk1 – July 2018
This case needed to be slightly taller... Also, that pico wont supply enough power.
At first a HDplex looked to be the way to go, but with the release of 20 series, I would look at putting a 1080 in this, and 300w might not cut it with the 4790k drawing around 100w oc’d and a 1080 drawing 180+w, the 400w ac-dc uses a lot of room.
It was around this time that I wondered, why use 19v then convert it down again to 12, 5 and 3.3?? Most of it is on 12v, why not just get a 12v power supply and plug it straight into eps, pcie and a pico? I get that using 19v means less amps, so you can use smaller gauge wire and tracers, but if its going straight from the PSU to PCIE/EPS, a single 14awg can carry up to 420w especially over small distances. No need to even split it into 8x 18awg cables. Apart from redundancy, I wonder why they even do this?! Granted the molex connectors are low amps on each pin, but if they are bridged with enough metal and soldered, it shouldn’t be a problem… I know xt90 connectors can take 90A, and the large molex can take 30A. I never did get around to experimenting with this.
I looked through hundreds of power supplies (this is before I found sffn). Eventually, I bought a 360w led power supply for $20 and and a pico for like $10, basically to experiment with. I did some tests with a multimeter and unfortunately the voltage ripple is way too high, and it’s got, just… terrible! build quality. You get what you pay for. I didn’t even trust this to touch a junk motherboard, I don’t want to start a fire.
I hooked the pico up to a nice 12V source, and it worked just fine. I didn’t trust the pcie and eps cables, so I replaced with bulkier ones. It ran hot, but since I'm not going to use these apart from the Bluray drive, I figure it will be fine.
The promising looking 12v PSUs on my list are: EPP 400-12 (127x76x35 - $90), Fidus MWLC550 (127x76x38 – free sample?), Delta PACSR12042S (111x50x14 – $265), Cosel TUNS500F (100x50x13mm - $300), TPP 450A (127x76x40 - $290). They all have the quality and size the build needs. Obviously $300 is a BIT too much to spend to experiment with. Maybe for the next build… 500w at 100x50x13mm tho! So tempting…
But I'm going with the EPP 400-12 for now, due to the price. If i manage to get a sample for the MWLC550,then 500W WIN! But I'm not counting on it.
The intention of this build is to replace the dvd player and play games. This was originally to put in a z97 asrock itx/ac board with 4690k and gtx 950 (210mm long) I have laying around after upgrading to z370. It also needs to fit a dvd drive, and have a front usb port. It needs to be cheap. This is for making old things into something to fit a use case.
I had a a4 box organiser (320x220x47) that seemed to be about the right size. I put the motherboard and GPU into that and went “huh!” and thought it would be pretty easy. Id just cut some holes, put in some stand offs and whack the parts in.
Here it is with some hardware in it (Just took these for the purpose of the photo. Also, the original lid got destroyed. Same design as further down though, but with a chunk cut out for the io shield.)
Mk1 – July 2018
This case needed to be slightly taller... Also, that pico wont supply enough power.
At first a HDplex looked to be the way to go, but with the release of 20 series, I would look at putting a 1080 in this, and 300w might not cut it with the 4790k drawing around 100w oc’d and a 1080 drawing 180+w, the 400w ac-dc uses a lot of room.
It was around this time that I wondered, why use 19v then convert it down again to 12, 5 and 3.3?? Most of it is on 12v, why not just get a 12v power supply and plug it straight into eps, pcie and a pico? I get that using 19v means less amps, so you can use smaller gauge wire and tracers, but if its going straight from the PSU to PCIE/EPS, a single 14awg can carry up to 420w especially over small distances. No need to even split it into 8x 18awg cables. Apart from redundancy, I wonder why they even do this?! Granted the molex connectors are low amps on each pin, but if they are bridged with enough metal and soldered, it shouldn’t be a problem… I know xt90 connectors can take 90A, and the large molex can take 30A. I never did get around to experimenting with this.
I looked through hundreds of power supplies (this is before I found sffn). Eventually, I bought a 360w led power supply for $20 and and a pico for like $10, basically to experiment with. I did some tests with a multimeter and unfortunately the voltage ripple is way too high, and it’s got, just… terrible! build quality. You get what you pay for. I didn’t even trust this to touch a junk motherboard, I don’t want to start a fire.
I hooked the pico up to a nice 12V source, and it worked just fine. I didn’t trust the pcie and eps cables, so I replaced with bulkier ones. It ran hot, but since I'm not going to use these apart from the Bluray drive, I figure it will be fine.
The promising looking 12v PSUs on my list are: EPP 400-12 (127x76x35 - $90), Fidus MWLC550 (127x76x38 – free sample?), Delta PACSR12042S (111x50x14 – $265), Cosel TUNS500F (100x50x13mm - $300), TPP 450A (127x76x40 - $290). They all have the quality and size the build needs. Obviously $300 is a BIT too much to spend to experiment with. Maybe for the next build… 500w at 100x50x13mm tho! So tempting…
But I'm going with the EPP 400-12 for now, due to the price. If i manage to get a sample for the MWLC550,then 500W WIN! But I'm not counting on it.
