The Quest for a Tiny Gaming Desktop

Hardware Hub Build Logs
1

Pre-log Rambling

Well, it's been some time since I've done a build log. Heck, my first build log was mostly a copy/paste from another forum. I've been building some rigs for friends and family, but since they weren't really mine I didn't bother doing any build logs for those...

Ok you got me. I'm lazy.

But this build is a slight deviation from your standard build, so here's a build log.

The Concept

There I was, staring at my computer on a dark summer night. Lurking forums and gazing at parts that I'd love to have but really don't need. As I scroll down, I spot a measly low-profile R7 250. Next to it, Newegg also recommended a cheap and small InWin Case, with a cheapo 200w power supply to go with it. An idea popped into my head - how small of a desktop could you build while getting great gaming performance? Sure, there are small and short cases like the Cooler Master Elite 110, but it's still not small enough to easily backpack around. Was it possible to find a low-profile graphics card with good enough gaming performance?

It was around this time last year(aka early 2014) that this idea came to me.

Well, an R7 250 is by no means a powerful card in my book. Not powerful enough for games. "Maybe that year-old GTX 750 and 750 Ti might have some low-profile versions?" I thought. Googling brought me to a single model - a low profile GTX 750 Ti made by Galaxy. Availability was pretty scarce and it simply wasn't very price competitive at the time. If I recall correctly, It was similar to the price of an R9 270, which is a better card by a decent margin. Even if I did pick up the card, it's a dual-slot card. Finding a compatible, compact case with dual-slot and low profile PCIe ports would be almost impossible. I shelved the idea mentally.

Parts Selection

Parts Link Will Be Updated by Friday

Over the last weekend, I found that I had some extra spending money which I could use from my part-time job which I've been doing over my long winter break. Enough to maybe put together a budget gaming system.

I again looked for more low-profile graphics cards. The GTX 750 Ti seems to still be the strongest low-profile card out there. However, this time, it's available by many more manufacturers - MSI, Gigabyte, and Zotac. Great! The price has also come down, and I just happen to have this 25% off coupon on Jet.com. I grab the Mobo and GPU off Jet.com for a pretty killer deal.

Storage? I'll just steal that 840 Evo sitting in one of my idle laptops which never gets used.

I notice that there aren't a lot of quality TFX power supplies as I browse pcpartpicker. I pick a Seasonic 300w out of the bunch of lesser-known names. It seems well reviewed, despite being out on the market for many years.

For airflow, I decided to go with a 80mm case fan. There's a free Enermax one after a mail in rebate at my local Fry's Electronics, so I spring for that one.

I hit up /r/hardwareswap for my CPU and RAM. I maybe saved $7+tax at most. Pretty crappy deals. Oh well, as long as everything works.

Now, I was looking for a case. There were still no cases that would fit my needs. I didn't need an optical drive bay - that often took up a ton of space in these little cases. Very rarely did they have 2 slots for PCIe as well. It was at this point when I decided to be a little bit adventurous.

I've got a 3D printer. I've got proficient solidworks skills. I decided to design my own print. Then, I'd print it and give it a nice coat of paint.

A custom computer case - something that's unique and one of a kind.

An inexpensive computer which is capable of gaming. One which is unique in looks and lighting, and is small enough to be easily backpacked from house to house. That's what I'm shooting for.

2

1/10
My first and only local part.

This fan is quite neat. It uses magnets around the hub so that the fan is essentially free-floating when in operation. You can pluck off the whole fan assembly and clean out the fan blades with ease. There's a little metal post in the middle with some grease on it, but that's all. Very interesting bearing.

1/12
Graphics Card came in today.

The pictures don't do it justice. It's so unbelievably small. Each fan is 60mm. Build quality seems great. The shroud doesn't creak at all and it just seems solid.

1/14
Parts from /r/hardwareswap came in.

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860k

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deditated wam

Found some stuff laying around which I can use for the build.

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Like this header thingy

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Why not some rgb leds. I forgot I had a roll of these. Needed a controller though - that comes from eBay/China. Gonna have to wait for those to get here, as well as some screws and switches I ordered.

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The main frame of the computer is theoretically ready. Still need to draw up the front and back plates, as well as the top cover. Not sure if I'm happy with the ID, but maybe laziness will get the better of me. Planning to have underlighting and small side vents on the top cover to allow for ventilation and hopefully some led glow.

1/15
Parts from amazon and jet.com came today

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like this here powah supply

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shit motherboard(more on that later)

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Slightly blurry, mb

3

Building

1/15

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Fun Fact: my first AMD CPU install. Pretty easy once you line up the pins

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blop

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testing parts, I think I have a DOA mobo. Fak. I'll pick one up at fry's tomorrow. Tested the RAM and GPU in my own system, as well as the power supply on my 3d printer. Fans just spin at 100% with no display output.

2/4

Woah, it's been half a month already?! #laziness

It turns out the used CPU I bought was doa. Totally wasn't expecting that. Spent a couple more bucks buying it directly from Newegg, and returned the CPU to the seller. Ah well, my bad luck comes to bite me again.

I printed out the main chassis of the case. My printer isn't big enough to do this in one go, so I had to split it up and glue it together. I created some holes for popsicle sticks to be inserted to help strengthen the whole chassis.

Here are the parts lined up next to each other.

With some finagling, I got the chassis built and glued up. It isn't pretty on the inside, but outside looks decent and hopefully a coat of paint will cover up the blemishes.

I started to test fit parts.


damn, cable management is going to be fun.

So far there are some unexpected problems with the design, but nothing absolutely project-stopping. Inaccuracies in 3D printing, not accounting for the 24-pin locking clip, and the standoffs raising the motherboard so high that the GPU almost doesn't fit are just a couple things I noted.

Stuff from china came in a couple days ago. This includes standoffs, screws, and a mini rgb led controller. They just came in little plastic baggies - didn't bother photographing them. Today I finally got around to soldering a JST connector to the power switch, as well as wiring up the rgb controller to the power supply's +12v via molex.


I'm actually really surprised what this little RGB controller can do. Lots of flashing/fading demo modes, and also can cycle through colors and brightness. Shipped to my house for a mere $0.88.

Here's the shiny power button reflecting the LEDs in the background.

That's all for today. I'm gluing together the top cover which I also got around to printing out. Hopefully tomorrow I can finish designing the front and back panels as well as painting the chassis.

2/11

I got around to designing and printing out the front parts. Due to some tolerance issues(mainly from having to glue the 4 chassis parts together), it doesn't quite fit together all that nicely. Nevertheless, it'll work as v1.

Here's the first part of the front panel. I/O and fan mounted.

Surprisingly good fit.

Testing the I/O fitment

The second part of the front panel. RGB controller and power button are nicely fitted.

Little bit of hot snot on the rgb controller.

Here's the front. Not too sure about the design, but it's functional.

Another picture of the front.

Velcro mounting the top panel. It was the easiest option.

Everything installed, except for the LED strips.

Not much room for activities lol

Here's the back. Definitely need to adjust some of the cutouts.

Not sure about the design. Very utilitarian. I'm highly considering reworking the modeling for a v2 as there are some places where some tweaking wouldn't hurt. I could also optimize for printing a little bit more so that the case fits better. I could even print in ABS and give it an acetone vapor bath to make it much more visually appealing. Anyway, that's going to be it for today. Probably going to be going back to the drawing board and tweaking the design.

4

Best you could do before APU's with HBM come out is going to be a Broadwell CPU with fast memory, unless you don't want to spend $375 on your CPU

https://pcpartpicker.com/part/intel-cpu-bx80658i75775c

5

The whole build is around $310, not including case materials yet.

And a GTX 750 Ti should still kick the snot out of integrated graphics...

6

Broadwell is expensive because there's like a 128MB cache just for the iGPU on board, so it's really fast for integrated graphics

almost touches a 750 in GTAV with just 1600mhz RAM

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5775c-i5-5675c-broadwell,4169-6.html

7

So here's what you'll want to do, it's ONLY $1200 for a highly capable no GPU build, or you could just buy a nano if someone was crazy enough to spend that much, the board is supposed to support up to 3200mhz RAM

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MV22hM
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/MV22hM/by_merchant/

CPU: Intel Core i7-5775C 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor ($374.98 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: Asus Z97I-PLUS Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard ($354.02 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Dominator Platinum 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-3200 Memory ($489.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $1218.99
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-01-13 06:22 EST-0500

8

Damn, that's impressive. It's a shame Skylake doesn't have that huge cache. Broadwell on the desktop was so very weird.

Paying 4 times more for similar performance to a 750 ti? Ridiculous haha. I'm not sure how you're able to say "ONLY $1200" at all.

9

If skylake has the cache it would be way more expensive as well, although you should totally swap in an R9 nano whenever you get 500 bucks to throw away

10

Too bad a nano isn't low profile though. It won't fit!

11

It's still really tiny though, you could always get an extender/riser and just like plop it on top over the CPU

12

Cmon, it's ONLY $1200 :P

1 Like
13

While we are at it. It wouldn't be THAT much more to watercool an R9 Nano. Might as well pop one of those into the build.

Personally, I am guessing that the new APUs coming in a few months will be fucking amazing (assuming they have HBM and aren't too expensive), but that is a topic for another time. And it will be a while before we actually see any parts. For now, this seems like a really solid build. With the more efficient designs of Polaris and Pascal coming this year, I am guessing that you would be able to easily upgrade the GPU should you decide to spend a little more.

I think that printing your own case would be pretty cool, but getting it right would likely be pretty hard. Case design isn't exactly easy and getting the measurements all perfect will likely take some trial and error. I would look towards the NCASE M1 for inspiration, or for small case if you decide against printing your own.

14

Can't wait to see what 14/16nm finfet brings us. Although I'm buliding around a pretty weak 860k, so I see a 750ti as a pretty good fit.

Yeah, getting the dimensions and holes right on the first try will be quite difficult. I've done designs casing around actual items, but nothing this large and complex.

I have done some pre-planning. Here's a little screenshot - still needs a lot of work and actual measurements of the components.

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2 Likes
15

CPU and ram got here, and I got pretty far in case design and stuffs. Check 1/14 post update.

16

If you need any help on case design or manufacturing, let me know (checking for clearance issues/tolerancing)... I work as a CNC Programmer and have a shop and Mastercam at my disposal in case you get in a pickle and need something out of metal... I remember you from when I used to do a lot of Build a PC advising and I pretty well just skipped over most the things you replied to as they were +/- a part what I would say...

http://www.formfactors.org/developer%5Cspecs%5Cmini_itx_spec_v1_1.pdf

there's a print for mini ITX form factor so you don't mess up the bolt hole pattern... if you do stuff like this often it wouldn't be a terrible investment to get a pair of 6" Mitutoyo calipers... they're about $120 normally but http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/161910927948?ul_noapp=true&chn=ps&lpid=82 <--- buy that, you'll use it for a LOT of things you never thought you would if you like to model things... easily switches from MM - Inch... I prefer dial calipers for machining but they do well enough for modeling

17

Hey, I remember you too. I got a bit busy with college and haven't really liked the look of the new forum as much as the old one, so I've been mostly lurking.

Thanks for the offer. I'll let you know if I experience any troubles.

I did googling and saw that spec sheet for M-ITX. It was really helpful drawing up the cases and such. I'm pretty sure I drew it up correctly...hopefully haha.

Calipers really help with 3D printing as well. Accuracy isn't really that amazing though, and therefore cheap calipers work surprisingly well. I picked up one of these since I have some old store credit from when I used to to r/c stuff

http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__4304__HobbyKing_8482_Digital_Vernier_Calipers_150mm.html

Some more parts came today - will be doing an update soon.

1 Like
18

Interesting build, I'll be following along to see how the case turns out. I love inexpensive builds.

I'm also designing a case now, but full atx. Need to pick up some of those calipers. I recently got the Shapeoko 3 desktop CNC and will be making most of the panels with that, except so far I have been doing a bunch of stuff to get it set up and haven't milled anything yet.

@DrunkenPanda interesting to hear you work with CNC

19

Calipers are a must. They're so useful.

Little update:

So it turns out the CPU was doa. Returned it back to the owner for a refund and ordered one off Newegg, which came in the other day.

Everything works quite well now. I'm surprised how well this little 860k chip performs - I've never actually tried in in person until now.

I've printed the majority of the parts, just gotta sand and put em together since I had to split up the chassis into 4 parts due to printer size constraints. I don't have many power tools, so there's some work to be done.

Got my power button in the other day - pretty quick shipping from china. Waiting on standoffs, screws, and an rgb controller now.

Here's a firestrike bench result: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/7293310

20

The tense you used confused me a little. So you already have the new 860k and everything is up and running?