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is there anything super small/minimal like the mini box m350 but for mATX? highly vented, metal, enough for a low profile noctua
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Jun 12, 2021 05:03
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| # ¿ May 13, 2024 11:06 |
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Lord Stimperor posted:I originally didn't want a Shield because I thought it's a walled garden. But it occurs to me that I could probably sideload the Brave browser onto it, which would give me an ad blocker as well as the ability to stream from a bunch of web-based streaming sites (like kissasian). I'll look into that. I think it boils down to either a Nvidia shield or a mini ITX PC. the shield tv / apple tv / etc do much better implementations of some of the "niche" features that your system may have, like HDR support, or DolbyVision support, etc. I am normally a huge fan of "do-it-yourself" and "you can build something better for the same price you'd pay for a premium device" but that's just not true of the current ecosystem. windows support for HDR has been funky and mediocre forever and it looks like Kodi is "experimental" at best (running someone's hacked-up build). https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=332180 if you don't have an intense need for tinkering with this I'd say just get a shield TV. If you find that doesn't suit your needs for whatever reason (browsing?) and you absolutely cannot engineer your way there (pihole or other DNS solutions?) then you can get a J5005 intel nuc for like $125 + RAM + storage (so like under $200 all-up) and run a second device for that. But the shield has native support for things you will have to go out of your way to get working on windows. also maybe you could get streaming sites working on Kodi? I remember there being quite a few plugins that were obviously targeted at piracy...
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Jun 14, 2021 21:54
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Happiness Commando posted:Are there decent, new(-ish), and reasonably priced NUCs around? I've had my eye on this Minisforum NUC for a little bit and I acknowledge that I'll be playing Chinese factory roulette, but I need a new computer, I won't be getting a video card because lol, and I really do like the NUC form factor, especially for the general computing that I do. asus has put out a pretty decent zen2 nuc https://www.microcenter.com/product/626702/asus-pn50-bbr033md-black-mini-booksize-barebone-system if you are comparing across multiple sites be sure to copy the whole part number. note that they haven't put out a zen3 update - even the pn51 is just using zen2 chips (5700U, etc)
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Jun 30, 2021 14:37
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I’m vaguely looking at the idea of turning my old fileserver into a router. is there a case like the mini box m350 that will handle mATX instead of ITX? That would let me reuse my quad NIC/ECC server board. Would be looking to go as cheap as possible and as small as possible (like m350 size but wider), with either a pico PSU (which I’d have to buy, of course) or a 1U server PSU (which I can reuse). Ideally metal but ventilated, probably will just use another AP for wireless rather than trying to cram it all into one box.
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Jul 3, 2021 15:18
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Was there one of the sandwich style cases that allowed you to do either a 3 slot GPU or a 2slot and a separate 1 slot card behind it (with bifurcation)? I think most of them would probably do it with an appropriate riser but…
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Jul 7, 2021 20:35
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   5700G / B550i Aorus Pro AX / Noctua L9a / Mini-Box M350 / PicoPSU 150XT The M350 is actually extremely well-finished for a $50 case - I'm very impressed. I've used $50 cases before and they are usually, uh, "rough at best". This is actually really nice. Usual mITX build errata: didn't put everything together first, and then realized the L9a uses a custom backplate  . Power jack didn't fit in the spot due to the plastic meme armor on the motherboard's IO shield and I had to hacksaw off half of the screw hole for that power jack. Power jack hole has a "crosshair" support bracket designed to fit the barrel connector option (150w brick uses 4-pin DIN) and I had to take tin snips and cut that out.The L9a is only rated to about 47W, doing heavy x264 transcoding (3440x1440 CRF 29 veryslow) with full fan speed it runs at about 82C (tctl/tdie) at 60W package power, running around 4.1 GHz. A heavier load like Cinebench R23 eventually pushes it up to 95C at which point it drops to maybe 4 GHz. Which is reasonably acceptable given the form factor, the cooler, and the noise. Might be able to squeeze it a bit more with a thicker fan (I miiiight be able to fit a full NF-A9 PWM (92x25mm) in there instead of the stock NF-A9x14, just barely) or by seeing if I could add the side rail with 40mm fans to force some extra airflow (although that will add noise). Efficiency at the wall is not all that great - I don't think those laptop bricks are all that efficient. I'm idling at about 30W at the wall (5W package power) and during x264 encoding (60W package power) it's running about 100W at the wall. Some of that is chipset/etc but I think I'm losing a lot in the power brick. And while idle efficiency is important to me - tbh as long as it's happening outside the case, it's at least not affecting thermals inside the case. Other than that I do love that PicoPSU for this build - between that and the M.2 SSD it makes it super super clean inside. It's literally just the PicoPSU input and CPU power strings, the front header/USB, and the fan cable, those are the only cables inside, everything else is on the board or on the PicoPSU. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 15:25 on Aug 16, 2021 |
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Aug 16, 2021 14:58
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yeah if I take the lid off it can push 80W at 85C, basically 20W more at the same temps, so it's an airflow problem. out of the box the case has no natural airflow beyond convection - the fan can suck a little bit (although measuring it out, there's about 1cm between the panel and the fan) and it's got enough louvers that air flows out pretty ok but it's not a huge amount of airflow. I realized I can take the meme armor off the m.2 socket on the top of the board, and I can mount an extra fan in front plus either a thiccer fan on the cooler (which should put it right up against the side - if it fits) or a thiccboi on the option mount rail. Really though the extra thermals doesn't seem to translate into a massive difference in clocks/performance, so even if it works I may just limit it to 65W anyway and call it a day. Maybe it'll be more when I try using it for graphics.
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Aug 18, 2021 01:41
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Broken Machine posted:I don't ever overclock stuff, and I mostly run t series intel or e series amd. I'm idly curious though, if overall you'd get better results in a smaller case like that, if you're turning up the clock speed or multiplier or whatever, using a lower wattage chip and boosting it more? It'd be interesting to see the data on that, but not enough to me to actually test it. nowadays you basically don't want to mess with it because the boost algorithm is doing the best it can with the power and voltage limits. You could certainly push up the power limit on a lower-TDP chip (unless AMD locks it down on those efficiency-focused chips to keep you from doing that? I don't remember if they do) but the efficiency-tier chips aren't actually better silicon at all (if anything they're worse/lower quality silicon), they are basically the same (or lower binned) chips with a lower power limit set on them. now in principle it could save you money if the lower-TDP chips are cheaper (like 3900 vs 3900X) but AMD generally hasn't made those efficiency-focused chips available at general retail either, to keep people from doing exactly that.
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Aug 20, 2021 00:22
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are there any options for a really SFF pc with an ODD bay? I'd kinda like to get my parents an upgrade for their current turboshitty AMD E350-based htpc they use at the family cabin, but they have a big media library stored on blurays. the HDPlex H1 TODD is pretty cute but it doesn't need to be passive. probably the easiest answer is to just get them a motherboard like J4125-ITX I guess, but... 
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Aug 21, 2021 02:09
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I'm looking for something the size of a Hdplex H1 TODD, not a shoebox case. I want something wii-sized but with a bluray drive and running windows, or something the size of Mini-Box M350 but taller to fit in a slim ODD. I should see if they'd be open to an "appliance" like a ARM-based something or a console with a media player though. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 06:12 on Aug 23, 2021 |
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Aug 23, 2021 06:08
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Z the IVth posted:I want to replace my old desktop mini-tower with something smaller. Mainly used for Photoshop/web browsing but also for light gaming (no VR or 4k 120fps poo poo but being able to run new games at medium settings would be nice). Sure. A good place to start might be to look at Sliger's catalog, they make a lot of interesting cases with high compatibility (at least for SFF, relatively speaking). Those "ATX"/"mATX" cases are smaller than a lot of mITX cases of yesteryear - the full ATX one is 15x14x7. And "sandwich-style" cases are the modern recipe for cramming a relatively high-power GPU into a small case with little wasted space. With the current crop of GPUs it can be a little tough to fit a smaller case - the trend is for board partners to go for giant 2.5/2.75/3 slot coolers. There are some cases that are designed to accommodate that (check out the SM560 there) but even if the cooler fits in terms of slots you also have to keep in mind the card length/width as well, SFF cases are also tighter in those dimensions. Right now the NVIDIA Founders' Edition cards are the smallest that is generally available for their model tiers, but they have pass-through coolers that aren't necessarily the optimal thing for a sandwich case (someone else can probably chime in on that). The Sliger cases aren't cheap, but that's a SFF thing in general. You're paying a premium for size no matter how you go. As you already noticed, SFF prebuilts tend to be expensive as well. And don't necessarily buy a prebuilt and think you're getting an awesome engineered thing that is just plug and play and it'll be super fast and quiet either - a lot of the time you pay more and you get something that's still hot/noisy.
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Aug 23, 2021 21:54
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Z the IVth posted:What's the opinion on buying a (possibly secondhand) gaming NUC like the Hades Canyon? don't buy Hades Canyon specifically, because that one turned into a football between Intel and AMD for support (presumably, Intel stopped paying, and AMD stopped supporting) and it's no longer getting drivers. the successor is called Ghost Canyon and that moves to kind of a weird thing where the motherboard is on a PCIe card and it plugs into a backplane that attaches a standard (mITX-sized) graphics card. That one just uses an off-the-shelf NVIDIA graphics card and that will get support like any other NVIDIA card, and could be swapped for any other graphics card that would fit. here's a review/explanation of what I'm talking about because it's a little bizarre from a standard PC design perspective. It also lists the MSI Trident X, Corsair One Pro i200, and HP Omen Obelisk as some other competitors - and I am also aware of the Corsair Bulldog (which is unfortunately limited to 6th/7th Gen Intel chips - so nothing more than quad cores). ghost canyon (and I think there's a new successor now, or coming soon?) is a fine enough design, but you will be limited to a laptop SKU and the boost behavior that entails, plus it currently means that you can only get 14nm processors. Using Zen2/Zen3 is a major advantage in terms of noise/thermals, 7nm reduces the power consumption significantly and the less heat you put out the less you have to dissipate. Basically: you know the saying about "fast, cheap, good, you can pick any two"? SFF very much works the same way. "case volume, noise, thermals, pick any two". For a given amount of heat you have to dissipate, the smaller the volume the more difficult to move air and that translates into higher noise. Or you could not move the air and that increases thermals, and so on. But the easiest answer is to simply dissipate less heat in the first place - normally that means reducing your performance level, but going from 14nm to 7nm is a significant reduction in the power consumption and it's actually faster. AMD processors (at least, Zen2/Zen3 processors using 7nm) are the absolute default answer for doing SFF builds at this point, maybe Alder Lake will be decent later this year but don't buy 14nm chips (NUC or otherwise). the other trick you can use to increase efficiency is underclocking a faster GPU. Power consumption scales faster than clock speeds (it actually scales with the square of the clock speed) and it works the same in reverse, if you underclock it then you will gain significantly more efficiency than you lose (up to a point). A 1080 limited to ~65% power and undervolted (just set the power limit and increase the core clocks until it starts losing stability) will put out 1070 performance at 1060 power consumption. This only works to a point, and you can also end up with frametime problems. If you do this - the 3090 won't scale well (too much VRAM) and I don't know how the 3080 and 3070 Ti will scale either (on paper, GDDR6X pulls less power per bit than GDDR6, but I've never measured a card to see). The other possibility is RDNA2, and I strongly suspect that since it's a 7nm-based card the 6800XT and other AMD cards will scale down nicely as you reduce the clocks. Anyway if you like the Ghost Canyon design then take a look at the Velka cases - these make similar tradeoffs to the Ghost Canyon NUC but use off-the-shelf parts and will allow the use of an AMD 7nm processor on a standard mITX motherboard. Do look at the specs carefully in terms of supported GPU size (all three dimensions!) and CPU cooler size (you are probably looking at a Noctua L9a-AM4). You may well be looking at a mITX sized card anyway given how wide coolers have gotten now, but PcPartPicker can help narrow the search a bit (although apparently they don't allow searching by width). I'd be glad to cross-ship if you wanted something from a company that didn't ship to the UK, but I can't do anything about the import duties  Anyway see my post above about the Mini-box M350 I built, it's tiny because it has an APU with a decent iGPU by iGPU standards (it's about GT 1030 performance). But it also isn't a stellar performer by discrete GPU standards - it can do 720p gaming OK, 1080p is getting to be a stretch, and framerates won't be awesome. That's about as good as integrated graphics get, currently. But I built it for a mini desktop, not for gaming, and it's got a lot of CPU power for the size - a DIY build like this will significantly outperform the TDP-limited and boost-limited laptop CPUs in NUCs and many engineered mini-PCs. If you primarily are going to work, but you want video outs and to run lightweight games occasionally(DOTA, etc), and you can accept the resolution/framerate/quality tradeoffs, that's an option too. The Velka and Sliger cases are the next bigger thing for DIY systems. (I actually can get good framerates at higher resolutions in older games with this - I tested Team Fortress 2 running at 3440x1440 with a performance-optimized config, and I can run 60fps minimum/80-100 fps average, and it'll even max out my monitor at 180fps when not much is happening. But newer stuff is going to be 720p tops and probably closer to 40-50 fps at that.) Going to a mini-PC with a discrete GPU may get the size back down a bit, but it comes at a cost in terms of CPU performance (and GPU performance will not be as good as a full DIY build with a GPU either) and much higher pricetag. And possibly noise/thermals as well depending on the unit - they are not a magic wand either and despite being expensive they are often built cheaply and poorly. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Aug 25, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 02:16
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Z the IVth posted:What's the opinion on buying a (possibly secondhand) gaming NUC like the Hades Canyon? I thought you (and others) might find this interesting - these are benchmarks I ran tonight of the Intel 5775C vs the AMD 5700G. The 5775C is probably a reasonable facsimile of the 6770HQ in the Intel Skull Canyon NUC here, probably somewhat above due to higher power limit. The Skull Canyon's 6775HQ does benefit from a better cache design, a faster architecture (Skylake vs Broadwell), DDR4, etc the 5775C here gets a substantially higher TDP (desktop vs laptop) and boost behavior. The 5775C gets a liquid cooler here (in RVZ01). (L4 is not entirely descriptive of the Crystal Well design especially on Skylake-R but) On the other hand, AMD has a way faster iGPU and twice the cores, but is under a low profile noctua air cooler. 5775C vs 5700G: Graphics Score: 1553 vs 3148 (+112.6%) Physics Score (CPU): 10540 vs 24711 (+134.4%) Combined Score: 583 vs 1019 (+74.8%) https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/26142326/fs/26142242 (RAM is running at JEDEC on both of these, and cores are running at stock clocks) This is also probably the absolute best case scenario for Intel, their in-game performance often didn't measure up to the synthetic ones iirc and Skull Canyon almost certainly runs at a much lower TDP than the 5775C. Paul MaudDib fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Aug 25, 2021 |
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Aug 25, 2021 12:05
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Action-Bastard posted:Hello thread, I'm wanting to try a first Mini ITX build for the experience. The plan is a cheap and simple Home theater PC Intel's newer chips have a slightly better media block/IO block if you don't care about gaming drivers at all. The 3000G is really old but it doesn't really matter for HTPC either. Also you won't really need the liquid cooler and you could do a Mini Box M350 and get the size down a little more. Since you don't have an ODD there you could also just do a NUC like this - that has HDMI 2.0b (although not HDMI 2.1 like the newer Intel chips with Xe graphics). They do use SODIMM memory though which if you have full size DIMMs already I guess is an additional expense.
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Sep 15, 2021 02:37
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a while ago I brought up the Velkase Velka line to someone and they opined that there were better options around for that concept, any recommendations?
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Mar 23, 2022 06:47
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also, what is the terminology for those dense shoebox case builds with giant air coolers (like NH-D15 or Dark Rock Pro 4, or 120mm dual towers), and does anyone know a few models I could look at there?
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Mar 23, 2022 07:25
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I bought a Sliger S620.
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Mar 23, 2022 16:03
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What’s your desires mix between small, cheap, and performance/storage/memory? The Dell Wyse thin clients are very popular for that sort of thing, and some of them have Gemini lake, and all sorts of weird options like RS232, but they’re not small. They’re very cheap on eBay. You could also get an older little booksize or nettop PC a little cheaper, but the performance and capability will be a bit less. I have a couple that i don’t realistically have any chance of using again, i could sell you one cheap. You could also get an old EEE-style (not that exact one necessarily) super mini laptop or x86 chrome book. But performance gets real bleak the farther back you go, bay trail or whatever really is about the slowest and lowest that is realistic for a modern OS. But if that stick pc will do it that seems like a perfectly reasonable option to me unless you have some other need. You won’t get much cheaper without seriously compromising on performance, or size.
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Mar 30, 2022 07:29
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I ended up taking the  hit and canceling my Sliger order. I think I can re-use a lovely older SFF case I have and use a NH-D15S if I remove the PSU and use a pico PSU instead to save space.The other reason is things have just been going badly on my other work items on that project. Getting a hackintosh set up is a much larger can of worms than I realized, and I don’t think I would be able to adapt a m.2 nvme SSD to mini-PCIe as easily as I’d hoped (the adapter is e-key only, for wifi, but the SSD uses M key), and if I go pico PSU then I need to wait for the slot power only RX 6400 model. I did also grab a cheap thunderbolt enclosure, and that is the only major success on that project so far, but I’d have to plug it into an x86 Mac (probably Mac mini) rather than M1 because apple doesn’t support that yet. Maybe that changes once they launch mac pro though? But the x86 mini is as expensive as the M1 model and I can’t bring myself to quite pay that. I think at this point I’ll just keep plugging away at trying to get hackintosh to work, and go from there.
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Mar 31, 2022 09:50
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What do people think of the Sliger Cerberus X design where the PSU can go either on the front or above the motherboard? It'd be nice to have the fans in front for airflow but that means putting the PSU on the back, which blocks a lot of airflow around the motherboard (even with an AIO there's still other components). It also looks like most people do fans on intake on the bottom. Seems like a SFX PSU is a good idea, if you can live with the capacity constraints that entails? There's less downside in either placement with a smaller PSU. Are the Corsair Platinums still the way to go? this looked like more or less the most reasonable (non-showpiece) build:  Maybe use louver plates in the bottom pcie slot covers, and put some fans on top or in the front? That front being open through the framework there is going to lose a lot of static pressure, if you're trying to do positive-pressure... or maybe that's the point and they're trying to "duct" the gpu exhaust out the front? In that case maybe some fans on top too, and lose the dinky atx panel fan and replace it with a louver panel, so you've got two positive-pressure areas coming from top and bottom...
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Aug 24, 2022 02:36
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are there any SFF chassis that allow a lot of 3.5" internal storage? do like a fractal 7 mini chassis but with a "storage layout", where you just stack in 3.5" drive trays on a rail in the front and have the intake fans blow over them. Cerberus X actually has pretty good capacity if you just fill it with drive trays, but, they don't explicitly say a capacity. But that's more or less what I'm talking about, an "ATX style" layout with a bunch of drive trays in it. or are there any alternatives to U-NAS 800/400 series yet, that scratch that QNAP/Synology itch for hotswap miniservers? Other than the tragically-  Silverstone DS380 or whatever, that is?
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Nov 5, 2022 04:01
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