I just finished building this small thing. My previous system was a "standard" system with a P182, E8400 etc but I never really needed that much power. As long as I can decode 1080p x264 I'm pretty happy. I seldom play games and when I do it's Half-Life 2 or older stuff.

Silence and low power consumption is important to me and small size and portability is always nice. This system idles at ~52W AC compared to my previous Intel based system that idled at ~69W. Not a very significant difference but still.

It was quite easy to build in the NSK1380. I built a similar system in a NSK3480 not long ago and that case seemed smaller and more cramped. The NSK1380 is much more open.



I had to do some dremel work to the drive bay to make room for the Minja. Luckily the Minja is short enough for the DVD-RW to fit, a few mm more and I would probably have to mod the case of the optical drive or skip the drive all together.
Fitting the S1 was also very close, not much room to spare.



My SSD and HDD are zip tied to the front of the case. I'm not too proud of that sloppy installation but couldn't think of any other way. I wish the HDD was more suspended from the case. That foam doesn't completely stop the vibrations from the disk.



The NSK1380 is a very nice little case and I strongly recommend it.

edit: Thought I might add a list of the hardware. It's listed in my signature at the moment, but that might change in the future.

Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H rev1.1
AMD X2 4850e w/ Minja
2 x 2GB Corsair PC6400
Sapphire 4670 w/ S1
M-Audio Audiophile 192 (you cannot see it from the pictures but it's next to the 4670)
PicoPSU 120W
Scythe Slipstream 120mm 800RPM
Mtron MOBI 16GB
WD GP 1TB
Pioneer DVR-216D

Very sweet setup


Andy

Very very nice.

I love that you have been able to fit the Minja, ODD, S1 inthere.

No compromises.

The whole build looks very familiar

I'm in love with the fact, that you run this off a PicoPSU! Seriously, any PC that cannot run off a PicoPSU 120 is overkill.

It's hard to see from the pictures, but this runs off a single fan, right?? By the way, where is the 3.5" HDD supposed to sit (of course I'm assuming that Antec didn't plan on users to zip-tie their drives to the case wall... )?

Yes, it's a single Slipstream 800RPM. And by default there is actually room for three 3.5" HDDs, one horizontal under the 5.25" bay and two vertical to either side. With the Minja and the S1 in there all three became unusable.

I haven't actually tried to play any games yet. I'm waiting for a working version of the Radeon BIOS Editor which at the moment has some problems with my Sapphire 4670. I plan to underclock and undervolt the card slightly just to be sure. It should work ok anyway really, I measured the load to about 117W AC max during 3DMark06 before I switched from the original Antec PSU (lying beside the case, open side) to the PicoPSU, and that was with the CPU at stock speed and voltage.

Dont worry Vicotnik

As I have mentioned in my "The Antec NSK1300. Brought to you by AuraAllan"-thread I ran:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R
CPU: Intel E4500 (M0) undervolted to 1,075V. (lowest stable)
RAM: 2*1GB Cellshock
GFX: HD3870 w/AC S1
HDD: Samsung HD501LJ
WLAN card in PCI slot
Scythe Slipstream 1200RPM @ ~570RPM

on a PW-200-V.

It consumed ~130W from the wall when gaming.

The 4670 is 55W max and if you undervolt the CPU the pico should do just fine.

That sounds reassuring, AuraAllan.

Btw, I will paint the top black just like you did.

Good idea. The original color looks awful.

Actually I think you could have avoided cutting up the drive cage. I remember you could pull off the heatpipe caps at the top on the original Ninja. I haven't see anyone do it with the Mini Ninja, but it's worth a try.

I actually tried that before cutting the holes in the drive cage. I tried twisting a cap, using some mild force but it didn't move. I didn't dare try any harder of fear I might damage the heatpipe.

And even if I had removed the caps I would still not have avoided cutting away the 3.5" holder under the 5.25" bay, to make room for the Minja and the HDD.

Vicotnik: I'm planning on building a pc using the NSK1380, just wondering if you could advise me on whether or not the sapphire HD 3650 graphics card will fit in the case without any problems:

Cheap & quiet graphics card to fit the NSK1380?

Thanks

im thinking of something similare, problem is ive never built a pc before.

heres the list so far im thinking of getting

Antec NSK1380
Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850E
Asus WL-138g V2
Corsair TWIN2X DDR2-800 4096MB KIT (2x2048)

Samsung SH-S223F
Samsung Spinpoint F1 1 TB

as i understand the board comes with two sata cables, so that should be enough for the drive and hd.

The cabinet comes swith the fan and powersupply.

Does it come with powercables for the drive and hd?

Stupid question, but where on the board do you plug the power for the drive and hd?

Not meaning to sound patronising or anything, but putting together such a mini PC isn't easy for a first build. You'll need plenty of advice and perhaps some modding of parts/case to make everything fit.

It's much easier to put your parts in a bigger case.

i know..

googled GA-MA78GM-S2H and NSK1380, and noticed that some have used these two.

The last pc ive opened was years ago, large cabinet. Just changing drives and installing memory, pci etc.

The last thing ive only done is to take apart an eee 1000h to lube the fan...

Nice to see another sff cube build. I'm running one also inspired by AuraAllan, though not as cleen. With a Pico120, and a 220W brick I've also been able to power a decent system-
Intel Q9400 @ 3.0ghz
HD3870
1HDD
no ODD
2x2gb ram
6 USB devices

Uses ~115W under CPU load. Pico is quite versitile, as are 12v bricks.

Thermalright HR-01+ fits inside, mobo was GA-EG31M-S2 w/Intel E8500 and HD3870 w/Accelero S1. Minimal cutting to the CD/DVD drive cage was required to clear the heatsink.

Not all boards will have the same clearance with that heatsink, it was purely a fluke that it fit. The CPU socket is very close to the rear I/O backplate.

Here's another variant on a config for this case and has the advantage of fitting a decent quiet drive setup.

I've put in a Mini ITX board with a Samsung 1TB drive in a GrowUpJapan box. The box sits vertically on foam on the left side of the case held in place by some trusty elastic tied through slots in the top & bottom of the case. Works just fine. There's enough room left for the box by using the Mini ITX mobo.

I don't have a CD unit but use a flash drive for installs. Runs from a 90W pico and uses about 45W. Currently I have a PCI Gigabit NIC addin card.

Only 1 fan that blows inwards through the original PSU fan grill with a Zalman fanmate stuck on the back of the case.

I use this as a 24/7 music server running Ubuntu 8.04 Server.

Next year I'll see if I can get a more powerful config to fit and may use this case as a main PC.

Just a small update. More space in the case now since I don't need a storage drive nor optical drive. I still haven't got around to painting the top cover.



I've made a few small upgrades, the hardware list is now as follows:
GA-MA785GMT-UD2H
X4 605e w/ Minja
4 x 2GB DDR3
GT240 w/ S1
M-Audio Audiophile 192
Antec NSK1380
picoPSU-150-XT w/ Dell DA-2
Scythe Gentle Typhoon 120mm
Intel X25-M G2 80GB

I actually really like that setup, very compact, and very powerful at the same time.

Wish I could get my get my tiny rig back together.

Wow that build is SO clean now.
VERY nice.



Now go paint the top cover !

Actually, you could probably fit a full size ninja in there for lower temps as well, but that's just being anal.

Actually I used a Ninja for a while, but my friend needed it back. Have one still lying about but it's one of the first revision and I have only the S775 assembly parts. So there's room for a Ninja at least. But the Minja is doing it's job well.

I will paint the top cover sometime during the summer I think.

edit: Did the top, much better now.

You could buy a Socket AM3 retention mechanism w/P4 clips. I'm using this one with an original Ninja.

http://www.svc.com/am2rm-revb.html

It's amazing how spacious this case is with the ODD and PSU removed! Great build, now get a larger CPU cooler, just because you can!

This is quite possibly one of my favorite cases I've stumbled across in some time.