Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Enclosures and acoustic damping to help quiet them.

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torp
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:06 am
Location: Romania

Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by torp » Mon May 13, 2013 5:26 am

I need to move a pre existing build. Unfortunately, i have just one possible space with the following dimensions:
40 cm height!!! x 30 cm width x 40 to 45 cm depth.
It's a full ATX motherboard; I'm hoping to just get a different case (PSU not needed) instead of going on the neverending upgrade treadmill.
Contents:
- atx mobo, cpu, ram (ancient, but they will do)
- coolermaster hyper TX3 EVO
- one optical drive
- one Asus Geforce 650 (non Ti, fairly short)
- one Seasonic G series 360
That's all.
I have 3 spare cases, all higher than 40 cm :( Depth will also be a problem, but that I can adapt to.
Any SPCR-worthy suggestions?
Thanks!

Edit: i did find the Lian Li PC-A05 (and friends) by googling on my own, but it seems to not be available in Romania any more.
Edit 2: CoolerMaster Elite 361. Only problem is that the dvd drive will end up vertical and it's for my daughter; i foresee some broken discs :)

Will wait a few days for suggestions then order the Cooler Master if nothing better comes up.

CA_Steve
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Location: St. Louis, MO

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by CA_Steve » Mon May 13, 2013 7:23 am

Don'y have a case suggestion for you offhand...but do have a concern: Are you stuffing this PC into an enclosed space? If so, how are you going to deal with the resulting heat/noise?

torp
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:06 am
Location: Romania

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by torp » Mon May 13, 2013 8:25 am

It's inside a desk; the front and back of the said space are open; the back is a few centimeters away from the wall. I think it should be reasonably well ventilated.
And if i get the CoolerMaster i have ~15 cm of extra width to leave on the sides.

Abula
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Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by Abula » Mon May 13, 2013 8:46 am

torp wrote:Edit: i did find the Lian Li PC-A05 (and friends) by googling on my own, but it seems to not be available in Romania any more.
This is what i was going to suggest, but since its not available, its tought to get below 40cm height with PSU+ATX mobo on the same side, here some others with similar design to the lian li you were considering
Lian Li PC-A55 (W) 188mm x (H) 375mm x (D) 455mm
Lian Li PC-V650 (W) 251mm x (H) 360mm x (D) 427mm.

Pappnaas
Posts: 726
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Location: Germany

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by Pappnaas » Mon May 13, 2013 1:11 pm

MS-Tech CA-01XY
http://www.ms-tech.de/eng/index.php/pro ... s/pdcid/68

Cheapo OEM case, 80mm casefans.

Or stick with the CM desktop and use a slot-in drive or consider an external drive.

torp
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:06 am
Location: Romania

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by torp » Tue May 14, 2013 2:50 am

Ah well; i ran across a CM Elite 361 in a brick and mortar store so i bought it.
Will post photos when I get around to setting up the system if anyone's interested.

Ralf Hutter
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Location: Sunny SoCal

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by Ralf Hutter » Tue May 14, 2013 6:03 am

torp wrote: Will post photos when I get around to setting up the system if anyone's interested.
Please do!

torp
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:06 am
Location: Romania

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by torp » Fri May 17, 2013 10:47 pm

Update: my CPU cooler doesn't fit :(
Deciding on taking it back vs buying a low profile cooler... can't get away from the upgrade treadmill :(

torp
Posts: 32
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 5:06 am
Location: Romania

Re: Looking for small-ish case that will take an ATX board

Post by torp » Mon May 20, 2013 10:34 pm

Okay, lesson learned: don't go cheap with the kid's PC, just bite the bullet and upgrade it when it's ancient. Also, the case is somewhat of a pain.
So I managed to get all the hardware - which was before in a decent mid-tower case - inside the CoolerMaster.

The coolermaster Hyper TX3 Evo wouldn't fit, so I looked for the original AMD cooler and did a fan swap. That's why you see a white Nexus over the CPU. But see below, after the front panel warning.
If you use this case, *pay attention*! You need to remove the front plastic to plug in the PSU, and i pulled a wire from the reset switch while doing that (you may see a piece of soldering iron to the right of the photo).
Obviously, this case will heat up more than a roomy mid tower. The problem wasn't the video card (Asus geforce 650) or the CPU, even with the fan swap. The problem was the ancient nvidia 730 chipset with integrated video. While in the mid tower it ran stuff like Minecraft and The Sims fairly OK. Even Guild Wars 2 was running, although it was laggy even with all details on minimum at 1280x1024.

In this case, it stays at 127 C according to SpeedFan. That's on idle/browsing. If you start any 3d application, even the Windows 7 experience index, it shuts down. Can't blame it on the 650, it does that in both cases, when I use the discrete graphics and when I remove the card and run off the integrated video. I even screwed a small fan to the chipset heatsink (gold with Asus logo in the middle of the board) and it didn't help any.

So... today I receive a Pentium G2020 with a mini ATX motherboard and new Ram for the rebuild. Should be 2x as fast as the old Athlon64 X2 (not Athlon II), make me coffee in the morning and solve world hunger. More importantly, it's a mini ATX board so I could have picked from like 3 million cases instead of just this one. Not to mention that if i worked half the time i spent troubleshooting this build I would have covered the cost of the new components and then some :)

Here's an image of the filled up case. It may look better with a modular PSU and less cabling, but the Seasonic G 360 isn't one:
Image

Bigger version here: http://i42.tinypic.com/2uiw5xu.jpg
I have more assembly photos but too depressed to post now.

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