PS2 High performance PC Build

[Mnky313]

Short story, Me and a few friends are working together to make a PC inside a PS2 chassis (fat), we have been planning it out for a while now and just ordered an old PS2 to get accurate measurements because we can't find accurate measurements online, we are working off of one image from a forum 7 years ago and some guy's sketchup model, but so far we might have it theoretically working with an optical drive and internal FlexATX PSU, I attached some images and here is a PC parts list (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KH2cmq), there might be enough room if we lightly modify the heatsink for the GPU to have some of those controller port to USB adapters, as well as a rear 3d-printed or acrylic backplate with custom holes for the I/O and airflow cut into it. questions and ideas/flaws you might see would be appreciated, thanks!

[RollinLower]

that's awesome, and you guys are awesome for doing this!

 

the first thing that springs to my mind tough is temperatures. how are you going to keep this thing cool enough to function when under some load? if i recall correctly the PS2 wasn;t that big on airflow options

 

[Mnky313]

8 hours ago, RollinLower said:

that's awesome, and you guys are awesome for doing this!

 

the first thing that springs to my mind tough is temperatures. how are you going to keep this thing cool enough to function when under some load? if i recall correctly the PS2 wasn;t that big on airflow options

 

Yeah, that is a concern, planning to cut holes where the fake vents are to use them as real vents and maybe add a small fan in the back to try and cool everything, going to have to remove the shroud on the GPU to mount a standard 92mm fan in place of both the noctua lp fan and the gpu fan, hoping that maybe it just might cool it effectively enough....

[Mnky313]

Edit, V6 design, added a fan and fixed the motherboard model I downloaded to have the ports in the correct place

[Mnky313]

Cleaned everything up a bit, added correct colours and textures and made the rear plate accurate enough to hopefully be 3d-printable, discovered that the I/O shield is over a centimeter too tall, probably have to make my own , working on that, (I am deliberately updating this a lot because it was near impossible to find any actual guide where people described their ideas and showed how it was all working)

[Mnky313]

Update again, final model for now, until we can get more accurate measurements (when the PS2 comes in later this week)

[Mnky313]

All the parts are here, there will be more updates come Monday, with pictures hopefully, if anyone has an idea for the eject button we need one, I promised I'd update this thread, didn't think it would have a month

[Sfekke]

Now I fully stand behind this!

Can't wait to see how this evolves

[Ross Siggers]

Loving the idea! I'm building a PC into a Dreamcast at the moment, and I'm jealous of the amount of space you have to work with  Check out my thread here, although I don't have any 3D models of my layout, I'm flying by the seat of my pants a bit more than you! I jsut have two thoughts;

- I would recommend going with a smaller form factor power supply. There are several solutions out there that split the AC-DC conversion, and the PSU itself, into separate units. KMPKT, HDplex, etc. You save TONS of internal space by using an external brick like a laptop, or, if you didn't want that, you'd potentially still save space inside and have far more flexibility in layout.

- I would maybe flip the motherboard to be facing away from the GPU, for the CPU to get fresh air from outside the case. This depends on your aesthetic though, if it'll be laying down like that, it's not a problem. If it's standing up however, it'd be far less 'sleeper' because you'll likely be able to see the vent cutouts. This is the layout I'm going for with my Dreamcast build, because there's no other orientation for that console, the underside vent will never be seen. It has feet too, so the opening isn't directly on the desk. Alternatively if you consider my first point, you could actually slide the motherboard up to where the PSU currently sits, so you have space over the cooler in it's current orientation 

Happy to help if you have any other questions! Followed, looking forwards to progress updates!!

[Opencircuit74]

Oh no. I just saw this, and remembered that I have 2 broken PS2 phats that I was going to modify, and after seeing this I just have to. After you finish this, please hit me up with how it went. I might actually start working on this right now, hmm...

[Mnky313]

Update!
All the parts (except one, the USB 2 headers for controller ports) are here, everything works, and the windows install is successful. We took off the shroud for the GPU (sorry  no pics of that, I forgot). Bet with some rough estimates it's gonna be close, but it looks like it should barely fit height wise and width wise there is a good amount of space, haven't cut anything (yet) but the GPU heatsink might need a little modification because of the WiFi Antenna connectors, and the PS2 needs to have some plastic cut in order to fit everything, and the controller ports will need to be slimmed down and have the guide edges cut off. Next update will be Wednesday and will probably involve cutting things... (still don't know about eject button )

[Mnky313]

On 11/25/2018 at 12:50 PM, Ross Siggers said:

Loving the idea! I'm building a PC into a Dreamcast at the moment, and I'm jealous of the amount of space you have to work with  Check out my thread here, although I don't have any 3D models of my layout, I'm flying by the seat of my pants a bit more than you! I jsut have two thoughts;

- I would recommend going with a smaller form factor power supply. There are several solutions out there that split the AC-DC conversion, and the PSU itself, into separate units. KMPKT, HDplex, etc. You save TONS of internal space by using an external brick like a laptop, or, if you didn't want that, you'd potentially still save space inside and have far more flexibility in layout.

- I would maybe flip the motherboard to be facing away from the GPU, for the CPU to get fresh air from outside the case. This depends on your aesthetic though, if it'll be laying down like that, it's not a problem. If it's standing up however, it'd be far less 'sleeper' because you'll likely be able to see the vent cutouts. This is the layout I'm going for with my Dreamcast build, because there's no other orientation for that console, the underside vent will never be seen. It has feet too, so the opening isn't directly on the desk. Alternatively if you consider my first point, you could actually slide the motherboard up to where the PSU currently sits, so you have space over the cooler in it's current orientation 

Happy to help if you have any other questions! Followed, looking forwards to progress updates!!

We looked into smaller form facter PSUs (Pico PSUs) and there are some that are powerful enough and could work, but they either require an external power adapter (which we didn't want to do) or were too long (deep) to fit in the PS2, if there ends up being not enough room I might look into it again though, that would free up some space...

[Mnky313]

On 11/25/2018 at 8:27 AM, PacketMan said:

Hmmmm I wonder how the temps would be, have you considered a blower style fan for CPU + GPU? Maybe something like the Nvidia's reference cards, or like the servers' ones

The shield for mounting the GPU like that would cover a side panel for better air flow, maybe installing the mobo and GPU upside down?

That's a nice build, hope I can see the result!

Yeah, the problem with blower style cards is that are big, there is really not that much room in it at all, the card is ~170MM long and that is the entire length of the PS2, for reference the founders edition 1070 is ~265MM long I believe... 

[Ross Siggers]

11 hours ago, Mnky313 said:

We looked into smaller form facter PSUs (Pico PSUs) and there are some that are powerful enough and could work, but they either require an external power adapter (which we didn't want to do) or were too long (deep) to fit in the PS2, if there ends up being not enough room I might look into it again though, that would free up some space...

What sort of power draw are you looking at?  HDplex do an AC-DC converter that sits internally, that goes up to 400W. But admittedly that's something I'm less knowledgeable with.

I'm going with an external converter brick, and internal HDplex. Should handle up to 200W peak, and I'm using a lower TDP i7-6700 that runs at 35W, so that should be more than enough even after adding a graphics card.

 

I'm shooting for more moderate power, but my space and cooling limits that just as much as my power delivery.

[Mnky313]

5 hours ago, Ross Siggers said:

What sort of power draw are you looking at?  HDplex do an AC-DC converter that sits internally, that goes up to 400W. But admittedly that's something I'm less knowledgeable with.

I'm going with an external converter brick, and internal HDplex. Should handle up to 200W peak, and I'm using a lower TDP i7-6700 that runs at 35W, so that should be more than enough even after adding a graphics card.

 

I'm shooting for more moderate power, but my space and cooling limits that just as much as my power delivery.

If I remember correctly its only around 250W, the HDplex one we looked at was like 200MM long, making it impractical for the PS2, it would have to sit sideways and block a ton of other components, that was why we didn't use it. Just checked, yes, just the AC/DC converter without the DC-ATX board is 199x40x58MM, the FlexATX unit is 150x40x81.5MM, and that just fits legnth wise with the cables, there is nowhere to put the 200MM long HDplex unit.

[Mnky313]

Update Again!
Tested temps outside of the case and yeah, as predicted cooling is a problem, the new plan is to mount some 40MM noctua industrial fans (NOT the ones in the picture, those are 30MM and will be replaced, just showing where the fans might go) toward the back to pull hot air out and away from everything, we removed the Wifi card/antenna and everything should fit height wise, including the controllers (we decided to re-solder the PS2s original controller front plate to the USB adapter because it gave us more room and is easily mounted, cut the middle standoffs out (all the other ones *should* be fine). Still a little more cutting to do around where the I/O on the motherboard is, but overall everything seems to be going well... (there should be another update tomorrow!)

[Mnky313]

Another Update! Not a big one this time, discovered that we can fit a 30mm fan and 2 50mm fans back-to-back to pull hot air out, also talked about using panel mount USB ports instead of just extensions, the GPU heatsink is going to have to be cut a few millimeters shorter to make clearance with the ram and audio jacks,  there should be another update come monday

[Mnky313]

Sorry for no update today  , had stuff to do, but there should be an update on thursday

[ccRicers]

This is looking sweet so far. Glad you put the PSU and an optical drive inside the PS2 case. A lot of console case mods give up the optical drive, but this should make it fit for a all-round gaming box and HTPC that plays Blu-Ray movies.

[Mnky313]

thanks!, yeah honestly I don't like the optical drive, but my friend (Whose system it is) was VERY adamant on having it, so.... XD

[Opencircuit74]

I'm actually going to do a lower-powered version of this build for myself (i7 3770s + gtx 1060), is there enough room for a 3.5'' hard drive? (The motherboard is a thin mini itx so I don't need an internal power supply).

[Mnky313]

16 hours ago, Opencircuit74 said:

I'm actually going to do a lower-powered version of this build for myself (i7 3770s + gtx 1060), is there enough room for a 3.5'' hard drive? (The motherboard is a thin mini itx so I don't need an internal power supply).

I don't know about fitting a 3.5in HDD, but here are some rough measurements, keep in mind that there are plastic bits holding it together, so you lose about 15 MM on the side that doesn't have the jut-out

[Ross Siggers]

On 12/3/2018 at 11:22 PM, Opencircuit74 said:

I'm actually going to do a lower-powered version of this build for myself (i7 3770s + gtx 1060), is there enough room for a 3.5'' hard drive? (The motherboard is a thin mini itx so I don't need an internal power supply).

Curious as to what your power setup will be. 

[Opencircuit74]

5 hours ago, Ross Siggers said:

Curious as to what your power setup will be. 

Yeah, I've been thinking about that for a while. I might have to just get a beefy laptop power supply and mod the board so I can adapt it to a 6-pin, and shove some heatsinks on the VRMs because of the high power draw.

[Ross Siggers]

16 minutes ago, Opencircuit74 said:

Yeah, I've been thinking about that for a while. I might have to just get a beefy laptop power supply and mod the board so I can adapt it to a 6-pin, and shove some heatsinks on the VRMs because of the high power draw.

It's worth finding out from the manufacturer what the maximum power draw you can have is, because STX and ThinITX are direct DC power, there's normally a pretty reserved limit on what they can handle.

For example my STX board has a max rating of 120W. But a ThinITX may be higher becasue they still have a PCIE x16 on them, right?