I have a Dream...The Dreamcast SFF build!

[Ross Siggers]

Honestly, I could throw all these parts into the case now and it would work. But I wanna see if I can get the motherboard lower down, I'm still looking at buying some of the very low profile DDR4. everything would just fit better

Parts like a better gpu, higher bandwith riser cable etc, can come later.

I think maybe this weekend I'll make more adjustments to the case, and start shortening all the wires to length to reduce clutter  

[DECLO]

 I heard that the new gtx 1650 low profile have a height of 32 mm. Could it be fit on it? 

I saw some test about 4x to 16x pcie and you loose only 5 or 10% of performance. That's alright

[Ross Siggers]

@DECLO 32mm wow really... That's not bad. I landed on the plan of using the 6gb version of the 1060, but doing the same as I already have, putting a low profile cpu cooler on it. They're becoming really cheap now. But that's a decision for a later date! 

 

The riser, that sounds like exactly the one I was planning on getting, it has two ribbon cables instead of the single style I have now. Card is running at pci 1.0 speed or some shit 

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

When I was playing Sonic Adventure in the previous post, I was just trying to see how hot the heatsink got. Remember, it's very close to the motherboard.

Turns out it gets pretty toasty...but not too hot to touch. So I think as long as I make sure it doesn't touch, even the warm exhaust from the cpu cooler should help. I definitely need to cut away a bit more of that corner in teh case though, the capacitors on the other side get toasty too.

Debating stick-on heatsinks to hlep too...

[Ross Siggers]

New update coming tonight guys, just a small one; a few tweaks to the psu placement to give some room, and some mounting stuff for the ssd. 

[Ross Siggers]

ACTUALLY SCRAP THAT SHE'S RUNNIN' OH MY GAWWDDDD

So I started the evening deleting the plastic back plate for the cpu, to make a tiny bit more room. And when I went to test fit it, I decided cable routing for a few things and I just ended up hooking everything together and ran it all in-case for the first time!

Significant update incoming, I need to get all the pictures off my phone.

[Ross Siggers]

So the other day I tried to tuck the pico/KMPKT mini back a little bit, to stop it touching the motherboard when it's hot. There was a notch for a capacitor here, a trimming of a tab there...it got quite in depth, but I managed to get it absolutely as tucked up against the wall of the case as I could. I then made up a couple of mounting standoffs, just like the motherboard ones. These will be glued/epoxied in position when it comes to final assembly  Don't worry about the connectors; the case isn't going to be jostled about at all, and they're a very snug fit already.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next up, I made some more mounts, this time for the ssd. Despite coming in a metal enclosure, it actually has holes for mounting screws? So that's...kinda nice. Anyway, check out how perfectly that cut-out fits around the motherboard standoff. No, I didn't cut a semi-circle on the pcb...that was already there too!

 

 

 

 

 

Also, knowing that the sata headers were very close to where the ssd is mounted, I went and bought the cutest, shortest sata cable I've ever seen!! It's only 7cm long, and it's perfect

 

 

 

 

 

Because the power plug is actually going to be in the same corner as the pico, I made a little opening and looped the power lead back behind the unit itself. 

 

 

 

 

 

So after all of that, I've got clearance, some hard mounting, and I've also got the beginnings of some cable management going on  Starting to finalise things and its a nice feeling!

 

[Ross Siggers]

So the really bulky, plastic backing plate for the cpu socket has been annoying me for ages. I mean, it takes up vertical height which is essential in this build, but it's also kinda detrimental. Yeah I know it's supposed to help with socket mounting pressure, but I think it's contributing to the board bending slightly.

SO OFF IT COMES!! I took a soldering iron to heat up the metal fittings, so they'd come out of the moulded plastic. A couple of paper gasket washers later, and the cooler can be reinstalled, tightening down just as it did before, but with less bulk on the back and honestly it feels like it mounts just as well as ever. 

The only thing I'd say is because the mounts are now four individual screws, it was a little fiddly. But that's all.

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

So I was going to try and test fit a few things, since I slimmed the motherboard, moved the pico, etc. As well as reroute the riser cable the other way around the motherboard, to keep it away from the pico heatsink that I know will get a little warm.

But I figured, there's nothing stopping me just building the entire system into the case, I'll be doing most of it anyway to check fitment, which I know will be good anyway....so...

The fact I kept the modem cover removable is a real win here; It means I can easily deal with the otherwise completely hidden/inaccessible power cables. For the purpose of this test, these will be outside the case, because they need some major shortening and resoldering to fit in the space.

 

 

 

No, the build isn't arr-gee-bee enabled, it's just a blue power indicator on the pico  

The ssd and riser cable are running off of the sata power header on the pico, for final assembly I'll cut off the extra two plugs, just a load of necessary clutter. It makes a slightly awkward duck down under the motherboard for the ssd, but it's not like the alternative mounting positions are any better. Then it shoots out the front and wraps around to the riser cable on the far side of the case.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As mentioned further up, the split power cable is yet to be shortened, so these are still hanging out the back of the case. As well as the power button, temporarily taped to the side. Otherwise it's looking pretty clean, with only the monitor and peripherals, as it should be  

 

 

 

 

Considering it's just resting on there atm, the fitment of the lid is pretty good. Nothing is fouling it, so it can rest on the little plastic tabs I left perfectly centred.

 

[Guest]

delete

 

[Ross Siggers]

@Mr. horse check back in a few minutes  The forum was throwing me an error about attachment sizes, so I posted the text and I'm editing in the photos of the first full assembly as we speak, into the previous post

[Ross Siggers]

One last post, regarding the dreaded thermals....

They're passable right now. Which is as much as I could expect, I was genuinely worried the build would be unusable with it's heat and volume. Truth be told, the fans are audible even at idle, and pretty noticeable when in moderate use. But nothing outrageous, considering what it is. Equivalent to an average gaming PC with cheap fans. And the idea is that it'll be a fair distance away, being hooked up to a TV on my living room, so I can live with the volume.

Taking into account that it has been fairly cool here in the UK the last few days, the idle temperature with the LID ON was still quite a pleasant surprise. The cpu was level at around 35* which is...actually great! Unfortunately the gpu steadily rose from 35* up to 45* over the course of around 10 minutes, so I will definitely be looking into that low profile ram, to give the gpu fan a little room to breath up there against the lid. I think it would stabilise then.

 

Lid ON

 

With the LID OFF, processor temperatures stayed boardly the same, as it's intake is on the underside of teh case anyway. But the gpu felt much happier, sticking to 30*. Lid off is how I'll be using this system to game, so I should't have any trouble with it in those situations. Ironically, day-to-day useage with the lid on may be the one that gives me more trouble.

 

Lid OFF


When the cpu fan spins up even the smallest amount, you can definitely feel air pressure coming out of the controller ports, so I think it'll be wise to leave them as ventillation. The small front Noctua exhaust fan never ramped up, giving the slightest breeze of warm air...May have to check the fan curve for that to see if it's meant to ramp earlier.

Since I have the system fully assembled, I may do some light gaming or cpu heavy tasks, to see what it's like under some load.

 

 

[CiBi]

It's all come together nicely! Good job!

[Ross Siggers]

I wired the power button today. Simple job, no easy way to fit a bracket in there so I just whacked some epoxy on there to keep it in place. OH MY GAWD it's so satisfying, the cheap-ass switch I got even has the same long travel and audible click that the original one had...

 

 

 

[GrogStache]

That looks really good, dude! That little nugget of a PC looks amazing! 

[Ross Siggers]

@GrogStache cheers man!

It's really getting to the finishing touches stage; Cable lengths, gpu mounting, mesh over the vents. When I reassembled it after making the power button, I could see better options for cabling in the front, not to mention I'll trimming the sata one down too.

 

Once it's cable managed a bit in there, I can see the controller ports being even more effective as ventilation. But I'm planning on taking one and making it a passthrough for all the front I/O that's currently hidden  

I still want to drop the motherboard down a little with low profile ram, for more gpu space... but that can come at a later date and probably not effect much of the above  

[Ross Siggers]

Just bumping this thread up, with a few thoughts I've been having, although the car is taking priority again as I'm on a tight deadline with that.

GPU mounting

I spent ages thinking about how to mount the card using the standard rear I/O shield, but then I realised...why do I even have to use that? It's not like I'm in a standard form factor  Not to mention all it does is block exhaust out the rear, which is kind of important in this build.

So I'm going to remove that completely, and use a sheet of metal or plastic, mounted onto the four corners of the motherboard like a backing plate. Then I can drill mounts into it wherever I want for the card, mounting it nice and rigid, as well as giving me flexibility for any future upgrades. All you gotta do is make a new set of mounting holes! This will put a little bit more strain on the motherboard standoffs, so I gotta make sure I get a good epoxy or something to set them in place

Front Panel

So for this, pretty simple. I got a second switch and I'll be mounting it in an identical fashion as before, but on the other side. That way POWER is actually power, and OPEN is going to be reset. 

I actually bought a 'front panel set', so it comes with power and hdd activity lights. So I'm going to solder on a new led that's orange, and run it up to the original power light position on the Dreamcast. I know on modded consoles people like to make this blue instead...but this isn't an actual Dreamcast anymore  

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

I did some cable management and cooling bits last night;

 

-- Modified the Add2psu by removing it's molex plug, and soldering a fan connector in it's place. This means it can plug directly into the splitter from the motherboard, completely eliminating the temporary cable I had before

 

-- Trimmed the housing of the Sata plug into the psu, in an attempt to get it sitting flatter. Before it was pressing against the wall of the case, and in turn pushing the psu towards the motherboard.

 

-- Cut off two of the four 'daisy-chained' Sata connectors coming from the psu, getting rid a lot of bulk at the front of the case. Sata isn't a small connector!

 

-- Managed to tuck the whole cable for the Noctua fan behind/underneath the 3D-printed mounting bracket. This was nice because I really didn't want to cut up the nice sleeved fan cable!

 

-- Removed the bracket from the rear of the graphics card and test fitted. It already looks like it'll cool better  

 

-- Hard to explain but I filed the inside of the air vents on the case, to try and help reduce turbulence. imagine it like portin/polishing an engine. Not sure if this will make a difference to cooling but it may make the exhaust fan quieter...

 

 

 

After doing the above, I actually now have...well, quite a lot of space up front! I'll try and post pictures but it's hard to show how much better it is.

[Ross Siggers]

Hmm. Watching 1080p Youtube with the lid on doesn't bode well for thermals, it was rising quite sharply until I took the lid off again...Will thermals be the death of this project?

 

 

 

 

EDIT: NO THEY WON'T!

 

So the gpu essentially feeds from the cpu exhaust. Make that cooler... the whole system benefits, in a far more noticeable way than an ATX or even ITX system would. So I made some temporary...legs. Ambient temperature is maybe 18-20*c.

 

Firstly, idle temperatures, with the lid on... yes you heard me ON. The cpu is sitting at a breezy 28....nice. It essentially acts like an open bench underneath, with that fan placement though. So subsequently the gpu temps are pretty reasonable too, settling in at 43.

 

The next thing I wanted to try was every day media, so basically a youtube test as this would be a bit more gpu intense than browsing websites. I'd expect near, if not identical tests running on netflix, but I didn't test this.

I was fullscreen at 1440p and although it looks like the gpu is still climbing significantly, I would say it was likely to settle in at around 65*c. You can see the cpu wasn't climbing at all. Gpu fan wasn't even that far off the baseline of the custom fan curve, which is 40%. Ignore the messiness at the beginning, my crappy WiFi dongle was struggling to get a good signal.

 

 

 

Probably even more significant in person than the lower temps, was that without the console straight on the desk...it's now actually very quiet. I mean not silent obviously, but before the fans were very erratic, and generally at higher speeds. I'm currently browsing the forum and a few other tabs right now, it's settled all the way down to it's idle temperatures, and isn't obtrusively loud at all. It's probably the equivalent of a laptop fan. Pretty good right?

I MEAN if having the console raised on a little shelf of some sort, seems like a big deal to you. Then this could be seen as a major compromise. But honestly I'm rolling with it, and I'm thinking of maybe putting it on a little arch with my steam controller being stored underneath when not in use

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

I supooooooose I should revive this thread, and give you guys some kind of a conclusion *gasps from the crowd*

 

The build hasn't reached it's 'final form' as previously described. You know, with the expensive low profile ram and a GTX1060? But given the thermal limitations with it's current specs, I don't know if it ever will get to that point, being realistic. It did however get to a very complete and useable state, so that's exactly what I've been doing with it.

 

It lives in my bedroom next to my actual consoles, hooked up to the same TV, and it runs all sorts of emulators and older games. Paired with wireless peripherals and it works like a charm, I'm currently regressing to my childhood and using it to replay NFS Underground 2  

I'll add a follow up post tonight with a few pictures, but i essentially just mounted the gpu, finished the front I/O and did some cable management  

[TheCamba]

On 10/10/2019 at 7:29 AM, Ross Siggers said:

NFS Underground 2  

Great choice.  I miss that game.

[Ross Siggers]

On 10/23/2019 at 8:50 PM, TheCamba said:

Great choice.  I miss that game.

Right in the childhood eh  Still waiting for a straight remaster, the handling is better than I remember too. The bodykits are worse though...

I'll add some pictures from the build...promise!

[Ross Siggers]

POWER DELIVERY

So the main thing that really needed doing, to get it all comfortably in the case, was finalising the dreaded power delivery. The bit that caused so much stress earlier on in the build. It all worked, but was a heap of incredibly long cables, or temporary wiring...the trigger wires for the PSU were twisted together by hand... 

 

First I modified my Add2psu; It came with a molex connector but instead I soldered on a fan connector. The trigger signal for the PSU is provided by the fan header, so I'm having to use a splitter from the motherboard. This was relatively straightforward, I simply had to wire power and ground, then used epoxy to stick the new connector onto the pcb.

 

Here you can see the finished 'trigger' circuit. It's....well, it's a splitter cable. Nice and simple, and it happened to be the perfect length too! The motherboard header is right above where it sits, score.

 

 

Green dot: Motherboard power lead
Orange dot: PSU trigger/fan header
Blue dot: Sata power for SSD and GPU riser.

 

 

Next, I had to make the power brick actually plug into the Dreamcast itself, not trail halfway around the world, because there was about 25cm of cable length designed for larger cases. This involved mounting the female plug inside the case, as well as tidying up the wiring from there, to the PSU itself. He

 

 

 

 

 

Helpfully, I'd saved all the larger plastic off-cuts that came from modifying the case, so I had a handy bit of the correct colour plastic to shape/epoxy over the old modem port. After that it was simply a case of drilling holes for mounting screws, and the power lead itself. Don't worry the thumbscrews will be replaced with normal, shallow headed screws, along with some Loctite for good measure. They were literally the closest thing I had to hand at the time! Although they're nice brass fittings, right?  

 

 

THIS was the nerve-wracking part...there used to be a plug connection, where I've now soldered. Not only was I modifying the accessory cables, but the PSU itself. I took a huge amount out, you can see how short the cable run actually is, it's nothing. I even had to re-solder them once because I was cautions, and didn't make it short enough. But now it all fits nicely in the ex-modem compartment, which clips shut as it should.

 

[Ross Siggers]

GPU MOUNTING

The GPU ended up being mounted slightly off centre, which I'd like to maybe revisit. But it's sturdy the way it is now, with two fixed points on opposite corners of the card. It uses one of the corners of the motherboard, lined up with the riser card, for a bolt-through fit. The opposite corner is on the GPU itself, and is a bit more...custom. It's done using a trimmed piece of plastic, with a standoff...epoxied upside down into it. The little bolt you can see holding it all down from the top is actually the trimming from one of the long motherboard standoffs. Remember when I shortened them to lower the board? Well I saved the offcuts, because I figured tiny M2 sized bolts might come in useful, and whaddya know...

 

 

 

 

 

The result is a GPU that doesn't slide out of place when the console is anything but perfectly flat...in fact considering it's only held in by two bolts, it's very sturdy! It also sits a nice distance from the motherboard. This could be a few mm smaller? with some insulation between the two, but this works great as it is.

ASSEMBLY

The assembly was.....a nightmare as you can imagine, most of it had to be done with the motherboard in place, removing like 99% of your ease of access. Lots of pushing tiny connectors in, with the tip of a screwdriver, and cramming wires into crevices. Adding the front I/O really did add to the cable clutter, with two buttons and a power led. These could DEFINITELY do with shortening as I actually had to double over all of these. Again, nothing is really designed with such short cable requirements in mind.

The 3D-printed fan shroud ended up being a great place to cram stuff; there's a little cavity underneath it where you can route cables and not be in the way of anything. Unfortunately there wasn't space to put the front I/O through there, but enough was tucked that this wasn't an issue.

 

 

 

 

 

[Ross Siggers]

I felt like this picture deserved it's own post;