Ultra Compact AMD Sleeper

Mnky313 · August 12, 2019

Quick backstory:
For a while now I've been using an eGPU setup on my Precision (first an rx 480, then a 1080, then a Vega 64) and it's been some trouble but once I got the weird things figured out it works pretty good but a lot of games have some performance issues or stuttering (most games actually run fine, GTA V runs at 60+ fps on high/very high, games like CSGO, Civ, etc run just fine.) but FH4 runs awful (like 40-50 fps on low) and minecraft barely gets 60-70fps with shaders (and drops to 40 while moving).

But what has stopped me from building a desktop is not having everything in one place, I used to have a desktop and a separate laptop but I kept leaving ongoing projects/games on the desktop and not having it on the laptop resulting in me trying to remote in and send it over google drive. I know there are some better solutions like onedrive or google drive synced folders/using the laptop as a NAS.

My Idea was to use the more powerful desktop for basically just gaming, while syncing the Documents/Appdata folder between it and the laptop and use a USB KVM switch to handle switching between PCs (I know about tool like MouseWithoutborders or Synergy but this requires it to be running on both machines and is not a prefect solutions especially for gaming)

I have always liked the portability of SFF PCs but cases like the ml08 just weren't small enough and cases like the A4-SFX or Ghost S1 are too expensive for just a case IMO (I know it's a limited production and I understand the price but I won't personally spend $200 for a case.) so I started looking for SFF Prebuilts that could have components swapped easily. Originally I couldn't find much until I stumbled upon acer aspire X14XX series, they are quite small (sub 10L) and have a standard I/O Shield/mITX motherboard mounting, though I still needed to mod the case to fit a 1000w Server PSU and full height GPU but every SFF prebuilt would need these mods.

I plan on moving the RX 480 back to an eGPU on the laptop

Not finally to the actual build:

I plan to build a somewhat budget build with a r5 2600 and the Vega 64 I already own, I attached an image of a google sheet (PCPartPicker doesn't really work for this + I want to order most of the expensive parts on Amazon with the cheaper stuff from eBay)

If you have any questions about what the parts actually are feel free to ask
(The RAM is 3200 CL 16, SSD is 256GB)

I need the random cables/hubs (5.25" USB hub, PCIe to EPS Cable, Internal USB Hub, DVI Cable) for specific reasons:
5.25" USB hub - Can't be the original one I wanted with tons of ports including external molex power because it's too long and interferes with the GPU, I need more USBs and like the idea of QuickCharge
PCIe to EPS Cable - Server PSU uses a mining breakout board and I need to convert it to EPS to power the CPU (though I could use the 4 pin on the Pico PSU but I'd still need a splitter)
Internal USB Hub - Board only has 1 USB 2 header and the case needs 2 (one for front USB, one for card reader)
DVI Cable - I need to connect 2 PCs to a VG248QE and only DVI and Displayport work at 144hz (the eGPU rx 480 has DVI, so it's for that)

I thought about getting a 2700 for $50 more but because this PC will be for pretty much only gaming I don't think it would be worth it.

I have a somewhat accurate CAD model, but it's not with me at the moment, I'll add it later today

Here is a picture of the back panel cut outs for the GPU and PSU:

I will add more pictures once I can order the parts and actually start assembling it.

Mnky313 · August 17, 2019

Ok, so I got most of the parts in yesterday and started testing the system (I didn't have the riser so I couldn't build it in the case). Everything worked apart from the pico psu which wouldn't power anything except an LED on the motherboard so I tried a bunch of things and narrowed it down the server PSU outputting 14V on the 12V rail which was fine for anything else I plugged into it but the Pico PSU wouldn't run with 14V.
I bought a new server PSU (it was like $25 with 1 day shipping) and everything works now! (well sort of, the USB 3.0 ports that plug into this board on the 5.25" bay thing have a short or something because if I plug anything in it shuts off, but I narrowed that down to the connector being bent too much and ordered a 90 degree extension to hopefully fix that.)
Here are some pictures (and temps aren't as bad as I thought, the CPU (2600 @ 3.8Ghz) hits about 85 c while running CPU Burner and the GPU hits ~80 and sometimes climbs to just below 90.

I had to get a different 5.25" bay hub thing that I planned for because the original one was too long, but this one has Quick charge 3 which is pretty cool I guess.