sff Small Form Factor PC Planning, Cooling, Mods, Tips

[reCAPTCHA]

Small Form Factor PC’s can be somewhat powerful and very small nowadays, but there are always tradeoffs. They're tough to build in, hard to plan, often limit cooling, and are hard to silence.

These tips are based on my experience with a Fractal Design Node 202 Case for ~2 years; this isn't comprehensive and I'm no expert, but I never found all these things together when I went looking, so I decided to put this together.

This is also my first post besides bricking a motherboard with bad cooling (See Cooling>Ducting for what I’ve learned, I stress tested my new setup A LOT and found the culprit).

Planning

Spoiler

• Make sure your PSU will fit. Check if it’ll take an ATX, SFX, or SFXL PSU. When in doubt, smaller is better (trust me, even if a case says it'll accept a 130mm PSU, you're better off with a 120mm for the cable management). Also, check the AC power plug’s orientation on your PSU if your case uses an internal extension, some won’t work and will require more modding (like mine, see General modding).
• Make sure your CPU cooler will fit. It’s one of the most basic parts, but it can get overlooked. Most cases have their max cooler height listed.
• Make sure your GPU will fit. Some cases won’t allow long GPU’s.
• Pick a GPU Style. In some cases, a blower-style GPU will do better compared to an open-air cooler, but this depends on the card, case, and if you willing to specifically shop for it.
• Check NVMe Drive Locations. This isn’t necessary but considering the back of most SFF MB trays have no airflow, it’s best to get a MB with a front-facing M.2 slot, or else buy a thermal pad to cool your NVMe controller using your case.
• Check out motherboard power/data connectors. Some ITX MB’s use… odd… locations for connectors (I’m looking at you, Gigabyte AB350N-Gaming Wifi (Right)), and it’s best to avoid spots that may be cramped in your specific case.

 

General Modding

Spoiler

• Custom PSU Cables. I think these are the best SFF mod you can do. You can buy them (Expensive) or make your own for significantly less. I ordered materials from Mainframe Customs and saved a LOT of space in my system, especially with the run for my SATA drives.
• Custom AC Extensions. If you made a mistake, this might be necessary for you to do. C13 cables often only come with one angle direction and can be too thick for some cases. It’s a little sketchy but a saw, a lot of solder, and even more hot glue can fix it.
• Dremel + Motherboard Tray. Depending on your case, MB, and CPU cooler, you may have interferences with mounting bolts or NVMe drives and your MB tray. These can usually be fixed by test fitting everything first, noting where interferences occur, and taking a Dremel or saw to it, making sure the case is empty and all metal shavings are removed afterwards.

 

Cooling

Spoiler

• Ducts. If you have a 3D printer, or know someone with one, this is an amazing mod (I shaved off ~10C under synthetic load). Read more below. I did brick my last motherboard a little over a week ago, but have stress tested my new duct setup and have learned a lot.
• Spoiler

  I recommend starting with your CPU cooler intake and *maybe* doing your GPU if it’s blower-style or isn’t in its own compartment. Less is more when designing these, straight walls usually work well and aren’t hard to print well, and they can easily be attached to the fan with normal fan screws. The tricky part is getting the right height. If you don’t have extra fans, don’t go all the way to the vent. If you have another small fan you can use for active exhaust, you can go to the vent. If these are close together, you can add deflectors so no air is recycled.
  Keep in mind that any duct will add some noise and large deflectors will do this as well, but you may be able to cut down fan speed for a fair trade.
  NEVER CUT ALL OF A VENT. Ducting is great, but if you only have a few fans, I don’t recommend totally cutting off the vents, you may lose an exhaust you didn’t know your system was using.
  That being said, as long as you do some stress tests and check all your system temps before and after installing an air duct, you should be okay.

  

   

• Frankenstein CPU coolers.  Don’t be afraid to mix things up a bit if you don’t have space for a tower cooler. The Cryorig C7 is a popular cooler, but can be made much quieter and a *little* cooler with an adapter made by J-HACK you can buy or 3D print. This is just one example.
• Undervolting. I’ve undervolted my GPU using this guide by Majestic, and it’s really helped my temps.
• Frankenstein GPU coolers. I have no personal experience with this, but Linus did show how Noctua fans could decrease temps on a GPU in this video. You can get around the fan header issue he presented using a simple optocoupler circuit if you’re so inclined. This is my next mod, more to come.

 

 

 

[kelvinhall05]

2 minutes ago, reCAPTCHA said:

tough to build in

Not really, unless you have a super shit (sub-$40) case.

2 minutes ago, reCAPTCHA said:

hard to plan

Use PCPP.

2 minutes ago, reCAPTCHA said:

often limit cooling

True, but things like the Noctua L9i and even 120mm AIOs are great for cases with low CPU cooler clearance.

3 minutes ago, reCAPTCHA said:

hard to silence

Not if you're using good fans.

[reCAPTCHA]

23 minutes ago, kelvinhall05 said:

Not really, unless you have a super shit (sub-$40) case.

Use PCPP.

True, but things like the Noctua L9i and even 120mm AIOs are great for cases with low CPU cooler clearance.

Not if you're using good fans.

Cable management alone is a hassle, PCPP doesn't take into account things like RAM clearances and only gives basic info.

As for coolers, I personally had a choice of 3 (C7, L9a, stock)  that would fit in my system but any of them without modding would let my cpu bake while gaming or using CAD programs.

I personally use Noctua fans. And you can't really choose your GPU fans on an air cooler.

 

Just tryin to help people who may have the same issues as me.