Xbox 360 SFF Build

[DarkEcho]

Hello! New to the forum and I figured I should get stuck in and post some of my ideas here and get some other peoples opinions.

 

So as the title says I'm thinking of trying to strip out an xbox (A regular 360 not the slim one as I don't think anything will fit in that) and see about building a SFF gaming rig into it.

 

So obviously I'm going the way of ITX, the Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe is my primary choice of motherboard at the moment, however it is a little expensive so if anyone has any opinions on a better option for the mobo I'd be happy to hear them. Other components include an i5 3570K, GTX 670, 8GB regular corsair vengeance RAM and last of all a nice sff PSU like the ST45SF-G from silverstone. No DVD drive I have a usb one that does the job. I'll be putting an SSD in there as well which can pretty much get chucked anywhere, even in the old HDD thing on the top.

 

Potential issues and their current solutions include:

 

- Gfx card is obviously too long and too wide to fit, because the 670 PCB is actually a lot shorter I was hoping to use either the new Asus mini 670 OR if I can I would like to implement some watercooling, so I would be using a regular card with maybe that nice alphacool waterblock featured in Linus' Prodigy build on NCIXcom. Then I would also need a PCIe Riser card (Flex one would be nice so I can position it myself.)

 

- The power supply even though it is small will not fit inside the case underneath the motherboard (unless there was a way of pushing the motherboard up into the xbox hard drive area), and it may get pretty hot in there unless I add some extra venting for the sides. I could leave it outside of the case, but it would be stuck to the back pretty much and take up room looking ugly.

 

- If I do go the way of watercooling, not only will I have to fit in a pump and res, there is also a 240 rad to think about, but if I can hide that behind a monitor or something I don't mind. If anyone has a suggestions for a long but thin pump/res combo (or not) or something that would be cool to mount where the DVD tray is that would be great. I had though about putting a cylinder res so you could see the water with some lighting through the gap. thinking of using an xspc raystorm as the cpu block as well.

 

- Piping also an issue, I haven't watercooled before but I have read and watched so many things about it I feel like I've done it before. Basically I would like the pipes to be as straight as possible I know right angles aren't a great idea for flow but I like that kind of industrial feel and I want to replicate that.

 

- Haswell and all the new stuff coming out soon, which may throw my plans around, planning to start the build in a few months.

 

 

I also would like to do some paint of the case, maybe some designs on it and have a side window, paint the cage inside all black and I really want to put a lot of attention to detail into it and get it perfect.

 

I realise this may cost in excess of around £1000 and to me that's like chopping off an arm but I feel it's worth it.

 

Ideas and input welcomed and I hope some time in the future I can share this in the build logs section! sorry for the higgledy piggledy post!

 

Cheers!