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Lil'Lad: The most unbalanced web-browsing box.

welp, i thought i wasn't gonna be building anything again soon, but here we are. 

 

this is gonna be a SFF web browsing box for my older brother, who just wanted something tiny but still snappy enough for normal day to day computing. 

since we wanted it to be cheap, lots of stuff in this PC is actually hardware i still had laying on my shelf. this also means that some choices are well... unconventional.

 

here's a rundown of the specs,

blue = bought

green = delivered

 

Gigabyte Aorus B450I. it's AM4, it's full featured, and cheap. yup.

AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3350G. mostly because it was super cheap secondhand, and we're going SFF so integrated graphics are a must.

64GB in 2x32GB DDR4 ECC. Nope, 32GB ECC UDIMM, yep! "whut? why?" you may ask. because i had it laying around and well, i can. 🙂

Intel 760p M.2 SSD. this will be the boot drive, also a hand-me-down from my main rig.

DELL 1,92TB Enterprise SATA SSDs. again, not very practical i guess. but he'll definitely have enough storage to last him a while.

Noctua NH-L9a AM4. mostly because it was the only cooler that would fit, and i have a weak spot for nocs.

Noctua 40mm fan.  this is a maybe, i'm not sure if i can actually fit this in there, but i'm sure all extra cooling would help.

Pico PSU 150W. this is because the case doesn't actually fit any PSU's. neither normal nor unconventional ones.

Inter-tech ITX A60. it's tiny, and he likes the looks of it. so we'll make it work. 

Bitspower universal RAM cover.  because these ECC sticks run hot, and in a tiny case with no airflow to speak of it will need all the help it can get.

 

welp, that's it for now. all parts should arrive sometime this week, and i'll update you guys on the progress. for now tough, here's some exquisite low light phone pictures of the motherboard and some other stuff already in it.

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IMG_20210412_214906.thumb.jpg.283a2b435ce47e0bcd0754a4ad8acbbe.jpg

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1 minute ago, King of Memes said:

Casually has 64gb of ram lying arround

originally i had them as spares for my main F@H server, but i recon the 256GB in there is probably enough, even if a DIMM fails. 😉

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I love "whatever I can get my hands on" builds like this. With storage and memory like that your brother is going to have an extremely responsive machine for anything not CPU bound!

Powerspec 1530 (Clevo PB50DF2) ~ i7 10875H ~ RTX 2070 Super 115W ~ 32GB DDR4 ~ 2x 1TB NVMe ~ 2TB 5400RPM ~ 1080P 240hz matte IPS

 

Gigabyte G1 GA-970-SLI ~ FX 8320 @ 3.3Ghz, 1212mV ~ 16GB DDR3 ~ Radeon 570 4GB ~ 512GB NVMe ~ 2x 1TB HGST 7200RPM

 

Xtras ~ Dell 22" 1680x1050 matte IPS monitor ~ Logi M705 mouse ~ PowerA Fusion Pro Xbox One controller ~ Sony XB950N1 headphones ~ Epson V700 film scanner

 

Streaming Setup ~ OBS Studio with AMF encoding ~ iVCam bridged to LG G6 ~ Focusrite Scarlett Solo interface ~ TONOR condenser cardioid mic

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welp, some parts arrived today, and i've got some good news and some bad news.

 

lets start with the good news. 

the case arrived today, and this thing is proper tiny! here it is on top of my current main build, in a Lian Li O11D Mini. 

300494692_tinylad.thumb.jpg.acc1100c3dbe2a8da425de8b08c9a1b0.jpg

 

I also got the CPU in, meaning i can finally get that socket populated!

CPU.thumb.jpg.bcafd988526a4da6f593379fce80054f.jpg

 

so in with the motherboard, and lets see how everything is gonna fit 😄

504168015_moboin.thumb.jpg.8eaedd5fda3a1e6b37c1dc4a363c0dc4.jpg

 

Here we got our first problem tough.

This case 'officially' supports 2 2.5 inch disks on the disk tray that mounts above the motherboard. sadly tough, with the second disk in, there is no way to mount the front USB, which interferes with the second disk.

 

so my poor bro, he's only getting 3TB's of storage this time. F in the chat pls. 😞

1403621390_USBnofit.thumb.jpg.b600042c115f4dee49fab89d3d6ccb49.jpg

 

Anyway, this is it for now again, i'll be recieving a few more packages tomorrow so expect speedy updates!

 

Here's a few pics to properly show off how tiny this thing is:

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that's a 120mm fan!

1258101013_WhatsAppImage2021-04-13at19_28_40.thumb.jpeg.ab48880e048f11f1cdcc0bd013db6ff6.jpeg

 

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This sounds like a cool little project. Look forward to seening more progress 🙂

If you cannot say what you mean, you can never mean what you say. The details are everything.

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welp, the final parts arrived and the box is together! 

 

sadly this doesn't mean it's actually working tough. But we'll get to that when we get there.

 

first thing first, heatsinks for the RAM!

make any green PCB stick look 100 times sexier with one simple trick. 

561500329_ramcoolerson.thumb.jpeg.0d11a3a69b12d140ab6a0e7a71da6abd.jpeg

 

after that the noctua cooler arrived!

i thought this would mout to the stock backplate of the AM4 socket, but that turned out to be not the case. so welp, guess the motherboard comes out again.

after that it's a super simple process tough, put on the backplate and screw the cooler on from the back. ez pz!

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next on the list is the PSU, or rather, the internal part of the PSU. this thing is proper tiny, especially for the 150Watts it's supposed to be able to deliver. mindblowing stuff.

438710868_picopsu.thumb.jpeg.a51476236c5e191ba5480bce8035a48a.jpeg

 

and with that, everything goes together!

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and at first sight everything seemed to be working. when i press the power button i get fanspin on the noctua, but no RGB from th emotherboard and no POST.

i tried a couple different things, but in the end everything points to the RAM. i did some reading and it turns out that this CPU does actually support ECC RAM, but only un-buffered. 

and well, the 32GB sticks i have are buffered. so yeah, looks like it might not be the full 64 gigs as planned. i should still be able to get 32 gigs total in to this though. but i'll have to find some unbuffered sticks.

 

anyway, i plugged in a stick of Dominator Platinum from my main rig and it booted up just fine. so it'll definitely be a beast once it;s fully built with the new RAM!


as always, more updates tomorrow.

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welp, there she is!

IMG_20210416_201816.thumb.jpg.8896a2f48d024df6681439d6c12bd8f5.jpg

IMG_20210416_201941.thumb.jpg.d7dcb2244d7c19ac12195a5a1ebc9155.jpg

 

I swapped the 32GB registered sticks out for 16GB unregistered ECC sticks, and she booted no problem! I kept the RAM heatsinks for these sticks too ofcourse, it's still ECC.

I also swapped the bulky SATA cable out for a slimline SATA cable from a SuperMicro server.

IMG_20210416_180452.thumb.jpg.2aebb2a68550a8fa11faf78423dc6bca.jpg

 

this thing turned out quite nice if i do say so myself. after tuning the fan curve a bit it can actually run fanless most of the time, but if it reaches 45C it'll start ramping the fan slowly. silence was definitely a factor during this project, and i feel i definitely succeded on that one. 

 

general usage feels super snappy, eventough with an APU you generally want way faster memory than these sticks provide. I guess as long as you don't run anything graphically intensive it doesn't really matter that much. 

if it does get him into trouble lateron tough swapping it out for a kit of faster memory as super easy.

 

here's a few more pics comparing it to some stuff for size. at 2.9 liters this thing is really tiny!

IMG_20210416_201836.thumb.jpg.7841dec5ee44ad95bfee3691690fa96c.jpg

IMG_20210416_201924.thumb.jpg.9545203db4193a1cb976501905b6d4c1.jpg

 

 

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