Custom VESA mount (m)ATX case for portable workstation

[Engineer Dave]

Budget (including currency): ~$500 CAD

Country: Canada

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Various 3D CAD applications and video editing (a bit of KSP after work :P)

Other details :

- Existing parts to bring over: Quadro P4000, My old TV

- Upgrading from i7 2600k with 16G RAM

Final Build:

Ryzen 5 3600x

16G DDR4 @3600mhz

Quadro P4000

1tb PCIe4 NVME WB Black

 

I figured that a few of you might enjoy this build   I am quite happy with how it turned out and am writing this post from it right now.  I own a company (TimberWolf Cycles) which makes custom high performance bicycles out of wood and so I have more tools for working with wood at my disposal which is why this case ended up being built this way.  The purpose of the machine is general CAD work as well as some video editing which I plan to do more of for the business as time goes on.  

 

I generally leave my workstation on a desk at my shop but fairly frequently take it home, or (when not limited by COVID) would use it to show prospective clients the design of their custom bike.  A laptop able to work hard enough for me would be quite expensive and I don't really need that level of portability.  I also own a 2012 MacBook pro which is fine for word processing and emails or meetings when CAD work is not involved so I am not in need of a laptop.  A desktop however has too many bits to carry when going place to place which led me to the idea of the "LAN Party Rigs" of my youth .  The original "THE RIG" was just a regular ATX Case with a handle bolted on the top and a screen bolted to the side with a bent steel cover slipped over the screen when left in the shop.  The was great! because I could just grab the handle and toss the machine in the car on the way somewhere.  Problem is, it was HEAVY!  Like 4 2010-era enterprise grade hard disks and a 750W PSU heavy plus the steel case, the screen, the surge protector I crammed inside, yada yada.  It was also getting old and while the I7 2600k still packs a pretty good punch for these workloads, NVME was out of the question and PCIE 2 was a bit of a bottleneck for the Quadro P4000 I had acquired the year before to replace my aging (not well) Quadro 4000.  I debated just refiling the case with new components but to really maximize the benefits of the upgrade, decided to give it some flair!  

 

I decided to build THE RIG MKII the other way around essentially.  Rather than mount the screen to the case, I would mount the case to the screen.  This let me shrink the case, and use a bigger screen in the form of my modest Samsung 30" TV that I didn't need and is bright and has a nice wide viewing angle which will be helpful for showing things to customers.  I had to modify the TV Stand to tilt the TV up a bit so it would be comfortable to view from a desk, and also move the centre of the support back to keep it under the centre of mass of the combined unit.  The case itself would have to stay thin for this to work out well so I chose an unconventional but very practical component arrangement that resulted in a 1U thick case.  I didn't want the machine to be loud so commercial 1U PSUs were out.  I ended up dismantling a PSU and placing the fan adjacent to the circuit board to draw air out of the case and over the heat sinks.  I left space for an ATX board beside that but I would argue there would be very little reason to ever put a full ATX board in this thing and there would be no way to use the extra PCIe slots anyway.  As it is, I use the X16 slot and one X4 slot for my WIFI card (I know you can get boards with WIFI obviously but this one came up for sale and the guy tossed in a WIFI card which actually is essentially a riser for m.2 letting me put in a wireless AX later if I like.  Both slots are obviously connected via riser cables.  The GPU which is really the heart of this machine is turned on its side overtop of the expansion part of the board with the fan facing the back of the case.  This lets it draw its own fresh air and gives it its own exhaust. It can run full bore in this crazy tight case without warming up the case much at all.  A sweet 1U CPU cooler with heat pipes keeps the profile low and also draws in fresh air directly but exhausts into the case.  The PSU fan (which sucks air out of the case) is sized for a higher flow rate so even at max CPU fan speed the case is below ambient pressure.  There are two small intakes near the VRMs that draw in make up air and keep those cool.  All said and done, the GPU idles at 35C in a 21C room and the the CPU at 39C and each peak at 79C when fully loaded so I am very happy with the airflow design.  The goal was never overclocking and the temperatures are very reasonable.  The other motherboard temperatures including the PCIE4 NVME drive sit very steady at 40C to 45C no matter the load.  The consistency of this temperature is optimal for NVME drive life.  

 

But what about shielding in a wooden case?! Most of you wouldn't likely care but I figured since I had unboxed the PSU (removed its shielding) and am building a nice stable workstation, I should shield both the PSU area of the case and the MB area.  I did this with a combination of stainless wire mesh on the intakes, a fan grill on the main exhaust, and a lot of copper foil tape with conductive adhesive.  I also used a more open mesh between the PSU and the MB to ensure that dust was less likely to collect inside and more likely to collect on the intake screens where I can vacuum it (remember I build wooden bikes so there is lots of dust at times!).  The case is made of poplar core plywood with mahogany veneer and closed with MANY tiny brass screws which electrically connect the shielding.  

 

Inside the PSU area I did the other 120VAC connections including the leads to power the TV and a standard household socket on the side for my second monitor at the office, or a laptop charger or whatever.  On the top of the case, I put the on-button (a button that used to be the engine start button in my old car made from a defrost button painted red) and the totally unnecessary RGB button from the PSU.  Also on top of the case I put two front panel USB3 ports for thumb drives and a marine panel mount quickcharge 3.0 module wired into the 12V from the PSU.  The Molex connector to power that was harvested from the ancient 128mb hard drive that I found had escaped many a tech purge .  A very rare external port to add is found on the bottom which is a SATA3 data and power connector that I use with a cable I made up to connect a standard internal type optical drive if I want to burn a DVD for the old folks in my life etc.  

 

If you have any questions or want to build something like this yourself, jump in on this thread and I would love to chat  (yes I also use an Orbweaver Chroma for CAD shortcuts... Sacrilege!) Tossed in a pic of the latest bike in progress for the the curious among you

 

 

[GDRRiley]

==moved to build logs==

[Engineer Dave]

Just a bit of an update after using for a while and a list of some of the components that were needed to make this.  

 

Update on the NVME drive cooling.  I did discover that under significant sustained writes that the NVME drive would reach a thermal throttle point for the controller and so I have ordered a heat spreader.  Under thermal throttling, the drive still achieves these results so not really a limitation on the performance in the real world especially since only the benchmark was able to hit these temps (82C) but I figured I would fix it anyway.  

 

Everything else seems to be working great and is very stable.  

 

Upgrade path is an RTX a4000 likely but I can wait a loooong time until that is necessary likely.  This would make use of the PCIE4X16 and would require an upgrade of the riser cable as well likely.  

 

Another comment I would make is that the Intel line of CPUs seems to handle the use of C states better and so can be more effective for bursty use cases like mine.  Because this was done in early 2021 and PCIE4 was a goal of mine for the project I chose AMD.  This future proofed the design as well as made use of used components in the form of the CPU and MB which I could find for sale locally and saved me a fair bit of money.  If I was reading this and building a machine for CAD later, I would likely go for an Intel CPU with a high turbo speed and low core count.  You would likely find the temperatures would be even lower at idle and adding a battery would be easier if that's a goal.  If you are someone who does a huge amount of FEA or if your workstation is instead for video editing or other things that need high core counts, I would look at the high core count options and likely stick with AMD because of that.  None of this is really a problem for me but a good comment to note for a reader of this.  

 

Another project to follow is the quick swap battery pack so stay tuned for that update if you are interested.  For those wondering why the case is mounted off-center on the monitor, that is one of the reasons  The battery holder and its inverter will go in that space and plug directly into the accessory plug on the side completing the rectangle behind the monitor.  This will feed the power backwards through the plug and so a safety tether will prevent the inverter from switching on while not plugged into the side of the computer.  

 

Components of interest:

 

Noctua NH-L9a-AM4 - the CPU cooler used

 

Crucial Ballistix 3600 MHz DDR4 DRAM Desktop Gaming Memory Kit 16GB (8GBx2) CL16 BL2K8G36C16U4B (BLACK)

 

Western Digital 1TB WD_Black SN850 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD - Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, Up to 7000 MB/s - WDS100T1X0E

 

EZDIY-FAB [20cm] PCIE 3.0 16x Extreme High Speed Riser Cable PCI Express Port GPU Extension Card-Right Angle Connector

 

TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS

 

Ryzen 5 3600X

 

Quadro p4000 VCQP4000-PB from PNY

 

Azza PSAZ-650W(ARGB) 650 WATT Power Supply W/Addressable RGB (didn't really want to tear apart an expensive supply and honestly I have been pleasantly surprised by the reliability of another one I have so I had no qualms.  If I need to replace it, I can easily just pull the circuit board out of another one.  The space will work for most normal configurations of power supply)

 

 

[Kadzo]

I have a question regarding the cooling, how did you manage the exhaust air? I can see that you made plenty of intake openings but can figure out where is the exhaust for any of this. I understand that the PSU fan is purposed for this but i am not sure is this enough due to its position. 

 

On another topic the frame of the bike looks interesting, what are your plans with it? If i can see from the picture this is a composite frame with internal cable routing. 

Is it for road or MTB? 

How do you implement the bottom bracket correctly? 

Awesome job so far i may add for both builds.

[Engineer Dave]

On 5/11/2021 at 4:41 AM, Kadzo said:

I have a question regarding the cooling, how did you manage the exhaust air? I can see that you made plenty of intake openings but can figure out where is the exhaust for any of this. I understand that the PSU fan is purposed for this but i am not sure is this enough due to its position. 

 

On another topic the frame of the bike looks interesting, what are your plans with it? If i can see from the picture this is a composite frame with internal cable routing. 

Is it for road or MTB? 

How do you implement the bottom bracket correctly? 

Awesome job so far i may add for both builds.

Hey Kadzo  Thanks for your comments about both the bikes and the computer.  

 

In terms of exhaust air, the GPU does its own thing meaning it intakes air through the central circular opening (between the CPU opening and the PUS opening) and exhausts through the slots directly below that as well as the perforations in its own IO shield (how it is designed to work).  The rest of the PC all exhausts over the power supply.  The air entering the power supply is generally about 40-44 degrees C and doesnt get outside of that regardless of loads in my tests.  The exhaust temp from the power supply is only a degree or two above that since the power supply doesnt actually make very much heat and the flow rate is relatively high since all of the airflow not assosiated with the GPU goes through there.  I also reshaped some of the crappy heat sinks that came with it (all PSU heat sinks are basically a bent hunk of sheet aluminum with a handful of cuts) to put them more in the air stream.  The benifit to flowing over the PSU last is that the temperature sensor inside the PSU governs the PSU fan and so any increase in temperature anywhere in the machine results in the PSU fan increasing in speed.  In practice, the PSU fan has never exceeded ~50% so there is a lot more headroom for safe temps without experiencing any throttling on chipsets etc.  The whole computer sort of acts like a duct that is slightly below ambient pressure with the CPU fan pushing air in and the PSU fan pulling air out the far side and the other 2 small (non GPU) intakes in the side allow a tiny bit of make up air to cool the VRMs and the RAM.  The whole inside ends up being remarkably isothermal with nearly every sensor reading the same temp no matter what hardware it is monitoring (other than the CPU and GPU).  

 

In terms of the bikes, the one in that picture is destined to be a touring frame but generally I build road bikes.  Lots more information and some pictures are on the website www.timberwolfcycles.ca The bottom bracket is made from extremely thin titanium tubing overwrapped with carbon firber and, in some cases, wood.  The titanium is the bearing seat but the strength comes from the wood and carbon composite and creates a better bearing fit than can beachieved with a carbon BB due to the surface properties of the titanium along with the preloading of the carbon fibers that results from pressing the bearings. 

 

 

[Kadzo]

7 hours ago, Engineer Dave said:

In terms of the bikes, the one in that picture is destined to be a touring frame but generally I build road bikes.  Lots more information and some pictures are on the website www.timberwolfcycles.ca The bottom bracket is made from extremely thin titanium tubing overwrapped with carbon firber and, in some cases, wood.  The titanium is the bearing seat but the strength comes from the wood and carbon composite and creates a better bearing fit than can beachieved with a carbon BB due to the surface properties of the titanium along with the preloading of the carbon fibers that results from pressing the bearings. 

Marvellous i have seen some bikes made from bamboo, but this is remarkable and beautiful great job! 

 

How long does it take to make one like this? I have a plan to make one MTB in my life for myself because i have issues with my height being 2m tall its not easy to find a perfect match . I have seen guys create custom carbon fibber frames but i plan on going aluminium due to easier manufacturing process and tooling required.

[Engineer Dave]

9 hours ago, Kadzo said:

Marvellous i have seen some bikes made from bamboo, but this is remarkable and beautiful great job! 

 

How long does it take to make one like this? I have a plan to make one MTB in my life for myself because i have issues with my height being 2m tall its not easy to find a perfect match . I have seen guys create custom carbon fibber frames but i plan on going aluminium due to easier manufacturing process and tooling required.

It takes about a month to build one  

 

Depending on the outfitting of your home shop, welding thin aluminum may be tricky too.  A lot of performance aluminum frames use significant processing of the tubes to thicken the areas where the welds happen to avoid cracking (welded aluminum looses most of the tempering strength) You may actually find useing composite easier at home since you can overwrap joints etc. Be prepared for lots of sanding and wear a good mask etc . Without fancy tools (like a vacuum pump and molds) it will be a bit heavier but should be workable.  I am surprised that you cannot find frames for a hieght of 2m; while tall, this is not an extremely uncommon height.  I am currently laying out a frame for someone who is ~1.9m (althought they are custom frames so maybe that is one of the reasons for the order) Something to watch for is that the larger the main triangle, the stiffer it needs to be to feel right on the road.  Perhaps look to order from the NL where the average male height is now 1.82m and bikes are prevalent.  Or I would be happy to build you a custom wooden one of course  A mountain bike doesnt benifit as much from the properties of wood because of the seperate suspension (wood is naturally vibration damping) but it would not be difficult to build one regardless.  I would likely add a carbon layer in the down tube or thicken the wood to increase stiffness.  

[Engineer Dave]

Follow up on the NVME drive cooling.  

 

The cooler/heat spreader I ordered arrived and has eliminated any throttling that was occuring.  Highest temperature reached is now 60C durring synthetic tests and Idle temp is mid 40s like the rest of the interior of the case.  

 

For ~$4.00 CAD this is very easy to use and I cannot imagine needing anything more. A double sided semi sticky thermal pad and some elastic bands to hold on this (crudely) CNC cut copper chunk... I did polish the thermal transfer side of the copper before attaching it but I can't believe someone can load this on a CNC machine and ship it to Canada for $4 even if they don't clean up the burrs.  https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001732817668.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.3f374c4dkuTwn9