[In-Progress] Silhouette | Ryzen/Vega APU ITX Build

[TheSLSAMG]

I've always liked ITX machines. My first rig was almost Mini-ITX in a Bitfenix Prodigy, one of my build refreshes was in a Fractal Design Node 304 (which I still have) and I even owned an Aaeon EMB-QM77 which could take mobile Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge chips. That being said, I noticed that there was a lot of wasted space in the Node 304. It's a great case, but for my use it didn't need six 3.5" hard drive bays, ATX PSU support and support for 140mm tower coolers.

 

While browsing around on Instagram a few months ago, I got an advertisement from a company called GEEEK. They're a Taiwan-based company that makes PC cases out of acrylic. They have a case that resembles the Alienware Area 51 in either Mini-ITX or ATX flavor. Upon looking at their website though, what really caught my attention was the A30. At only 8.3 liters, it's significantly more compact than the 19.65 liter Node 304. The minimalist aesthetic is a really good design choice in my eyes. The interior layout is pretty interesting, with the GPU mounting on one side using a 30cm riser cable and the motherboard mounting on the other side. I've always wanted a compact HTPC, so this was my chance. At $50 before shipping, it's a pretty reasonable price. Shipping added another $26, but I was willing to pay it because I hadn't seen anything like it as far as compactness, design and value (there are HTPC cases like the Node 202 and RVZ02, but they don't really let you show off what's inside and they have a larger horizontal footprint.)

 

After taking around a week and change to get here, I finally got to put it together. It's a little daunting at first, but reading over their instructions online and working carefully made it a lot less so. Being made of acrylic allows it to have a semi-transparent "smoked" design, but it also has its' downsides. The two biggest issues I've encountered so far are the top fan grille cracking (I bought conventional metal grilles to replace it and I prefer it that way) and cracks forming around the side panel screws (you can see it in the photos at the end of this post.) To be fair though, I was probably screwing it on too tight. I'll probably get another acrylic sheet and cut my own panel at some point, but for now I'm not concerned by it. The rear I/O shield slot is also a bit loose, however this really is a non-issue since it is firmly in place when you install the motherboard.

 

While I love the form factor personally, it has its' limitations. GPU length is limited to 211mm without the front drive bay mounted, so if you wanted to use a GTX 1080 Ti Mini, it's possible. It would just leave you with a single 2.5" bay and whatever M.2 slots are on your motherboard. With the front bay and a standard thickness drive installed, that goes down to approx. 203mm. In my case, it's only 196mm since I jury-rigged two drives into the front. The PSU size is Flex ATX, meaning the only real quality choice is FSP and they're a bit pricey at $130 for a 500W 80+ Platinum unit. GEEEK cites a maximum cooler height of 50mm, however I found that the real cooler height is 55mm. The AMD Wraith Stealth will fit, however it is a hair from touching the side panel. 

 

With the case in hand, the itch to actually build this thing was growing ever-larger. I've wanted a top-end AMD APU since the 5800K days because a gaming-focused integrated graphics solution always seemed neat to me. Thankfully, they perform way better now than they used to and for $150, you get a 4770K-class CPU component with GT 1030-class graphics. I was originally going to do this build with a 2600X and an RX 580, but in the interests of speeding things along I decided to kill two birds with one stone and get a Ryzen 5 2400G. I've paired it with an AsRock AB350-Gaming ITX/ac (fun fact, it's the same board as the X370 and X470 variants but with a worse wireless card, and you save $50 to $75) and 16GB of G.Skill Ripjaws V at 3200MHz (not B-Die, but it will do nicely.) I've accumulated 2.5" drives over the years so a 500GB Seagate Momentus Slim, 750GB Toshiba and 256GB Crucial MX100 all went in. I hot-glued the MX100 to the Momentus Slim in the front of the case, as it only has two drive mounts and I didn't want to clutter up the rig with a loose SSD. 

 

As the title says, the build isn't quite finished yet. On the way is a Cryorig C7 Cu and a 3D printed fan bracket which will allow me to ditch the stock Cryorig fan in favor of a better performing (and louder) Delta 92x20mm AFB0912VHD, bringing the total heatsink height to 53mm. I haven't ordered the Flex ATX PSU yet either, so in its' place is an old 700W Cooler Master Silent Pro. It isn't optimal, but it will certainly do for now as the system barely pulls 200W. Overall, I love this thing so far. It chews through N64 emulation like a champ, it can handle PS2 emulation (though at 4x rendering resolution GT4 struggles) and it plays normal PC games reasonably well too. I haven't tried overclocking the system yet as the Wraith Stealth is already on the ragged edge of what I consider good enough. I may delid the chip soon, though that depends on how the C7 Cu performs.

 

End Specs:
CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 2400G 3.6GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($149.99) 
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - C7 Cu 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler  ($49.95 @ Newegg Marketplace) 
Motherboard: ASRock - AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard  ($64.99) 
Memory: G.Skill - Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3200 Memory  ($179.99) 
Storage: Crucial - MX100 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Storage: Seagate - Momentus Thin 500GB 2.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Storage: Toshiba - 750GB 2.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Power Supply: FSP Group - 500W 80+ Platinum Certified Flex ATX Power Supply  ($135.98 @ Newegg Marketplace) 
Case Fan: ARCTIC - F8 PWM 31.0 CFM  80mm Fan  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Case Fan: ARCTIC - F8 PWM 31.0 CFM  80mm Fan  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Other: GEEEK A30 Mini-ITX Tower Case with PSU Shroud and PCI-E Riser Cable (Purchased For $0.00)
Other: Delta - AFB0912VHD 66.1 CFM 92mm x 20mm Fan (Purchased For $0.00)
Total: $580.90

 

Photos (First spoiler is the bare case compared to a 16.9 Oz. bottle of water, second is the build as it stands):

Spoiler

 

Spoiler

 

[PlayStation 2]

Small motherfucker, I like it.

[Jurrunio]

that side panel holes remind me of this

 

Also, I wonder if the C7 Cu is any good? There are plenty of benchmarks comparing the Aluminium C7 with Noctua L9 showing how loud the C7 needs to be to match with the Noctua cooler, but I wonder how much will copper heatsink help?

[TheSLSAMG]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

that side panel holes remind me of this

 

Also, I wonder if the C7 Cu is any good? There are plenty of benchmarks comparing the Aluminium C7 with Noctua L9 showing how loud the C7 needs to be to match with the Noctua cooler, but I wonder how much will copper heatsink help?

From what I've seen, Cryorig's claim of a 15% performance improvement is a little exaggerated, but 10% isn't unrealistic. The C7 is a good heatsink with a crappy fan, and swapping it out for a Noctua NF-A9x14 (the same fan as the L9) yields the same performance as the stock fan with much better acoustics.

[PlayStation 2]

I saw the part where you said that GT4 choked at 4x native res. GT4 is notorious for being heavy as hell on GPUs. Just go custom res (1920x1080?) and throw MSAA on if you have enough RAM for it.

[Tech_Dreamer]

5 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

that side panel holes remind me of this

it's an AMD system , so...technically it's not a far off option to do real life cooking on the side of the case.

[Jurrunio]

21 minutes ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

it's an AMD system , so...technically it's not a far off option to do real life cooking on the side of the case.

it's not 8 core FX or top tier graphics card though.

[Tech_Dreamer]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

it's not 8 core FX or top tier graphics card though.

so it's going to be rare or  medium rare instead of a well done.

[DildorTheDecent]

smol boi

[FireMrshlBill]

Nice build. I like the design a lot. How are temps on the stock heatsink? 

 

Also, great minds think alike. I just finished my main rig (2600x + RX 580 like you mentioned you were originally going to do), and I have parts on order for a 2200g mini-ITX build in a 3.3L case (INWIN BQ656T w/150w psu built-in). Hopefully I can get enough work done to have time to get that mostly put together this weekend though the ram won't get here from newegg until next week. Same motherboard I believe, got it over the Gigabyte since Microcenter had it on sale + $10 MIR, and they also had the 2200g for $20 off.

 

Was going to mess with it a bit and then transfer it to something like an Antec Elite 110 or something that I can toss a gpu in down the road to use a htpc and Steam streaming (for games the 2200g can't handle well enough). However, I like your case's form factor a lot. Does the GPU being on the other side prevent it from being placed horizontal, or are there feet/enough ventilation to allow it to go sideways with the gpu on the bottom?

[Dugbuzz]

Sounds like an awesome build!