Mini-ITX HTPC

Alright Sup Forums, hit me up with some Mini-ITX/HTPC cases.

Thinking about getting the Node 202. Any proper alternatives?

I have that case. It's pretty nice for what it is. I run it vertically.

Any CPU coolers for it that aren't loud as fuck?

Was looking at the
>be quiet! Shadow Rock LP
myself,

So the vga card mounts flat? Thats kinda neat, I wondered about that. Whats the max card length for that case?

put a be quiet! fan on your heatsink or just get one of their cpu coolers.

310mm, but you should probably only run blower style coolers video cards

the only thing that comes lose is the silverstone ml08b and the other cases based on the same design layout

if you don't want to meme yourself into sfx psus, the core 500 is bretty good, regular atx psu support, 170mm tall air coolers, and 300+mm video cards, can even ultra meme a 240/280 AIO in the top

What's the appeal of HTPC's?

Why not set up a good Plex server and get a Roku?

don't get a fractal design case
>be shill, get 3 fractal design cases
>all of them are slightly deformed, side panels dont fit on properly
>lots of sharp edges, always cut myself on them
looks nice though.

If you're going to do mini-itx, do it properly. Picture fucking related.

Power: the GTX 950 has Pure Video Feature Set F which means it can decode 4k HEVC Main10 (and thus Main 8-bit too). It can also play vidya on big-screen TV if you're into that (or wait for a silent GTX 1060 option for the latter). Unfortunately, Intel support for HEVC is gimped on Skylake. A Kaby Lake CPU with iGPU would be sufficient for most HTPC use cases, which means you won't need a dedicated card.

Flexibility: you can dump a standalone Kodi distribution on it, you can put Windows on it, any Linux distribution or whatever you want.

Some cases also have good storage options, my (OP) case only supports two 2.5 inch drives, but that's enough for my case. I'll just hook it up to my NAS.

Not really, the 202 is the best mITX case currently on the market, bar none.

Noctua CPU cooler, corsair PSU, RX 480 blower card and you're set.

>stacking mobo and gpu
you're dumb

Too small, pretty much demands custom cable length and/or only running a single M.2 drive.

I got a fractal once, it had vertical mounting for HDD's no tray, all it was, was a vertical bar with holes punched out for screws.

you had to mount the HDD with the four screw holes near the logic board.

terrible design.

Also, it's one of those cases that pretty much demand that you cut off the stupidly fucking thick USB3.0 cable, same as the 202.

It takes three drives GOD YOU'RE DUMB

How much content is out there that would require 4k HEVC Main10 decoding? I ask as someone with terabytes of x264 content who doesn't watch anime. The only HEVC content I'm seeing is the rare porn torrent.

I do understand flexibility, however I value an easy-to-use interface that "just werks".

phanteks evolv mini itx is good.

Good luck with that, dickhead.

Will never get any more than 1 with standard shitty ATX SATA cables, and you'll be wanting to use that space for cable management anyway, even with custom length ones.

>53c doing nothing
nice housefire

>stupid enough to want his fan to spin when it doesn't need to

Card is designed to operate at 85c, anything below that is fair game to be sacrificed to the comfy gods.

I don't like streaming-only devices. If you need something that "just werks" (which I can fully understand) get the Dune HD Solo 4K or Popcorn Hour A-500. Those devices actually playback media on their own, without a Plex server. You can either jam a hard drive in there or stream shit from NAS, Samba, NFS, whatever, they don't give a shit. They both have the same Sigma Design chipset, meaning native 4k HEVC Main10 and 1080p H.264 [email protected].

In terms of needing support right now: you don't. There barely is any content. But who gets a system for limited-time use? Future proofing is a gimmick and a gamble, but I'm sure Main10 is going to be the standard as that's in the Blu-ray UHD spec.

No harm meant, but I personally think streaming-only devices like the Roku kinda suck.

They are facing different directions, so neither has a problem cooling itself

I thought about doing it and getting two dual tower coolers one for the gpu and the other for the cpu and making a custom case for it to meme the hell out of this place

operates at 85c regularly huh

Yep, just like any nvidia card made in the last decade.

sure thing buddy keep being delusional

The Silverstone cases like the Raven or Milo recommend otherwise.

Blowers only work benefit if it's a completely sealed case. These cases have perforations near where the gpu is

Unless you take into account that they are cheap and made to be upgraded to something better by the time new types of content become available, chromecast=$35, $35 every 2-4 years is a much better deal than $200-500 for an htpc, without counting the price of the nas as well

Is there an mini-itx htpc build that can handle mpv with powerful mpv config?

...

>Titan x
>290x can get to over 85c

You can fit an X99 with an 18 core, 36 thread xeon with 32gb of RAM and an overclocked GTX 1080 into a Node 202.

Yes.

Again, streaming-only vs. native support. I'd rather have a Popcorn Hour A-500 with a hard drive in it then a streaming solution. You can even download from usenet and bittorrent in the background while watching movies.

And even if you need direct streaming: you can set up a Plex server and stream via DLNA to the Popcorn Hour.

Devices like the Dune and Popcorn Hour are inexpensive enough for an upgrade every 3 or 4 years.

The Ncase M1 is sugoi desu.

>Blowers only work benefit if it's a completely sealed case.

Whats the smallest all in one board you can buy minus the gpu?
The new macbook motherboard is absolutely tiny, but I think something more powerful would be better.

Anyway, I've got an idea for a tiny system, using a tiny motherboard, such as the one in the new macbook, or maybe an intel one if their nucs are good, I would attach that to an external gpu device, gut the device so I can mount the small motherboard and gpu in a device the correct size to contain them with the smallest sfx psu i can find.

Just buy a fucking skullcanon NUC, glue it onto an RX480 backplate and use a laptop-style 150w PSU.
Now jam it all in an empty packet of doritos with a wireless keyboard+mouse

heat still radiates, you dumb fuck

The whole point of me doing something like that is to make it quiet and cool

Get a card with a backplate, pop a small 80mm fan facing between the card and the motherboard, most of the heat in that setup i talked about would get dumped outside the case, the other case meh, i wouldn't use it either, so not really a dumb fuck, you didn't read what i talked about and you call me a dumb fuck

Where's a picture of a smug anime girl when you need it?

Why are these smaller cases so much more expensive? I makes no sense, they take less material to make.

Anybody here have a ultra small mITX PC? I am talking about cases like the Streamcom ones. I am planning on making a case like that in a 200x200x50mm form out of 2mm thick stainless steel sheets, the most expensive thing in such a case is the ITX form PSU, google PicoPSU.

The thing that I stumble against is the fact that I want it with a 4-core Athlon 5350, however the stock cooler is 36mm and I need a 30mm one (basically as high as the RAM sticks) but I cannot seem to find one. Any ideas Sup Forums ?

First things first, learn how to solder and rather than paying out the ass for a PSU, buy a cheap laptop power brick and a 12>5v little converter and make your own PSU with some old ATX plugs.

As for the cooler, just use one that's 30mm high with the fan removed and either run it passive (undervolt it as much as possible) or figure out how you can mount a fan next to the cooler so it provides airflow without adding to height, maybe grab a RAM cooler and repurpose it's little fan.

R&D costs are the same yet less people buy these products.

Damn it's so big!

>less people buy these products
The Node 202 has been consistently going out of stock at my retailer of choice since its launch, and they're not known for buying in small quantities.

The problem isn't R&D, it's that half of these good small cases are being made by startups, and as such they have the nasty habit of including their initial equipment costs in the purchase price of the first few models, thereby increasing the price and keeping interest in these products low.

I wont risk it with the PSU but i could jerry rig an intel stock one I have that is 30mm

The Cryorig C7 is 32mm tall with the fan removed, and is more likely to be able to passively cool a 5350 happily

The "stupidly fucking thick USB3.0 cable" is required by the USB specification in order to meet 3.0 speeds.

Its going to look like shit

I don't give a shit about what the retards who designed the spec thought, you do NOT need that much wire for .7A and less data than a SATA cable.

I will opt for a Gelid Slim Silence AM1, since passive cooling needs good airflow and this case wont really have anything more than vent holes that could house 40mm fans. Finding this cooler is proving rather tricky tho.

My friend who is a welder will make this case for me, I am only doing the design.

The SG13 is $40. But I assume you're talking about small-run cases like the DAN A4, and for these the raw material cost is only a small fraction of the total cost. What's expensive is the total number of bends and cuts, and those aren't necessarily much less for a small case than a for a large one.

In the case of the DAN A4 specifically, there is the additional cost of the high quality 3M PCI express riser cable, which adds probably $60 to the total cost.

>as such they have the nasty habit of including their initial equipment costs in the purchase price
I assume by "equipment costs" you're talking about tooling, which isn't necessarily true. Many of the small-run cases are manufactured with standard processes that are available at any machine shop, i.e., laser and NCT cutting and punching, and manual bending. These typically have little, if any, tooling required. The problem is they involve a lot of machine time and manual labor, which results in higher cost per unit.

In contrast, the way most mass manufactured cases are made is to invest $100,000 in die tooling up front, so the cases can be quickly stamped out in die presses for a small fraction of the cost per unit. This only works if you 1.) have the capital to invest up front, and 2.) are pretty damn sure you can move enough volume over the life of the product to recoup the initial investment and still profit. Obviously, for a small-time operation where it's one or two people, this is a much more expensive and risky proposition than going for the former approach.

>SG13

Why do companies put the god damn PSU on top of the mobo?
In a case that uses full size PSUs, it makes cable management so much harder, and it doesnt allow you to have a medium sized air cooler.
Thermaltake did it right with their mini itx cases, but they look like dog shit

Node 304

Because it's much more space efficient. The SG13 is 11.5 liters, while the Thermaltake Core V1 and Suppressor F1 are close to 23 liters. That's basically the size of the SG09/SG10, which is microATX rather than mini-ITX.