Explicity Project

[4rtex]

Hello everyone!

It's been a while.....

I would like to share this thing I've been working on recently. I have previously shared it with SFF community and it has been renamed to "dead space", generally disliked for being too big - not to standard basically

Explicity is a 22 litre enclosure with some design principles in mind. It's all aluminium, made in Stoke

• has to be thermally efficient
• has to be easy to build in - don't want to build the case around the components
• can't have a PCIe riser cable
• can't have a PSU extension cable
• be relatively small

So, what can fit inside

• ITX motherboard
• SFX-L power supply
• 280mm AIO or 155mm tower air cooler
• RTX4090FE

I hope you enjoy looking at it. I have no intention of changing it, because I like it for all the aspects

I am now browsing Overclockers for RTX4070 Super to utilise the space, can't afford the 4090 yet .

***Sorry I thought I could link the images from my Google Drive. Will edit as soon as I can link photos***

 

[4rtex]

I hope we can marge this post with the first one. I didn’t know about the 120 minute rule, apologies

 

[ben1987]

Can’t be many smaller 4090 PC’s about, looks great

 

[LePhuronn]

I have previously shared it with SFF community and it has been renamed to "dead space", generally disliked for being too big - not to standard basically

Yeah, screw a lot of those guys. The elitism amongst some SFF enthusiasts is toxic AF. "Oh, you can't possibly call it SFF because it's over 10l" yeah, but you had to cut your 4090's power in half to stop it burning up, you melt. Sit the hell down.

If you end up with a lot of space in your design then yeah I'd personally suggest tightening things up a little (I personally wouldn't have put the PSU there), if anything to keep materials costs down, but you do what you want with your own project and money and I'll just sit here and appreciate it!

It's all aluminium, made in Stoke

Now this bit interests me. I'm also in Stoke and I'm always on the look out for local suppliers, should I ever get well enough to continue my projects.

Would love a lot more detail on your parts, how you designed it, how it was made, etc. It looks like flat parts you've screwed and riveted together so I'd love to see how you've joined everything up and how it all fits together.

 

[TrojanWhore]

Yeah, given that you've constrained yourself to not use a riser cable, I can't see how you could make it much smaller (except as @LePhuronn suggested, moving he PSU to the front which would allow the bottom part to only be deep enough for a PSU cable extension!).

I'd be interested in the fabrication/materials cost... I was looking at building my own case as I couldn't find one to fit my rather odd needs, but then luckily found one (log coming soon) and it was only £41

 

[4rtex]

I thought I'd share the dimensions of this enclosure.

330mm (L) x 238 (W) x 273 (H)

In comparison The NR200 is

376mm (L) x 185 (W) x 292 (H)

As much as I appreciate SFF builds, and man, some of them are impressive, they all generally restrict the components. I get SFF for low spec PC, but the top end requires custom approach for anything that small. The idea of my build was to try to find balance.

The idea of placing the PSU behind the motherboard is still there, I'm bouncing some design ideas in CAD, it would make the case 15 litre, but the PSU will blow hot air to the inside or draw hot air from the inside.

The space behind the motherboard; GPU's recently have a flow through cooling design, so all these SFF sandwich builds have the GPU blow hot air straight at the PSU. Why do the designers ignore it? For the sake of few litres of volume. This space here is so that doesn't happen. The below image is an 4070 Super Gaming X Slim. Would you buy this now or wait for the 5xxx and then buy it?

This layout also doesn't require any intake fans. My preference is less fans

Some background info
1) Designed in Solidworks. Sheet metal fabrications is my background so I just design something I know I can make straight away. It makes it easy for the sub-contractor.
2) PM me for the name of the business that made this in Stoke - it's "around the corner" from OCUK
3) This enclosure is laser cut and formed from 2mm thick aluminium sheet 5251 grade. It's components are fastened by M3 screws. The threaded inserts I used are self clinch flush nuts. They require a dedicated machine to insert.
4) Finished in black powder coat, majority is textured satin finish. The side panels are semi gloss dark grey.
5) Under the bottom panel is 5mm thick large rubber sheet. There are no holes in the bottom.
6) It's not cheap stuff I must admit. This particular prototype would cost around 0.5k but pricing varies greatly between sub-contractors.

Long term dream would be to design a custom full copper heatsink for the GPU so that it takes the entire space on the side of the GPU. I probably won't ever do it, it's just going to be too expensive

I was looking at building my own case as I couldn't find one to fit my rather odd needs, but then luckily found one (log coming soon) and it was only £41

Looking forward to this!

 

[LePhuronn]

it was only £41

Really? Where? I got quoted £30 just to put two 10mm radius bends in a 70x500mm strip of 4mm aluminium lol

 

[LePhuronn]

The threaded inserts I used are self clinch flush nuts. They require a dedicated machine to insert.

Lies I've put mine in with a 1/2 ton arbor press and even a hefty C clamp and a broken wrist in a pinch. But then I'm using 1050A aluminium because I'm doing a lot of folding.

"Round the corner from OcUK" would be just up the road from where I work so I'm sure I can work it out.

500 notes isn't insane for a one-off, some of the quotes I had from places like Fractory would approach that if I had every part made by them, and there's only be 1 of the big unibody pieces.

 

[TrojanWhore]

Really? Where? I got quoted £30 just to put two 10mm radius bends in a 70x500mm strip of 4mm aluminium lol

I mean I found a case which suited what I wanted - 480rad and a more modern look (Saharagaming p480).

I was definitely expecting £3-500 for a custom job even while having to bodge parts of it myself!

Edit: was also considering an open frame like, but slightly different to, the xtia at version (Jay has been subtly bending my ear for months ) .... Which would have needed at least a large sheet laser cut with 2-3 bends