MODZERO JUICE - NFC SYSTEMS S4 MINI #80 (FINISHED 13.12.17)

[HackJoe]

http://i.imgur.com/NQi2xdA.jpg

UPDATE 0

I've been looking forward to this one for a while now. Unlike some of my previous builds this one should be pretty much stress free (fingers crossed). It's not a competition entry with a deadline, it's not a buddy build, nor a personal rig upgrade leaving me living off a test bench until complete. This one is a goody, a new LAN rig, in a chassis I'm super excited to build in. With no end date *cough* i60 LAN in April *cough*, so come along and enjoy the journey.

This is a sponsored project, for which I'm hugely grateful! Massive thanks go out to NFC Systems for their support, E22 for once again showing their faith in my work and indeed Gigabyte for taking the risk and hooking me up. :thumb:

http://i.imgur.com/5GFiIFb.jpg
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SPECS:

• INTEL CORE i5 - 6600K CPU
• HYPERX FURY DDR4 2400MHZ 16GB (2X8GB) RAM
• GIGABYTE GA-Z170N GAMING 5 MOBO
• GIGABYTE GTX 1060 ITX OC 6G GPU
• SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2-2280 250GB NVMe SSD
• HDPLEX Hi-Fi 250W DC-ATX PSU
• NOCTUA NH-L9i COOLER
• 2X SCYTHE KAZE JYUNI SLIM 2000RPM
• NFC SYSTEMS S4 MINI CUSTOM CHASSIS

After my beloved Parvum Veer (MODZERO FOUR) took a savage thieving (of it's mod cubes) in order to complete my Thermaltake UK modders trophy 2016 entry I was left without my LAN buddy. That was back in late April. I'm pretty sure I'd seen the NFC PURIEL build someplace and went in search of more information. That took me to YouTube and there I met the S4 Mini.

Once MODZERO OCTO was finished I kept coming back to that S4 Mini I'd seen. At that time the GTX970 was about as powerful a GPU you could fit in the little monster (although couple folks over on the SFF forums had got the AMD Fury Nano running pretty stable too..) but the 10 series was coming soon and with it I was sure one of the board partners would put out a great ITX card.

I'd contacted Josh at NFC about sending me the S4 Mini with the panels bare. At the time, very day I was driving past a BMW garage and had found a liking for some of their blues. A M4 in ESTORIL BLUE to be exact. The more I saw of it the more I liked it. From the chromed trim accents to the deep red of the rear light housing, I liked how the black of the grill contrasts against the blue metallic paint work. The actual paint work was done by B-Negative and he nailed it! Thanks buddy!I left the panels to truly harden then went about giving it a cut and polish. I had the color I wanted, so that was it, I'd base my S4 Mini around the aspects of the BMW M4 I liked.

THE NFC SYSTEMS S4 MINI

Many may already be aware of this chassis or at least Josh and his years of great work in the modding community, for those that aren't, this is the NFC S4 Mini. A 4.3l air cooled ITX chassis designed by Josh, manufactured in small batches and sold direct from his NFC SYSTEMS website. You can find out a lot more about it over on his page but for now I'll just show a couple shots of mine.

http://i.imgur.com/S1Qj7mt.jpg
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This way up?

http://i.imgur.com/490nTkj.jpg
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Or this way?

I think I'm leaning toward the second, there are vents under the Alu wrap-around and as we know, heat rises. With the GPU being that end of the case, I think I may see some performance gains in this rotation.

http://i.imgur.com/8A9a5fH.jpg
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You can just about make out the vents under the Alu panel.

http://i.imgur.com/6ag3K59.jpg

As the build progresses I'll drive inside the chassis and show some of that, I may take a second pass at the cut and polish I think there are areas for improvement.

Outside of the custom paint work and sleeved cables I plan to make some modifications to how both the CPU & GPU are cooled and try my hand with some other materials to help make some of the internals really pop.

Thanks for check it out, hope you stick around and enjoy the log.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

Glad you like the paint buddy,always a pleasure for you.

It's getting a great reception that's for sure. Thanks chief.

Fantastic little build dude.love it.
The paint job is very nice indeed.

Nicely done dude

Cheers buddy.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

I absolutely love these cases, build is off to a great start

Following as always fella <3

That looks fantastic!

Cheers guys,

Took a little break over Christmas but will have an update in the coming days. I've picked up my power adapter now, thanks to the great guys over at Kustom PCs and my better half (made for a funny gift, being so appreciative of a laptop power brick...).

Still waiting on Samsung to restock their Amazon store (my 960EVO is on back order) then I'll get cracking with some testing. I've a few fan configs I wanna try out on the CPU and a couple options for the GPU.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

http://i.imgur.com/NQi2xdA.jpg

UPDATE 1.0

Well, now Christmas and New Years is out the way things are coming together nicely. Pre-Christmas I was still two key components shy of a POST. The M2 drive and a power adapter. I'll share my tale of the 960 EVO another time, as for the power brick, well that made for quite the odd Christmas morning gift unwrap. Turned out, my other half had being sending cheeky emails to KustomPCs. Knowing what I needed, they sent the power adapter inside a Corsair VS450 box. She then wraps the VS PSU box and come Christmas morning I fain adulation as she watches me remove the wrapping paper with an expression of 'erm...this isn't right', just as I then get over excited at the sight of the Dell ADP-330AB B Power Adapter inside.. She* is a keeper. I'd no idea she'd hooked that up, much impressed.
*the power adapter

http://i.imgur.com/DfUWLbL.jpg
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I've had the Gigabyte goodies out ready for a box bench test. The plan being, I'll test all hardware stock (as we all do... ) outside the chassis first. Then run some stress benches with all the hardware test fitted in the S4 Mini before I start working on the cables. I'm running a 95W CPU and a GTX1060 + M2 SSD off a 250W PSU, I wanna be certain I'm not pushing my luck.

http://i.imgur.com/c4DJik2.jpg
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It's a cracking little board, logical placement for SATA (yeah Impact... whats that all about!) and the 8PIN/24PIN are both where they should be.. surprising how many ITX boards are still getting this wrong.

http://i.imgur.com/NP84FwE.jpg
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GIGABYTE GEFORCE GTX1060 ITX OC 6G - When they teased this and it's big brother the 1070 ITX OC a few months back I got really excited. I'd already been eyeing up the S4 Mini but none of the GPU offering at the time (under 8") were doing it for me.. back then it was a toss up between the Asus GTX970 ITX or AMD FURY NANO. Having just moved from the 980 to the 1070, the thought of buying a 970 gave me no pleasure. I'd have loved a FURY NANO but that 175 TDP wouldn't have left me much headroom.

http://i.imgur.com/xAjTSnI.jpg
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It's a chunky little monster with a beefy heatsink. It absolutely fills the S4 mini GPU space but seeing as the 1060 PCB is a little less tall then the its big 1070 brother I'm hoping I'll be able to mount the power socket without any further mods.

http://i.imgur.com/2MX226D.jpg
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I'm using the Noctua NH-L9i, I may or may not swap out the fan.. with such a small chassis, cooling is key. But I'm a sucker for aesthetics. Don't get me wrong, I like the signature Noctua fan color, however I prefer the nickel heatsink under it. Same with the GPU, so I'll at least try swapping out both 92mm fans for these Sythe 12mm 2000RPM 120mm beauts.

http://i.imgur.com/Re2uKoS.jpg
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The S4 Mini has those two 120mm mounting points, one over the CPU, with the other above the GPU. I'll run a suite of benches with the stock cooling options then repeat with the slims. See how we get on.

I'm working on a custom backplate for the 1060 with a matching plate for the chipset. Exploring a few different approaches with that. Once I have the designs I'll see what you guys think.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

http://i.imgur.com/NQi2xdA.jpg

UPDATE 2.0

Over the last few days things have moved along nicely. These are simple phone shots and for some silly reason when resizing (I thought they looked cool at the time), I made them B&W. Won't be going that again..

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I'm really enjoying the S4 Mini chassis, it's the first independently produced small production run case I've bought. Josh over at NFC, clearly loves what he's doing. His enthusiasm comes through in everything. Already a world class modder and scratch builder (just check these out) he's also producing great content for his YouTube channel with the S4 Mini chassis clearly being a passion project for him. This is how the chassis looked when It turned up at my door. Before I sen it south to the mighty B NEG and his spray-gun of justice... (Not that you can really tell.. cos I made the bloody images B&W!! haha).

http://i.imgur.com/pdGMRqU.jpg
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I loaded up all the hardware and got windows installed onto the M2 drive.. I was expecting that to be a headache but everything worked as it should, happy days! (first time using M2) As I'm replacing all the cables for the HDPLEX with custom made 18AWG wire based replacements I didn't bother installing the PSU and ran it as seen above.

The HDPLEX really is a great bit of kit! years of using overly power equipped PSUs left me worried a 250W DC-ATX PSU wouldn't get the job done. On a side note they've just replaced this a 300W model (yeah... :wallbash with a different layout for the connections ( better suited for the S4 Mini). However this one is going a great job, If I were to swap out the 1060 for say the 1070 then maybe I'll look at buying the 300W.

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http://i.imgur.com/IkppoQH.jpg
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My original intention had been to sleeve all the cables, but after I'd test fit the PSU.. and it left me with this...

http://i.imgur.com/mFZZfdk.jpg
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I quickly became skeptical. I'd read over on the SFF forums users pushing the HDPLEX had benefited from the larger gauge wire (stock being something like 19AWG). So that's the current plan. It's gonna be tight with just the larger diameter wire let alone trying to sleeve 24 cables in 4mm Teleios. I'll look at sleeving the accents.. fan wires, switch, the power connector cables. Maybe I'll sleeve a couple from the GPU/CPU, see if it looks good.

http://i.imgur.com/mJbNBaF.jpg
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I have a couple Parvum switches so thought I had this covered... turned out the S4 MINI uses a 16mm switch, oops. Not to worry, KUSTOM PC to the rescue. Again, room is super tight with the 24PIN mobo connection sitting right up in-front of the switch.

http://i.imgur.com/q1Jklo3.jpg
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This is the first project since moving house.. I've turned my office into a right state trying to find all my 'bits and bobs'. I'd convinced myself I had a stash of terminals, but could I find them... no. I'd convinced myself I had extra 22AWG fan wire, but could I find it... no. Luckily E22 hooked me up with a rapid resupply, thanks guys.

http://i.imgur.com/NP84FwE.jpg

With everything loaded up stock the system pulled just shy of 245W from the wall. looping the Unigine Valley Benchmark the Noctua NH-L9i kept my 95W i5 6600K under 40'c and silent whilst the stock cooler on the Gigabyte GTX1060 ITX OC maxed out at 62'c with the fan at 40%. Granted it's winter, I live in North Wales (it's cold) and without the HDPLEX fitted in place both components see better airflow. I was surprised all the same. Even so, I wanted to try removing the 92mm fan/shroud on the GPU and mounting a 120/12mm fan over the GPU instead.

http://i.imgur.com/fy2Ep8U.jpg
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I think that looks ace! a pair of thick copper heat pipes, with the heat sink making contact on the RAM and VRMs (nice work Gigabyte).

http://i.imgur.com/trhEbxk.jpg
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With the slim 120mm Scythe fan in place, the GPU fit perfectly (lucky!). I'm a huge fan of SpeedFan I've used it for years, long before PWM became the norm and manufacturers included half decent fan control software with their motherboards. So the plan was simple enough. Install SpeedFan, control the RPM of the 3PIN chassis fan based on the GPU temp. Only for some unknown reason SpeedFan was unable to see fans (thought it did detect the correct controller). A quick search found others with Gigabyte Z170 based boards experiencing the same. When it's all done, I'll come back to it.. I'm sure I'll find a fix. For now I used another little app to do the same (arhh, I can't remember what is was called).

I ran the same loop of Valley and found the performance to be around the same. With one large difference. Whilst both solutions kept the GPU around 60'c, it took the Scythe running at 60% to pull it off. A touch too loud for my liking.

The Gigabyte Z170N Gaming 5 only has two fan headers too, and I'd intended to make use of some Dazmod ridged LED strips powered from a fan header (makes for simple dimming control). By using the chassis fan, I wont be able to do that.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading. What do you think, stick with the stock cooler or tweak the slim RPMs to reduce the noise and roll with it?

J.

 

[HackJoe]

You said "stock". bad boy

Loving this, and after my sheet metal disasters today it's good to see we're all having some trials and tribulations!

Haha, 'stock' for now.. I'd need to do something about the orange go faster stripes. Sheet metal can be a pain in the a**! I often wish I can better tools, think I'd try my hand at so much more. It's all a part of the process thou.. fun fun fun and all that.

i have that board. i also tried speedfan and apparently it is only supported by most boards and this isnt one of them. looked up some tutorials on it first aswell

Annoying huh.. The other app is doing the trick. If I can't get SpeedFan to see them correctly I'll have to buy this software I'm using.

Love this!

THANKS!

J.

 

[HackJoe]

Can you resize the images please as per FAQ

Whilst I appreciate, there was a single image I'd missed and mistakenly uploaded at 4000+ width. This is the only forum that doesn't auto-resize. My images are 1550x granted your FAQ (however old is may or may not be) asks all images be 1280x (a reasonable request) it pains me the extra 270 pixels warranted all my images be changed for links.

With the larger fan you probably have a larger dead zone under the hub. That and with the overlap and lack of shroud, the rest of the airflow probably leaks round the heatsink rather than through it. The colour of the shroud you can always do something about (paint, vinyl, sandpaper even) but the loudness of the fan you can only improve by sacrificing performance and you also lose headroom you may need once the PSU is in and the lid on. Given that it sounds like you also lose a mobo fan header to run this fan, I'd stay with the stock and redecorate it to your colour scheme - much as the bare heatsink looks nice in an industrial way.

Absolutely agree chap, the bearing is at least 3-4x larger then the 92mm fan on the stock cooler. I'm gonna put the stock back on (hope the GPU will fit) and vinyl the orange in white or blue.. or both. I'll see if I can sweet talk Daaaaveee into pulling out the old vinyl plotter for me once again..

Coming together nicely. Shame the Scythe is too loud, I would just go back the stock GPU fan.

I also have the same Speed fan issue with my Gigabyte Z170MX Gaming 5, which other piece of software are you using and is it any good?

Any chance you'll do me a couple more vinyl cuts buddy? ArgusMonitor, it's a clunky UI but it works! it's not free either which sucks... 30 day full trail deal.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

I think there may be a case of mistaken identity here?! I have not done any vinyl for you. Maybe its Davedree you're looking for, similar username?

Thanks for the software name though, I'll check it out

Sorry buddy, It because I cant see the avatars when replying, for some odd reason my brain decided you were Davido_Labido.

I'd be interested to hear what you think to the software.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 3.0

Things have moved along a little further so I'm back again to share my progress. A few things have happened since update 2.0. NFC hooked me up with a couple extra side panels for whats coming up next, I bought some EK Monarch blocks for the RAM (not they'll be WC'd) to provide a little extra height between the DIMMs and the PSU.. lets start there, RAM.


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I'd never removed the heat spreaders from RAM before... years ago back when all RAM came naked, I added heat spreaders a time or two but never this way round. It was easy enough, I used a low temp on my heat gun and gently warmed up one side of the RAM at a time. Once warm I slid plastic card (like a gym or library card) in under the heat spreader. Repeated that a few times and off they popped.


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They look much better now.

The majority of my free time over the last couple weeks has been spent on the wiring. I mentioned last time I'd intended on replacing the stock (thinner AWG) wires with new cables made with thicker 18AWG black wire. Well that turned into an epic battle between the function vs aesthetic gods..


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Oh, I put the cooler back on the GTX1060, it's a much tighter fit but the cooling (mainly noise) is so much better for it. I'll look at tarting it up a little down the road. The odd thing is.. the orange on the cooler matches the orange on the 960 EVO drive. As they are, the only two components you see on that side of the chassis, it sorta works... as is... But I guess we'll see.

But anyway, you can see the 6PIN GPU cable. The stock HDPLEX cable is yellow/black 21 AWG (not sure...) wire with a single 8-PIN at the PSU end and a 6+2 x2 at the other. Strapped up, fitted, you could barely see the new cable.


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But then things started to get complicated, well, crowded. I made the 8PIN EPS which turned out okay considering it had to bypass the 24pin to be routed correctly. However the 24pin is where the battle truly begun. The thicker AWG added a lot of bulk compared to the stock HDPLEX cable (if you were to simply cut the stock cable to length). I reassembled the build and booted her up. everything worked a treat. But they really ain't much to look at..


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So the war begun.

I don't know who struck first, wire or sleeve. But we know that is was me that scorched the ends

Bare black wires certainly look better then the HDPLEX cables but it's not much of a build without some sleeved goodness. Firstly, I had decided I had plenty of room to sleeve the EPS and GPU cables. I also took the HDPLEX power connector cable desoldered the stock wire, replaced with new wire and sleeved them.

ATTEMPT TWO:


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I hated this when I did it*. the EPS cable looked smart, clean, the cable combs made a color combo work and pulled your focus. But the 24pin looked fat and untidy. I didn't like that the power switch red cables popped as they were much shorter then the others. I knew I didn't have enough room to sleeve all 24 but felt as the positioning would hide the others, sleeving a few would add something.

*annoyingly, looking at it now. I kinda like it.



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The EPS was different, half the wire needed to remain bare in order to pass under the 24pin to get to its PSU connection. It was the pattern I didn't like. I love the colors, the chassis pulls cues from certain 'M' class BMWs with it's estoril blue paint job. The sleeve was picked to highlight aspects of the motherboard (the red DIMM and PCI slots) and to further that BMW scheme connection. The colors are a combination of the brand logo and the 'M' logo. So first time round It looked like this, a repeating pattern. But with only 8PINs it's too much and with only 6PINs for the GPU and 4PINs on the power cable.. I could not repeat the same pattern.

So it didn't last.

ATTEMPT THREE:


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I swapped the red switch sleeve for black and took the color out the 24pin. I went with 3 black to cover the bare wire beneath and one gray to pull in the Noctua Redux fan. I also redid the EPS wire (I didn't take a better photo...) I needed a pattern based on 4 wires, something I could repeat on the GPU and power cables. So I did. The EPS became gray, blue, light blue, red. With the remainder in black.


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I repeated the same for the GPU to match the EPS. At this point, had gone with 2x blue 2x grey on the power cable. It was getting there, but I still didn't like it. The 24pin still looked fat and untidy, I liked the use of combs on the GPU cable and was happy I'd found a pattern I liked but by matching the EPS it meant that you mainly saw the grey, red, black wires on the GPU cable when really you could only see the grey, blue, light blue on the EPS. So they looked totally different.

So it wasn't to be.

ATTEMPT FOUR:


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I had to do something about my fat untidy 24PIN. The main problem I was/am having is the 24PIN sits higher on the mobo then it's bottom edge on the PSU. So the cut lengths have to allow for a bridge type bend in the middle, A: to allow the PSU end to connect lower then the mobo and B: to run that 8PIN EPS under it.

So this time round I thought I'd sleeve four cables all black on the 24PIN to hide the wires underneath. I also trimmed a few to drop the high point on the cluster of wires. I bound them to pull them in tight under the sleeved cables above.


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Which worked (for the most part).. it dropped the 24PIN cluster enough to make the 4PIN power cable (now grey, blue, light blue, red pattern) sit above it.


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I also took the GPU cable and flipped it, so the pattern would show more of the blues. Added more combs to the GPU and power cable then reworked how the power cable routed through the chassis to the PSU.


and that's where I'm at... do I like it? no. Do I like it better then the previous attempts? sure. I don't really like the look of cable combs and don't feel my runs are quite on point. But I keep telling myself it's not finished.. I've got the back plates coming and the frame side panel to come, then a glorious tempered glass pane to finish it off. So for now, I'm leaving it. I need to move forward with those two bits. Once they are in, If I still don't like, I'll try again. It's all a process.

Thanks for checking it out. What do you think? Should I go back to bare wire? try a different color combination? rework the lengths? or do you like it?

J.

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 4.0

Back again with another little update. Not a great deal has progressed over the last couple weeks (mad how quickly these weeks seem to fly by) my other half is unwell, and caring for her is slowing things down. Which, in this moment, made me think of this scene from Monty Python the Holy Grail... start at 0:50.

https://youtu.be/grbSQ6O6kbs?t=55


Hahaha, so, whats cracking. well, a few things. Firstly, I'm redoing all the cables. But I'm doubling up rather then starting over. Which meant another visit to E22.


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I've bought enough terminals and wire/sleeve to make a second 24pin. I had an idea to separate the two rows of 12 wires, dropping one row down, to run along side the other. It's difficult to visualize but I think the end result could be good. keeping the bulk of the 24PIN down at the floor of the chassis. It's just an idea, we'll see how it turns out. If it's a success and I'm left with enough supplies I'm going to make a second (third if you count the factory HDPLEX cables) set of EPS and GPU cables. I'm pretty happy with those as they are, but whilst I'm waiting on some of these other bits (I'll cover them a little further down) it's nice to stay busy. Plus, I'm going to drop the red from the sleeve pattern and maybe the lighter blue too.


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The extra two side panels turned up (Thanks again Josh) in a textured black powder coat (which I really like). But it's gotta go. A buddy has a homemade sand blaster set up in his garage (he uses it to engrave and sell slate souvenirs), he thinks he can strip the powder coat with relative ease (I'll take some pictures when he goes it, let you know how it goes).


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Once stripped, I'll be sending both panels down to the wonderful B-NEG for some special attention. Dan is going to CNC the middle section of the panel and and cut the mounting points for the glass. I'm currently working on the CAD for this, although it's not going that well. Fingers crossed, the blasting will happen next week and I'll be able to get the panels off to NEG in time for his next visit home.


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I had been on the fence with this one.. originally I'd wanted to fit a small 12x2 display into the Alu wrap-around of the chassis. The inner chassis frame has a perfect cut out for this directly behind the GPU and if you were so skillfully inclined you could pull it off. Only I've gone with a GPU that is at the upper limits for the S4 Mini to house comfortably and to mount such a display directly behind such a GPU, whilst possibly, maybe, possible... it would certainly have a knock on effect to your thermals, perhaps damage the display too (pretty sure they are rated <60'c).

So what to do..

Well, I bought a bigger one. THIS ONE to be exact. I know I've already mentioned it, but if you're in the UK, the guys over at Kustom PCs do a bang up job. They have a truly great selection of products. I used one years back on a build I'd done in the Silverstone FT03.


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They are great little displays and very easy to program. I was looking at the layout of the motherboard and spotted the internal USB header is placed just below the PCI slot (the display is USB), and once I've put the glass side panel on it's not as though this build has lots of epeen watercooled glory to behold. so I thought..


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The USB header is directly beneath it, making connecting it simple and clean. The module is the exact width to nicely fill that space between CPU and GPU too.


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Mounting it should work out pretty well too. I plan to use the 120mm fan mounting holes above the IO. I'm working on the design atm (I'll share my designs in the next update). The plan is to frame the display, with the mount also framing the the Noctua cooler (on two sides). That should nicely hide the IO and cover the nasty green PCB on the display. I'm working on the mount being made from 3mm ALU which I'll powder coat along with the side panel frame to match the rest of the internal powder coating. If it all goes to plan the mounted position of the screen will run flush with the GPU once that has it's custom back plate.


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That's it for now. I'm hoping as my other half continues to recover I'll be able to put more time back in to this, I'm pushing to have the CAD work finished in the coming week so I can finalize dimensions for the mounts on the glass. I'm attending Insomnia 60 in April and this is coming with me.. so ultimately that's the completion goal.

Hope you enjoyed this little progress report, I'll come back soon with designs for you guys to give me some feedback on.

Cheers

J.

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 5.0

Nothing too exciting folks, life has been hectic but I wanted to touch base and share the little news I've got. With Insomnia 60 (LAN) just a couple weeks away it seems I'm not going to finish this build in time. Which is disappointing but fine. I'm not letting anyone down, it's not a show piece and it'll still be coming with me.

I'm still to send the side panels down to B NEG for some CNC love and until I do that I can't finalize dimensions for the glass. But it's all in hand and we'll get there.

So what have I gotten done.


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Ricardo over at COLDZERO (check em out if you've not already) hooked me up with the backplate mock up (top left, above). Which I'm pretty much happy with. Think I'll drop the NFC logo from the backplate and put it elsewhere. Maybe add a little 'sponsored by' or 'powered by' to proceed the E22 and GIGABYTE logos.

You can also see, I've pretty much finished the bracket design. The original was intended to be ALU (and it may go back to being so if this doesn't work out) but I had a thought, why not have it match the backplate. So I reworked the design and sent it over to Ricardo.

All being well it'll have the same design vents as the backplate running along that chassis mount side (to help clear the air kicked up from the CPU heatsink and should fit just about flush with the GPU. Fingers crossed those two bits will be with me before LAN.

In other news, we've finalized the design for MODZERO JABBA (the next project), that'll be coming this summer. Can't wait to show you guys!

This weekend I hope to remake my cables, so I'll report back then. :thumb:

J.​

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 6.0

Multiplay Insomnia Gaming Festival 60 is but days away! JUICE was always earmarked for competition in time for this event. It is after all, primarily my new LAN rig. That wasn't to be, with a number of speed bumps along the way, sadly JUICE won't be finished in time for LAN. But it will be coming..

Oh yes, I present, MODZERO JUICE STAGE 1.0...

or at least I will present it a little further down... sorry.

JUICE is running off a single 960 PRO 256gb NVMe drive, I'd not intended to add anymore storage. But will all my games installed on two 250gb SATA SSDs in my main rig and LAN being so soon, I thought about how best to make use of those SATA SSDs.

So I bought one of these..

I thought, I'd pull the two drives from my other rig, label them and hot-swap between the drives as and when. But, I had visions of losing a drive or disconnecting it when in game. So I went a different route.

The NFC S4 MINI can mount two 2.5" drives in front/behind the GPU. Yet I'd previously written this mounting option off for three reasons.

1. Knowing I was putting a toasty GPU in there I'd always thought the SSDs would get cooked
2. The HDPLEX molex/sata power connection on the PSU was tucked in tight at the back of the chassis partially under the motherboard.
3. I'd not seen anyone else fit the drives and do a cracking job of the power/sata cable routing.

Challenge accepted.. :rock:


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Firstly I took my two drives (two different drives) and covered the backside in matt black vinyl. Mounted them on the cage then proceeded 'to throw all the toys out the pram' when I couldn't find the two last screws... (They were holding my power connection in place... why I used two of the screws for this job I've no idea...)


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It was almost a none starter.. not only is it tight, but the cables actually foul the clear CMOS pins on the board. I'd had to be sure the wires ran between the pins... the whole build would have to be dismantled to sort that, had it been the case.


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With a sizable gap between the CPU cooler and the PCI riser (where my Matrix orb will be fitted) I planned to run the SATA power cables directly down to the PCB and across to the PSU.


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I'm not a huge fan of heatshrink cables and SATA (at least this choice of connector) is level leet when attempting the heatshrinkless approach, alas I'm not pOpe so I rolled with it (I'm already planning to redo it when I move on to Stage 2).


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Not a flattering angle, but you get the idea. I'd just been training the bends and had sagged the sleeve.


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With it fitted to the SSDs, now came the PITA. I'm not all too confident with soldering, but how else am I going to get any better. With the harness in place and the PSU in there too, I had a lot of already short cables to shorten and solder... with the prospect of starting over if I messed up (I only had the exact number of SATA terminals) hanging over me, a mistake at this point would have been a rage quit. haha..


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Done, all the connections were solid, the heatshink suffered as the wires heated up but with that end of the loom being down running along the PCB I wasn't too concerned.

Next was the bloody 24PIN, well, all the other cables really! If you've been following along you'll remember I've not been a huge fan of my pervious efforts. I loved the colors... individually, but struggled to make them work once fitted in a combination that really blended with the color scheme.

I touched on it a couple updates ago (I think) but I'd bought more sleeve in just the blue and the grey. So the plan was to re-sleeve the GPU, POWER and CPU. Then make a new 24pin.


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The old one was just a little too long in many of the wires which caused it to push up against the RAM more then I'd like.. I took my time, dropped the partial sleeve from last time and it worked out much better IMO.


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This time round i was able to have the PSU end come up from the bottom, which would enable to power adapter cable to run flush over the top, much better then before.


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Lastly I used more of the matt black vinyl to mute the silver/red motherboard stickers.

SO....

It's not finished....

But.


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What do you think?

J.​

 

[HackJoe]

Looks fab. The obsessing over the details is paying off for sure. Love the colour scheme

It's working out for sure. I'm so impressed with the NFC S4 MINI, those SSDs sit happy around 42'c when the system is under gaming load (GPU @ 70'C) while the CPU idles at 17'c (currently 15'c) and maxes at 44'c (gaming load). it's both quiet and plenty powerful enough for LAN times.

looks great

Thanks

Thats one of the best builds I have seen. So slick!

Dude, cheers.

J.

 

[HackJoe]

I've been building rig's for years but when i see stuff this good still blows me away!

Your a 1st class modder mate, really nice work.

Thanks buddy, I don't bang out the builds, the specs are never top end, but I love building them and the when they're finished I'm hungry for the next.

Black vinyl to cover a motherboard's red and silver stickers, eh? Sounds familiar

Seriously though, this is just sick. Absolutely stunning work, love it.

Cheers buddy, wasnt sure what you were getting at.... checked out your link. Dude, you've done a much better job with the vinyl.

Fantastic dude.looking forward in seeing it this weekend

Great seeing you over the weekend. Glad I didnt get your man flu! haha

J.

 

[HackJoe]

Looks amazing dude. So if you wanted to, you could replace the noctua cpu cooler fan with a say, noctua black industrial fan?

Sure, providing they make some the same size?

J.

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 6.1

Hi, Things have been quiet on the build front for some time now. I've been crazy busy. I'm now a married man and 8 weeks away from welcoming my first child into this world. I've continued to use JUICE as my daily driver and boy does it continue to impress. A couple months back I uploaded a quick snap showing a quick side panel mod I'd done in time for Insomnia 61 gaming festival. Having the side panel fitted makes the chassis as a whole much more stable.

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LAN was awesome (it always is), providing 5 days of freedom from the rest of daily life stresses. Shortly after I came back, I received a message from a dude called Victor. He'd seen my fabricator had fallen through and kindly offered up his time to help me out (what a guy!).

I sent him my CAD design for the Matrix Orb display bracket and he's run with it, correcting the mistakes I'd made and bashing out a prototype.

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Designed to attach to the 120mm fan mount on the S4 mini, Victor has opted to laser cut the design from acrylic. Then mill out where required and tap the holes.

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First attempt cut and ready for the mill.

Victor lives in the US and operates OPEN BOX STUDIOS I recommend you get in touch with him if you're looking for some design/fabrication work to be carried out.

I'll be back with another update once the parts arrive.

J.​

 

[HackJoe]

J.

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 6.5

I'm back folks, quick build update before the final shots go live on Monday. JUICE had always planned to have a tempered glass side panel. Josh over at NFC kindly hooked me up with a couple extra panels to aid my development a way to mount the glass.. which was easy enough. The vented portion of the panel was to be cut out leaving a frame (as the side panel makes up part of the chassis structural strength it had to be the basis for the tempered glass mod) to mount the glass. Which, was to be attached using six standoffs to provide enough clearance for ventilation. Easy right? Well, yeah... finding somewhere that could make the glass turned out to be far more expensive then I'd hoped. it's a small piece that needed to be tinted, tempered and have six mounting holes. When each of my quotes came back in the hundreds I decided to put a pin in it.

As I'm using the Noctua NF B9 REDUX, the fan sits just a few mm too high for the stock side panel to fit. This wasn't to be an issue with the tempered glass approach, so instead, I opted for a simple side panel cut out.


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Using one of the powder coated panels Josh sent ( I still have a beautiful BMW estoril blue side panel which I may give away to another S4 mini owner) I masked it off and marked out how I'd like it to look. The centre-left hole meant a clean, straight square frame wasn't an option. But that would have been boring anyway. So I left the vented section above that hole in place and kept a single vent down at the bottom right (a little nod to my love of Parvum Systems chassis).


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It was the first time using my oscillating tool and wow, for cutting at least, I've retired my dremel.


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I re-masked it and used some small hand files to clean up the lines.


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Then it was a couple primer coats (grey) and a couple more in a satin black automotive paint (It was all I had in my shed, left over from my old FT03 3D printed Matrix Orb mount, who remembers that?).


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Removed the tape and job done. you can see where the satin finish is still reflecting some light... I'd use matt black if I were to do it again.


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Really happy with how it turned out. With the panel in place the whole chassis is rock solid, zero flex.

So that's it. The final shots go up on Monday once Gigabyte shares them, soon after I'll do the final build log update. I'll post all the photos and talk a bit more about the Matrix Orb display.

Thanks for checking it out.

J.​

 

[HackJoe]

UPDATE 7.0 - FINAL SHOTS

Hi folks, well it's time to wrap this project up. JUICE came from a strong desire to build a LAN rig in the NFC Systems S4 mini chassis, to running it 24/7 as my daily driver. I'd have never thought I'd get so much performance from a 250 watt PSU. I've some plans to move to an i7 and GTX1080 using the HD-PLEX 300 Watt PSU and my current 330 DELL brick. But for now, it's finished and I'm delighted with it.

I want to extend a huge thank you to Josh from NFC Systems, the team at E22, my boys at Gigabyte UK and my eleventh-hour hero Victor at Open Box Studios. Without your help and support, it would never have happened.

So,

SPECS:

• NFC SYSTEMS S4 MINI CUSTOM CHASSIS
• INTEL CORE i5 - 6600K CPU
• GIGABYTE GA-Z170N GAMING 5 MOBO
• GIGABYTE GTX 1060 ITX OC 6G GPU
• HYPERX FURY DDR4 2400MHZ 16GB (2X8GB) RAM
• HYPERX 3K 240GB SSD X2
• SAMSUNG 960 EVO M.2-2280 250GB NVMe SSD
• HDPLEX Hi-Fi 250W DC-ATX PSU
• NOCTUA NH-L9i COOLER

...

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I'll be back in the new year with two projects, MODZERO JABBA and MODZERO 42. The later being my sequel to MODZERO FORTY. I've some exciting and originals plans underway for the HEX GEAR R40 chassis and can't wait to show you guys. Around the same time, I'll be doing another buddy build, MODZERO JABBA has been over two years in the making down at Parvum Systems and stands to be quite the eye turner when complete.

Thanks for following along.

J.​

 

[HackJoe]

Hi Folks,

It was great to have been included in this year's Bit-Tech.net Mod of the year awards! Great to have received not only a nomination but an honourable mention in the final results too. Thanks for the votes chaps. I'll be back with two new builds this year (at least). Starting mayhaps with my MODZERO JABBA (custom Parvum System X2.0) build.

J