today's video involves taking this
and this and this and like these boxes are like
they're not empty you know they're full of stuff and this and this and this
and putting them all in here yes my friends we are going to make a
full custom gaming rig that is small
enough that you could conceivably shoplift it
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let's kick this off with a look at the case that we're using to perform this
feat this is the velcase vk3 and the whole
thing is actually shockingly simple at least on the surface so we've got our
front panel which is just brushed aluminum with uh power button here and
this is all one solid piece all the way from the back it's bent here and then down to the
bottom okay then we've got two side panels that are fully perforated on the
top they've got two 80 millimeter fan mounts they've actually got their own
fan that uh they made which seems to be just sourced from some fan company but
what's special about it is that it is super slim
then on the bottom they've got what looks like kind of some mounting stuff i
don't know i've never built it before so we're going to find out what that is and then finally at the back that gives you
an idea of the scale of the project we're looking at that is a motherboard
io cutout so i have no idea how all this
stuff including an rtx 2060 is supposed
to go in here this thing's 80 bucks though so hopefully they've given it
some eighty dollars worth of thought i don't stand a chance of doing this
without the manual i'm quite certain of that we'll probably use the shortest
the shortest standoffs so now that the panels are off we're getting a look at
one of the first lies that i've told you guys in this video so that is not
actually the size of a standard i o shield and the reason that it's bigger
is because it includes multiple sizes
of motherboard standoffs so that you can actually change exactly where the
motherboard is mounted depending on whether you have like a larger cpu
cooler or you have a thicker graphics card so that is how we are getting a
dual slot graphics card into this thing and in fact
if you need to accommodate a longer expansion card you see these slots here
the case can actually be extended
or retracted well the manual says to start by
assembling your motherboard and cpu and ram and all that good stuff so
we are using just comes in a white box because this
is an engineering sample board but this is a seuss's x
570 rog strix mini itx motherboard and
this is a truly special little piece of
kit because it's got full support for up to amd's
upcoming 16 core processor now we're not
going that extreme we actually just went for a 3700 x 8 core processor because
that was the most heat that we could handle with
this right here uh the nhl9a am4 from
noctua which is the biggest cooler that we can fit in this case with a dual slot
graphics card but the capabilities of this thing are freaking sick so why
don't we start by getting our cpu installed here
everybody loves that cpu insertion port
now we're going to go ahead and throw on our m.2 ssd so there's just the one slot
on this board right over here you can see they actually had to build
up this crazy like riser thing so they could put
a cooler in there for the motherboard chipset
freaking bananas honestly this feels more like working on
a laptop than a desktop and this can go
oh we're gonna miss out on this rgb
well it's just clearly not gonna fit
this build is beyond stupid already
it is going to be great i will give you that now we've got some vengeance lpx
low profile memory this is a 3200 c16
kit so nothing special but pretty close to unlocking our cpu's full potential
there and now we've got to install our cooler
it's crazy this motherboard's so small they don't even have to put all the fan
headers in different places because you'd be able to reach them from anywhere so there's our cpu fan header
and then we're going to go ahead and cable manage it
kind of like that i guess so we're going to put it on that way i'm gonna put our
graphite thermal oh oh lordy oh oops
oh look at that i lied to you guys again there's a second m.2 slot on this board
it's on the back so do i even use the i o shield i guess not then
you do that
is one freaking dense
bit of computer performance although i have noticed a potential problem we know
that this cooler is as thick as this thing can handle
but our ssd actually peeks out above it a
little bit so we might run into uh a clearance
issue here so here's where it gets real ladies and
gentlemen wait what normally you would take your
motherboard standoffs and you put them into your back plate or motherboard tray and then
you put the motherboard on there not today
today we take the motherboard we put it straight against the back plate and then
we drive the tallest a 30 millimeter
standoff through the motherboard
and then into the back plate what is going on here my world is upside
down you can see the back plate of the motherboard is like bowed now so we're
hoping that it still fits without bending it too much
so this is adorable next up is our pci express riser because
obviously if that's our maximum clearance we're
not getting a graphics card sticking you know way out of the thing here
so the riser goes in here at the bottom
and then immediately wraps around the back of the motherboard
and then why is this so long
wait a minute what the hell no i know what the extras for holy crap it's gotta
go all the way around and then flip back
over that is the sketchiest thing i have seen today and today has been a sketchy
day already so next up we've removed two screws here
and here and we pull out this like uh like blocker piece like a spacer
piece because if we didn't have an expansion slot we we could actually put
it here and then you could install the i o shield normally but we do so our
graphics card i o needs to be over here this case is so very different from
anything that i have ever used before there you go it's in there just
empty space now so now we're ready for one of the coolest party tricks of this
thing remember i said that the spacers kind of affect
where the motherboard is positioned in the case so you see this little tiny
hook on the bottom of the motherboard tray here that can actually go into
either this one or this one depending on
where the motherboard goes so i guess we're gonna go with
the top one so then the next thing is to put an m3
countersunk screw in here which brings the whole package actually kinda
together and it mostly lines up
like i'm legit having a lot of fun right now this is like the most unique
computer build i have done in quite some time and i mean unique and like an endearing
way so now we go ahead and
wait we unscrew the riser why did we screw it in
unscrew the riser then connect the card to the riser then
slide it into the back so we go ahead
and we put this on here jake i'm like mashing
this pci express riser
i feel bad okay so then we slide it
through the back like that this is so ridiculous i just don't i
just can't even it's actually in there surprisingly
securely it's amazing to think that these are all standard components
it's time for our power supply and this is this is something a little special
silverstone if there's a weird thing that almost no one could possibly want
silverstone probably makes it so this is the sst fx 350 g this is a flex atx
power supply and it's about as thick as a single server u
it's got like a little tiny what is that 40 millimeter fan 30 mil
40 mil yeah it doesn't even have
an eight pin pci express connector
just has a six pin so we're gonna need a six pin to eight pin
adapter which is perfectly fine so that
needs to go wait what even no
it's not wide enough oh my god no i see it
you you just wrench this down here and put thumb
screws in from the back that is the worst power supply mount i have ever
ever seen you mash it down
and then these slots they're not even holes
that's where you put the screws in and then you just have to i guess wrench
them tight enough that they don't shift it's getting heavy considering the size
this is a a lot of computer what the crap how is this supposed to
work so now it's time for cable management um
so our 24 pin has to some friggin how
get over here oh lordy
so that can go there
yeah okay so now our eight pin connector goes
up here so we're just gonna stash the extra
gpu power cable over here that's gonna hurt our airflow a little
but i think that ship sailed a long time ago and now it's time for the front
shell installation okay apparently you can mount drives to this now we don't
need to because we're using m.2 okay we do want to put a fan or two in
here though do you know which way is right side up
okay so
no the fan's not gonna fit in there no way
i am calling it now no fan is fitting in
there there's no way
i think we might get a fan in here i'm like
stressed out so warm
okay jake insists that we go for full points
and put in the second cooling fan i think we're gonna need it i don't
think i really have a choice the amount of hardware that is packed in here
like yeah the sides are perforated sure but
jeez i both love and hate this at the same
time it's like i love it but it makes me really uncomfortable
so theoretically everything is lined up i've got all my
fan connectors installed so now
in velcase fashion the way to fit it
is to just mash it
oh that makes me so uncomfortable how are we gonna do this
anchor one side so right now i'm jamming the fan
power down alongside the fan so it'll stay out
of the blades this is dumb and this is crazy
i think i can lock it in place here but do the fan spin
that one's scraping that one seems to be spinning
damn it down i think i forgot to plug in my front
panel power yeah
okay they're both spinning now so i got to keep these cables
down like on the downside of here okay
okay
let's see if the side panels close you know what i'm uh
i want to see it boot first it's bad jeebies to uh close up the side
panel before you actually see it turn on
go ahead and cut for me the big thing is how quiet is it
gonna be or rather how loud
all right i gotta put on some little feet here some assembly definitely required
for this one
it's still cold from yesterday nice honestly looking at this setup on
the table i'm like where's the computer
it's more like an accessor like this is smaller than most external gpu boxes
all right moment of truth time
that's a good sign lights are on
we've got fan spin
hey we got a video output though
alright so everything looks good we got our 8 core processor 16 gigs ram now our
ram speed is still low but it looks like it's applied the docp
automatic overclocking to the megahertz profile so
let's try it let's give it a shot see if it works all right uh one thing that i want to get altered
here is that fan noise wow
okay so both my cpu and chassis fan are set to silent but
one of those headers is actually an aio pump control header and they've got a
bit of a different approach to control of that one be nice if you could just
set it to fan mode
so we're just going to set it to the cpu as a
um as a source auto
now let's see if it'll turn down a little bit
because right now this thing is pretty freaking loud
really that's controlled
yeah these things are ripping okay i've got asus software fired up and
it looks like that aio pump header
has a 100 fan curve on it 30 degrees we'll go down
to 30 at like 70 we'll ramp up to 55 or so
okay that's better
so it was that one fan that was killing us to be clear this is still not a
silent system but we need to have realistic expectations at least this is
not horrendous all right
let's go ahead and close it up
so what i'm going to do is i'm going to just not quite put these in all the way
so that our side panel isn't too bowed
there's going to be a bit of a gap but hey if it's good enough for tesla owners
it's good enough for me is that noticeable andy i can tell you can't
tell no so let's tune the other fan curves and then do some testing here i
think i found a profile that kind of works so i've got my two top fans which
are by far the most obnoxious set to 25
until we hit a fairly critical temperature of about 60 degrees so
that's where we're loading the system and then my knock to a cpu cooler i've
gone ahead and set a more aggressive curve on that because
even when it's running at a fairly high rpm
it's pretty quiet and a non-obnoxious sound
unfortunately you guys can probably hear that even with my two fans at the top
running very low or stopped and my knock to a fan not being annoying
the system's still kind of whiny and there's just nothing we can do about
that because of the 40 millimeter fan in the power supply that's one of the
challenges with these super small form factor cases is that you're stuck with
unconventional power supplies that just
require weird tiny fans to cool them
anyway i'm pretty happy with this so let's go
ahead and hit it with a load shall we so let's start by firing up the classic bmw
blender test and what i'm looking for here is what kind of cpu turbo speeds
we're observing as well as what kind of
noise thresholds do we reach here so it's going to take a couple seconds for
our system fans to kick in because i configured them that way
but you can hear them ramping up now as our cpu approaches 75 80 degrees
we're still turboing to just shy of 4 gigahertz though
81 degrees how's our turbo doing
3.94 gigahertz still looking pretty good
okay let's get ai suite open and see just how hard we have to hit it with the
cpu cooler in order to tame it
i mean we still haven't turbo down yet
oh we've got a couple cores at 3.917
oh wow windows search you are so damn useless hw info
oh a web result you know i bet with a
slightly better thermal compound instead of a thermal pad that would probably
break us through this threshold honestly it's not bad though we're still turboing
to 3.9 plus which is
respectable if not amazing for a 3700x
so cpu performance is looking pretty good i mean we didn't hit maximum boost
speeds but we didn't fall down to base clocks either and considering the form
factor even with the noise i am pretty darn happy with this thing
but life is about to get a little bit more
difficult because this is only a 65 watt cpu so if it's kicking a bunch of heat
out into the chassis these fans have a pretty good chance of removing it our
graphics card uh that's over 150 watts
so they're gonna be working a little harder and
less of the fan actually overlaps with
the graphics card side of the enclosure so
just gonna be interesting now
let's move on to games okay well i can definitely hear our power supply working
harder now oh
that fan is going ladies and gentlemen
in a computer that you can hold one-handed
we have got metro exodus running at over
60 frames per second 2560 by 1440
like basically all high details
i mean do you need a punch line like
kick him kick him in the mouth good good job take that spiders by the way i
figured out why we don't like the webs these are very very bad spiders
well there is definitely a lot more heat radiating off this thing
let's go ahead and have a look at how our gpu is doing you
know we maxed out at around 73 degrees
that is not freaking bad
and that's actually without even one of our
top fan spinning so one thing that i would tune about this configuration
is that i would definitely add like a a
separate temp sensor of some sort and then tie my case fans into that instead
of tying them into my cpu temps because while it was gaming i was
actually hitting max turbo so well in excess of 4 gigahertz on my cpu
and it wasn't even running that hot because you know obviously most games
only use anywhere from sort of two to four ish
or maybe six threads freaking awesome i really like
this thing i mean not in an i'd use it sort of way i'm more of a silence freak
than a small form factor freak but
i think the merits of a system like this
basically pitch themselves you want to you know go to a friend's house or let's
say your parents are split up and you go between mom and dad's house or something
like that you want to bring your computer boom
i'm walking out of the frame dang it andy
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they've got all kinds of other stuff too so thanks for watching guys hope you
enjoyed the video if you did maybe check out our other recent build video where i
upgraded my personal rig with the big brother to the 3700x the 3900x
core with water cooling