My brother and I just started exploring a cube project. We are both big fans of a lot of the work displayed on this board, thanks for all the inspiration! Here's the basics of what we're planning:
i5-4670k
Z87 mini-ITX
mSATA SSD -
Mushkin Atlas 240GB
Built-in PSU -
Athena Power AP-MFATX40P8
Liquid Cooling -
Black Ice GTX Xtreme M160
No 2.5" drive
No 3.5" drive
No optical drive
Hopefully getting to play with OC on CPU as well as integrated GPU tweaks. We wanted to avoid the external bricks associated with pico-PSU and since we aren't adding any cabled drives I think we can achieve that!
We would be very interested in all of your input and suggestions. I'll update as the project progresses..
Good luck.
Take a quick look at the dimensions.
Rad thickness 54mm, minimum dimension of your PSU 43mm. Proper ITX board will take my guess a minimum of 50mm to squeeze in. There is only 170mm space on each axis if you keep to roughly the internal 'can' dimensions. This leaves very little room for an internal fan and for routing of the pipework and cables (I don't know how slim you can go on a fan for this, but even so where will it have room to pull the air into it to drive it through the fan?).
That is just looking at one of the dimensions but looking at your rad height of 195mm means no way Jose unless the radiator is allowed to hang 30mm below the usual base height of the can. So unless you are abandoning the internal can completely and then spraying the perspex to hide the internals the look will be "industrial" to say the least!
The biggest rad dimension that would fit in a Cube format without extending out of the main 'can' is a 140mm rad. Water cooling considerations also are: how to bleed (the Alphacools are brilliant in having so many ins and outs you can bleed a closed loop system with little difficulty and I definitely recommend that if you are going closed loop, no res); do you go for a reservoir?; do you go for an integrated pump and block? Tube type and diameter - I went for 6mm internal, 8mm external mainly because of the H80 integrated block I used and it seems to work fine. If space is really tight you could try rigid copper piping but that is likely to be a real PITA in terms of build up.
If you are going to seriously get the whole PSU in there, then keep in mind this is also a heat generator and the consequences of a water leak onto a high voltage supply are much greater than onto a 12v one. Though hopefully if you get it side by side with the rad (assuming you do go long instead of wide) that can't happen. Also that little fan in the PSU is likely to be a screamer.
So a brief look at the numbers leaves me sceptical. Having said that, I of course am doing a build myself with very similar aims - although my aims are more to producing the most powerful Cube I can which is also quiet and cool - and people were sceptical about that too.....often where there is a will, there is a way.
Maybe my build can give you some inspiration on where to grab space from and scale up.
