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Haswell Thin ITX - Can't find info...

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snay

snay

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Hi, wondering if I can pick the brains of this community quickly.

I'm planning a build in a custom case, being after a decent SFF utility PC. Programming, VM's, various OS's, media machine and so on. At the same time its a project in craftsmanship and building a very sleek, unusual PC.

I'm planning to build a thin itx with and i7, 16GBs of RAM, and preferably only use the mSATA and mPCI slot for drives/expansion. My research has led me to believe that with a 330w laptop power brick I should have ample power to pull this off and maybe even get an overclock if I go the 4770k route. Although the 4770S still seems like the safer choice...

However, as it is a bit of a utility machine I would rather stick to the realms of hackintosh compatibility. Two boards are standing out in the Haswell line-up from what I can find; Asus Q87T and Gigabyte Q87TN. Both obviously similar boards. Whilst I have in the past used Asus and would naturally gravitate to it for no reason other than branding, I've heard things like they sometimes make things more difficult for hackintoshs over Gigabyte.

Basically, has anyone in the hackintosh community documented anything on haswell thin-itxs? Would compatibility likely be the same (for the most part) as their mini-ITX versions? Are there any boards I should look into/comming out? I'm finding that the whole thin-itx thing hard to find good discussions on.

If anyone has anything they think will contribute to my plan I would be very grateful!
Nay.
 
snay said:
Hi, wondering if I can pick the brains of this community quickly.

I'm planning a build in a custom case, being after a decent SFF utility PC. Programming, VM's, various OS's, media machine and so on. At the same time its a project in craftsmanship and building a very sleek, unusual PC.

I'm planning to build a thin itx with and i7, 16GBs of RAM, and preferably only use the mSATA and mPCI slot for drives/expansion. My research has led me to believe that with a 330w laptop power brick I should have ample power to pull this off and maybe even get an overclock if I go the 4770k route. Although the 4770S still seems like the safer choice...

However, as it is a bit of a utility machine I would rather stick to the realms of hackintosh compatibility. Two boards are standing out in the Haswell line-up from what I can find; Asus Q87T and Gigabyte Q87TN. Both obviously similar boards. Whilst I have in the past used Asus and would naturally gravitate to it for no reason other than branding, I've heard things like they sometimes make things more difficult for hackintoshs over Gigabyte.

Basically, has anyone in the hackintosh community documented anything on haswell thin-itxs? Would compatibility likely be the same (for the most part) as their mini-ITX versions? Are there any boards I should look into/comming out? I'm finding that the whole thin-itx thing hard to find good discussions on.

If anyone has anything they think will contribute to my plan I would be very grateful!
Nay.
Click to expand...
I don't think you will have to much trouble if you use a gigabyte board. A few things to consider though, if your making it thin you'd have to find a thin cooler to go along with it. OCing is probably off the table if its too going to be a really small build with a small cooler. Another thing about laptop power supply's is that they only supply one voltage where as an motherboard board needs a 12, 5, 3.3, -5 volt rails.

Never mind about the laptop PSU, I looked it up and these thin its boards have built in DC to DC convertors, so you should be fine with that power brick. I doubt you'd use more than 150 watts at full load, so you should be fine.
 
snay - Building a custom case with a thin mini-iTX motherboard is great thing to do.

In the past I have used the thin Intel D61AG (Sandy Bridge) in a G4 Cube and a thin Intel DQ77KB (Ivy Bridge) for a custom case build. You can find links to projects here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/completed-mods/87399-neilharts-completed-case-mods.html

I recently did a Haswell thin project using the ECS H87H3-TI motherboard with the i7-4470T low power CPU. The trail to putting OS X on that system is here: http://www.tonymacx86.com/mavericks...o-unsupported-ecs-h87h3-ti-thin-mini-itx.html . This project is now in a SilverStone PT13 case and uses a SilverStone AR04 low profile CPU cooler.

However of the 5 Haswell thin mini-ITX motherboards that I now know about, I would recommend the GA H87TN or GA Q87TN. You should understand that you are restricted on the power budget and most if not all of these thin motherboards advise a CPU of 65W or less which leaves out the i7-4770K.

The i7-4770T is a 45W CPU (low clock speeds) but still obtains GeekBench 2 scores in the 13600 range.

Normally thin mini-ITX systems are not over clocked. If that is high on your list you should choose a standard form factor mini-ITX motherboard.

Also with the thin mini-ITX you are restricted to using the on board GPU that is a by product of the Haswell CPU. Which means the CPU selection needs to be confirmed to support Intel HD4600 (as some of the low power Haswell CPUs do not).

Good modding and good luck with your project,
neil
 
Thanks bud. Yup the reasoning behind thin-itx is the use of a laptop brick so the case itself can be super-compact. If laptop bricks are good enough to supply the power that this type of build needs for a few years, I'll be chuffed! Considering some dual GPU gaming laptops can cope well, considering they probably have mobile i5/i7s, monitors, SSDs/HDDs, etc. I'm assuming they should be up to the challenge.

If there were pico-psu's powerful enough for this type of rig, I'd be building a super small, mini-itx water-cooled PC! :D However I if this project is a success I may build a low power, watercooled version as an interesting media machine. However I'm restricted to 160w (200w max load they say...) and feel I'll be pushing my luck! :D

As for the cooling, it'll be a completely hand-built case with the concept of a large high-end cooling block.

Imagine this sort of thing, but with a case and the cpu block just extruding massively out of it:
Noctua_NH-C14_Install_3.jpg

IMG_0959-2.jpg


The main issue is how much ventilation the system will need. Ideally and aesthetically, I'd prefer a tower cooler such as the NH-D14 out the top of slim little box, but passive air vents may not be enough for the board and its various components... So chances are it'll be the C-Shape cooler, blasting air into a little box with a vented side or open back-panel.

Its more of an interesting project than a computer that has a purpose. But it'd be too easy if I went low power. But I wont be purchasing any parts till the 25-27th of the month... so I've got some time to think! Chances are I'll pick my cooler and design the case around my choice.

Considering how quite modern coolers like those Noctua's are, it'll also be very quite! At least when idling.
 
Yes laptop power bricks will support thin mini-ITX builds. I use Dell laptop bricks as they fall within the specification.

My current thin Haswell build runs under a 100% load and draws about 55W at the AC in to the power brick and about 15W when idling with the i7-4770T. With a i3-4330 the idle is about 25W and under full load about 65W.

Your project sounds interesting. You should start a thread in the Workshop form area and document your project.

Good modding,
neil
 
That is very good to know. Cheers! Sorry Neil I missed your first post... More good info to read up on there!

On Gigabyte's site that they recommend at least a 180w PSU if you use over 84w TDP CPUs, which is bang on the i7 spec, according to Intel's page. So it seems the Q87TN from Gigabyte is anticipating muppets like me doing stupid stuff.

I'm not exactly looking to expand this thing beyond what I've stated, bar plugging in the odd pendrive and maybe portable external. But at the same time I want to be covered for power and have that safety-net percentage on top.

I could probably get away with a 220-250w PSU, but if I can get low thermals and power... then why not! But again, I haven't seen much on these boards and don't even know if I can OC on them and wasting my effort there? Considering they are '87' and the Asus Q87T said something about OC'ing on their site, I'm assuming it is possible.

But as I said before, its the ventilation I'll need to assess. I've heard that having mSATA and mPCI wireless/bluetooth cards can get rather toasty, along with something like Vengeance 1600MHz RAM. Although people do run completely fanless ITX setups.

But anyway, I will document it and post it as a build somewhere. I don't think many people have done stupid builds like this yet, so it might be at least something different to see!
 
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