Having lurked around /r/sffpc, /r/buildapcsales, HWZ for so many months (years?!), I finally bit the bullet and got myself a GPU to complete the build which was started last year in April. Yes, last year.
The first choice was the case which would also play a part in deciding what other parts I could get. I decided to go the SFFPC route and after much hemming and hawing, eventually ended up with the NCASE M1 as it seemed to be the most lauded case in /r/SFFPC. This was particularly important as picking a popular case meant that most if not all of the problems had already been encountered and fixed in future revisions or had workarounds. I was also pretty keen on getting a good GPU so the GPU compatibility compared to other cases like the DAN A4 was a major plus point.
The FormD T1 came out about a year later after I bought it which made me have a bit of buyers remorse but ah well, it is a pretty good case already.
Interestingly, as of this time of writing, the NCASE M1 has already been discontinued so hopefully I don’t lose any of the accessories that came with it.
I suppose if I had to do it again, I would probably have gotten the NR200P since its so much cheaper and looks about the same. Its not very much bigger also and I’ve since realized that vertical space is at much less of a premium that horizontal space, which I suppose is why HDBs exist. However, unlike HDBs, the NZXT H1 seems to be quite likely to catch fire so I think i’ll stick with this for now. :)
Having a more popular case also meant that there were a lot of builds on pcpartpicker that I could copy from, some of them leaving comments about issues that they encountered while building as well as tips on how to build in such a tiny spot. If not for them, I never would’ve expected the GPU to fit in the case since its such a long boi.
Of special mention is the 180 degree PCIE connectors, without which I would’ve never been able to close my case.
Cable management in this case was particularly tough especially since I admittedly had no idea what I was doing in the beginning
But thanks to some amount of peer pressure (and actual pressure to push the cables in to close the case) The case was actually able to close!
Yeah well there’s a bit of a gap on the motherboard side due to all the cables stuffed there but it faces away from me so thats okay :)
During the initial boot, I actually panicked because even though all the lights were on, no one was home. I mean, there was no display out. Thankfully it was due to this
But agh the cable management though to plug in another cable into the PSU and route it across to the other end of the case where the CPU power connector is.
But at the end of the day…
its aliveeeeeee
So well, the final build is…
CPU: Ryzen 5900x
MB: ASUS ROG STRIX B550i
GPU: ASUS 3080 TUF GAMING OC (in these trying times :( )
CASE: NCASE M1
PSU: CORSAIR SF750 (oh god the cables are so stiff)
COOLER: NZXT X53
SSD: SAMSUNG EVO 980 @1TB + WD SN750 @ 1TB
RAM: 32GB G.SKILL TridentZ RGB @ 3600Mhz CL18
Total cost: ~$4000 SGD, could’ve been ~$100 cheaper but Amazon lost my motherboard order and I didn’t want to wait another 2 weeks for a new one so just bought it locally. Arrived in 2 days, delivery services are pretty impressive nowadays.
Well it was definitely a fun exercise, first time building a PC by myself and in an SFF case to boot. The next upgrade will probably be for the homeserver, I have been eyeing some hotswap cases recently so who knows? Quite excited to see how efficient the new Intel Atoms with the Gracemont architecture will be also.