Project alMost ATX

Hey there guys! This is a project that's been in the making for about 2 months, and I've just finished this past week. It's called alMost ATX.

alMost ATX got it's name during it's conception; A powerhouse PC filled to the brim with components, stuffed into an mATX case. The "M" in almost joins "ATX" to form the name of the project as well as the technical form factor of the case.

The project, as mentioned, is based heavily on extracting the most power out of every available square inch of the case. I wanted something LAN Party worthy. Tons of power, but small if possible.

The initial planning phase of the build was simple; deciding what I wanted. I knew that either Crossfire or SLI would have to be included to pack the most punch. I knew at least 8gb of RAM should be included, and that if I could manage it, water cooling should be used too. But then, I hit a roadblock. Standard mATX cases only have 4 expansion slots, and I wasn't giving up on a multi GPU setup, and a certainly wasn't excluding a dedicated soundcard.

In short, I needed 5 expansion slots. After thinking a while, I decided to look for a case with 4 slots, but with space underneath to add a 5. I happened upon a literal SFF relic, the Silverstone SG03.



It was perfect. A side mounted PSU to cut down on height, 2 front 120mm fans for cooling, space for 10.5" GPUs, and the all important space under the expansion slots for the last slot.

So, I ordered the case, and work began. First was to take the case to the shop and use a pneumatic cutoff wheel to open up the slot



Next I filed the slot down and took the case home for paint, and ordered the rest of the parts.



The final specs of alMost ATX were the following

Intel i5 2500K
Corsair H60
Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3
16gb (4x4gb) G. Skill Ripjaw DDR3 1333
Two ASUS HD6870s in Crossfire
ASUS Xonar Dx Sound Card
Crucial C300 SATA 6gb/s 64gb SSD
Western Digital SATA 6gb/s 500gb HDD
Sony Optiarc SATA DVDRW
Xigmatek 700w Green PSU
Two CoolerMaster Red R4 120mm fans
Silverstone SG03-BF

Unfortunately I don't have any detailed build pictures to make this a full log, but here are the final outdoor shots!

















Thanks for checking it out, comments are appreciated!

I like it. Wouldn't have worked with a tower cooler, but with a Corsair all in one, you're golden

Me, rather than get a new case to give the second card room to hang, I'm swapping to Gene-Z when it's available on Newegg. Lazy way out, I guess.

edit: Hey, Suffield? Whereabouts? My brother lives on 159.

ratbuddy said:

I like it. Wouldn't have worked with a tower cooler, but with a Corsair all in one, you're golden

Me, rather than get a new case to give the second card room to hang, I'm swapping to Gene-Z when it's available on Newegg. Lazy way out, I guess.

edit: Hey, Suffield? Whereabouts? My brother lives on 159.

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Thanks!

By the way, I live on 75 which runs parallel to 159. The north end of it near Agawam

Heh, he's about a mile from MA, probably about 5 minutes from you.

Nice looking build! Always fun to see something done in a smaller form factor.

johan851 said:

Nice looking build! Always fun to see something done in a smaller form factor.

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Thanks! I think the best part about it is that not only is it small in the first place, but it's one of the smaller MATX cases as well, so it's doubly small, I guess?

Well, I wouldn't be impressed by a mATX board in an ATX case, if that's what you're asking.

Just toying around with OCing this morning, brought the multi up to 40 and left everything else at auto. This is what we've got



I'm not so sure that voltage is correct. At idle it's about 1.044v, and at load it's 1.056v. I've never used a voltage that low, even at stock clocks, for any other processor. If it is correct, looks like I have plenty of voltage headroom for much higher OCs.

Not bad, I really like this build. If you have any experience with it, do you think an H50 could fit under the PSU? It does have a much larger footprint than the H60.

JonSimonzi said:

Not bad, I really like this build. If you have any experience with it, do you think an H50 could fit under the PSU? It does have a much larger footprint than the H60.

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H50 would fit with room to spare. The H60 isn't even as tall as the motherboard's heatsinks. I originally bought a Scythe Big Shuriken for the case, but I happened upon extra funds for the build and sprung for the H60. I'm glad I did.

On a side note, I pushed the CPU farther to 4.2ghz on the same "auto" voltage of 1.056v. 4.5ghz is reachable at 1.1v.

Bear in mind CPU-Z doesn't work for showing voltage, at least not on my Z68MX. I forget which program actually shows it. Maybe the Gigabyte BIOS tweaker program?

ratbuddy said:

Bear in mind CPU-Z doesn't work for showing voltage, at least not on my Z68MX. I forget which program actually shows it. Maybe the Gigabyte BIOS tweaker program?

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yes touchbios shows it but it is always .01v higher than what you set it as is the CMOS.

I like this too! the only thing is it would be a pain to change anything since you have to remove the PSU everytime.

ratbuddy said:

Bear in mind CPU-Z doesn't work for showing voltage, at least not on my Z68MX. I forget which program actually shows it. Maybe the Gigabyte BIOS tweaker program?

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Yeah I ended up downloading the gigabyte program and it shows real time voltage. 4.3ghz is about 1.25v

fall said:

yes touchbios shows it but it is always .01v higher than what you set it as is the CMOS.

I like this too! the only thing is it would be a pain to change anything since you have to remove the PSU everytime.

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Yes thats the only bad part. I can't get my hands inside the computer and play around as usual.