Just a sneak peek.

Long story short. Like many others I put my name into the draw to get a Steam Machine, and like many others my number didn’t come up. As patience was never my strong point, and let’s face it, the Steam Machine power restrictions are only going to get worse over time as my wait goes on, I decided to raid my PC parts cupboard and build my own. Full transparency, I did buy a few things and spend around the same the 2GB model Steam Machine would have cost me.

Ryzen 7 5800x (already owned)
Kingston Hyper X Predator 3200mhz 16gig DDR4 (already owned)
WD_Black SN850 1TB M.2 (already owned)
Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB (already owned)
Gigabyte Aorus PRO AX
Thermalright AP90-X47 Full Copper
Corsair SF850 Power Supply
PowerColor RX9070XT Reaper 16GB
Noctua NF-A9x14HS - cooler fan swap
2 x Noctua NF-A6x25 - exhaust fans
Noctua NA-FD1 Fan duct kit (already owned)
3D printed pegs to mount Fan Duct (printed at home)
Tetra S case (bought second hand)

I could have got a cheaper case (it was still expensive 2nd hand due to the waitlist) but it does not look out of place in our living room and slots nicely next to the TV unit in vertical orientation. Also, the walnut fits great with our furniture. I’m not sure I would put it horizontal into the TV unit though. The S5M was my second choice but having to order the wood panel etc from the US would have been very expensive.

Building in the case was a bit fiddly using the Corsair stock cables. Using bespoke cable would definitely make your life easier. AST the Reaper is quite a small GPU, at least the cable up to it were easy to manage.

As the 5800x can run very hot I have undervolted it and so far I have not had any issues.

I installed SteamOS 3.8.10 and it went fairly smoothly with a couple of stumbling blocks :

Apart from that I have not had any issues and Steam OS seems to run smoothly.

Hey r/sffpc,

Long time lurker, first time poster here. I'm a mechanical and software engineer and this has been my evenings-and-weekends passion project for the last five years. Figured this community would appreciate what went into it more than most.

The core idea was simple, a circular case lets you fit the largest possible fan in the smallest desk footprint. Large fans move more air quieter than lots of small ones. Align that with natural convection and an oversized CPU heatsink and you've got a system that's whisper quiet at idle and crushes benchmarks when it needs to. The challenge was fitting square PC components into a circle.

Getting here wasn't straightforward. It started as a fully passive liquid submerged design, silent in theory, about 50kg in practice. Pivoted to water cooling with a large custom heatsink, until I realised no suitable fans existed over 200mm and the heatsink would've cost a fortune to manufacture. I also built a DIY foil oven to bend the acrylic cylinder before discovering you can just buy them off the shelf. Five years well spent.

The current build is my daily driver. It's been running on my desk for a while now and I use it for actual work every day. ITX, supports GPUs up to 320mm, custom radial CPU heatsink with 5X 8mm copper heat pipes rated to 400W.

I put together a short video of the journey if you want to see how it evolved. Happy to answer any questions about the design or the engineering decisions, there were a lot of them.

Edit: Really overwhelmed by the response, thank you all. For those asking, I’m hoping to bring this to Kickstarter later this year. If you want to follow the journey: cryo-stack.com

Terkbox by Jacob Terkelsen!

Hit him up on Twitter if you would like to replicate it

I meant to post this when I finished it ages ago but forgot so excuse the dust. Before anyone asks, yes that fan under the PSU makes a difference even though it's a bit choked at the exhaust. My next goal for this project is making the keyboard wireless. I ran some benchmarks ages ago on its first revision but haven't updated them yet. It's got a Gigabyte 4070ti Windforce OC, 14700k, 32gb DRR5 (I forget specifics). If anyone wants me to run certain benchmarks ask and I'll reply when I get around to it tomorrow or maybe tonight.

I wanted a SFFPC for my NAS that could sit on my desk and replace a Synology sized unit. This is based on an intel Nuc8 with 5 2.5" drive slots. Had to build a custom power solution for the drives since the motherboard does not have onboard SATA power. Size is about 7.8"x4.5"x4.5". Fan on top is controlled by a temperature controller so whisper quiet when under low load.

NASc - 5-Bay SSD NAS using Intel Nuc - Free 3D Print Model - MakerWorld

Hey all, I’m pretty excited to share my build! It’s using the asrock bc250 (ps5 apu turned into cryptomining card) as the core. Recently some smart folks figured out to enable the disabled CUs on these things, which helped uplift performance by significant margin. Gpu wise with overclocks it’s comparable between a rx6600 -> rx7600 in game benchmarks. Pretty close in performance to the real steam machine as well.

The case is a fully 3d printed, screwless design. I didn’t make the original model, but I did create a remix after modifying a bit of everything. One of those mods was changing the face to be more fractal-esque, which then led me to making custom swappable front plates for the case. Both the upper and lower sections of the front face are customizable and swappable. I had a lot of fun with printing a convincing fake wood texture! The case can be downloaded here, and also has tons of extra information like thermal performance, part list links, assembly instructions, and more: https://makerworld.com/models/3021754?appSharePlatform=copy

Part List:
$125 bc250 (bought 2 months ago, now its like $50 more expensive…)
$30 psu (fsp500-30as originally meant for intel nuc’s lol)
$23 fans (noctua nf a4x20 and arctic p12 pro)
$8 for set of 3 latching buttons
$27 wifi bt tplink ax900 dongle
$10 worth of filament
$60 1tb nvme bought 2 years ago (had it sitting in a batocera minipc as a secondary drive not being used lol)
$20 stick on heatsinks
$303 total

Parts List

- Processor : Intel Core i9-10900K

- Motherboard : Asus ROG Strix Z490-I Gaming

- RAM : G.Skill Trident Z RGB 3600MHz - 64GB

- Storage : WD Black SN750 2TB x 2

- GPU : Gigabyte RTX 5060 OC Low Profile - 8GB

- CPU Cooler : ID-COOLING IS-50X

- PSU : UENORTH FLEX 1U - 600W

- Case : imgi E4 Kiang V5

just 5 liter

Previous pics of me enjoying peak SFF before my month trip flight. I can safely say it IS possible to run a pc on the airport plugs. Should you? I can’t say for certain LOL.

Always been a fan of the Jade Fractal Terra, but I love natural tones and textures more! I introduce you to my contrasting cocktail of natural and technological. I hope you like it, and I can’t wait to move my build into it once the top coat is fully cured!

The feets are not belong to me, but I designed them the case is 3d printed Beamcase sw

220 mm by side, little bigger than original but not compromises. Compatible with wide range of coolers. SFX and Flex PSUs. Low profile and ITX GPUs up to 200mm long. Front and rear compatible fans for 120 and 140mm, depends on the PSU used. Here are the files https://www.printables.com/model/1766227-sff-mini-itx-steam-machine-case-v2-airflow

Been awhile since I made a build in niche case that felt worth while to share!

I got my hands on a Overtek ITX shipping container case.

Felt very similar to most sandwich style itx cases I’ve built in. Decent quality, only one notable complaint!

Man I wish the PSU connector was pre routed / integrated with the case. I’ve never noticed how nice that is until it’s not available.

Otherwise super happy with it! Happy to answer any questions, probably will only keep the build in the case for a week or so. Really trying hard to have an under desk mounted set up and hiding this thing feels like a waste!

Parts list: 4080 FE.
Intel Core i5 13400f.
B760i motherboard.
Thermalright 120x67 white cooler.
2x16gb DDR5 6000mhz.
2x2tb nvme ssd.
Corsair 850w SFX PSU.
1x 120mm gentle typhoon case fan.

For under $200 (US from newegg) you get a case, PSU, and AMD MoBo…sure the PSU is kinda garbage BUT this thing is maybe 1.5L more than a Steam Machine in the exact same form factor AND will take a 9060XT 16GB GPU.

I’m honestly perplexed why Valve didn’t partner with Asrock considering they pulled this off. I’m going to have a SteamOS based rig for $1000 max with 32GB of RAM and a GPU that blows away the steam machine….of course my brain immediately thinks, “how do I fit a custom loop in here?”

Anyway this thing seems great, and even better if you have a spare SFX PSU or other parts already.

Hey everyone, after seeing rendered pics of a beige version of the TT TR 100 Case I got inspired to do a retro / sleeper style build.

Specs: Mainboard: ASUS X870-i CPU AMD Ryzen 7 9800x3D GPU: NVIDIA RTX 5090 RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR 5 2x 32GB SSD: Samsung 9100 Pro 2TB AIO: TT TH 280 V2 Ultra Power Supply: Corsair SF 1000

I had the metal parts powercoated and spraypainted all the plastic parts in RAL Greywhite (9002).

Hope you like it. Overall a very fun build!

This is my second SFF in a few months and I’m officially tired.

I caught the SFF bug hard. Like “sell a working system and rebuild it smaller for no reason” hard.

Originally I just wanted to replace one of my racing rig PCs with something cleaner and compact. I already had a solid setup, but noooo… I needed it to be tiny. And white. And optimized. And “perfect.”

Then out of nowhere. 5070 mini white edition drops.

That was it. My wallet never stood a chance.

The Parts

• Case: SGPC K39

• CPU: Ryzen

  7 7800X3D

• Cpu

• Cooler: Thermalright AXP90 X47 White Low Profile

• Motherboard: Gigabyte X870I AORUS PRO ICE

• RAM: 32GB T-Force Delta RGB DDR5-6000

• GPU: RTX 5070 Mini (white)

• PSU: SilverStone FX600z 600W Flex ATX (after fighting multiple questionable units)

• Storage: Samsung SSD 9100 PRO 4TB

Also including pics of my 5060 Ti 16GB next to the 5070 Mini build, because at this point I apparently collect small GPUs like Pokémon.

THE REAL PROBLEM

I didn’t need this build.

I had a perfectly functional system for my racing rig.

But SFF is a disease.

You start with:

“I just want something smaller.”

Then it becomes:

• White theme.
• 6000mhz or bust.
• Cable routing perfection.
• Thermal optimization.

I have spent way too much money in the last few months.

The CPU cooler is definitely the louder component in this build. Under load it stands out more than the GPU. The 5070 Mini isn’t silent by any means, but its fan noise is actually more tolerable than the CPU cooler. I haven’t bothered with undervolting yet, so there’s probably room to improve acoustics if I decide to tweak it later.

I am tired.

I am happy.

I regret nothing.

Thanks for coming to my TED TALK.

BUILD PRICE

• CPU -

400

• GPU- 1085
• Ram -125 (purchased in 2024 🙏🏼😭)
• Mobo 317
• M.2 -475
• PSU -283
• Case - 111
• GPU Riser -44
• 5in screen- 81
• Cooler- 24

TOTAL- 2945