SFX Power Supply
Once we got the power supply in from Silverstone I was impressed with the short length of some of the cabling included, especially the 24 pin. I was disappointed that the ATX to SFX adapter plate that came with it wasn’t black to match the power supply itself. This wasn’t going to fly on our build at all. I had planned on painting to get everything done quickly but in the end I wasn’t happy with my results. I sent the bracket over to our friend Speedbump and he powder coated the bracket for us and sent it back over.
With everything powder coated I was able to put it all together and finally mount our new tiny power supply into the Lian Li PC-TU200. Hooking everything up with the smaller power supply was much easier than before. In the past I would have to slide the power supply almost all of the way out to deal with any wiring and this time I could do it all with the power supply in the case with room to spare. Even better, the smaller power supply also means more open space for air to move around in the case. Paired up with the new heatsink that I spoke about before and I saw a big drop in temperatures on the CPU, video card, and even on the motherboard. Opening up the space in the case has also stirred up thoughts about moving the build over to full custom water cooling but frankly as it sits we don’t really have any reason to jump into that.
All in all I am very happy with the changes. I’m sure the next time I take the cover off at a LAN people will be giving me funny looks because of the SFX power supply but the benefits including better air flow are well worth it. I wanted to write a little about my experience and open you guys up to a few new options on how to handle small form factor builds without compromising on the components that you pick on the build. Here we are with a high power rig, lots of storage, an SSD, and good cooling in a case that is about the size of two cereal boxes sitting next to each other. I can’t wait to see what everyone else can do when putting together a LAN box, don’t forget to post up your build before you buy everything to bounce ideas off of each other and of course post up pictures as you put it all together. See you guys in the “my rig” forum soon!
