[WIP] Antek ISK 300-150 AM4 Build

[Nobu]

Parts:
MB: Asrock B450 Gaming-ITX/AC (shipping)
CPU: 3400G (4000-series later, maybe)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L9a-AM4
RAM: TBD (Likely TEAMGROUP E+ 2x4GB 2400 cl16)
Storage: Corsair 128GB SATA SSD, to be upgraded later.

So far I've got the case and CPU cooler. I've unpacked and disassembled the case. It's a lot heavier than I expected, and assembly is funky – you must remove the HDD and FDD trays, and the power supply assembly in order to remove the fan bracket. You probably can't acces the lower screws on the fans with the motherboard installed either, so removing the bracket is required to remove or rearrange the fans. The fan blanking plate has two tabs holding it in place, along with two screws, and the whole thing is plastic, so you need to be gentle when removing it.

Back to the PSU: It's held in place by two screws and four tabs. It's held very securely by the tabs, but getting it under or off the tabs is a PITA. I don't know if it's the FP cables/housing (plastic box up front, behind FP) or the poor routing/strain relief on the power cable coming out the side, but something prevents it from sitting right on the tabs near the front side of the case, and you can't see them so it's wiggle jiggle until it falls in place, then press down on the left side and slide forward.

The Power/Reset/*LED wires are all on the left side...except one. But they're all the same length! I bundled them together and routed them under the PSU power cable, will tie them to the support bracket above the MB... except the short one.

Here's what it looks like, all said and done:

Seems like cable management will be a cakewalk. Some wires may have to switch sides depending on board layout, but looks good to me. Undecided on fan placement

 

[sladesurfer13]

Parts:
MB: Asrock B450 Gaming-ITX/AC (shipping)
CPU: TBD (Likely APU, considering the 3200/3000G)
Cooler: Noctua NH-L9a-AM4
RAM: TBD (Likely TEAMGROUP E+ 2x4GB 2400 cl16)
Storage: Crucial 128GB SATA SSD, to be upgraded later.

So far I've got the case and CPU cooler. I've unpacked and disassembled the case. It's a lot heavier than I expected, and assembly is funky – you must remove the HDD and FDD trays, and the power supply assembly in order to remove the fan bracket. You probably can't acces the lower screws on the fans with the motherboard installed either, so removing the bracket is required to remove or rearrange the fans. The fan blanking plate has two tabs holding it in place, along with two screws, and the whole thing is plastic, so you need to be gentle when removing it.

Back to the PSU: It's held in place by two screws and four tabs. It's held very securely by the tabs, but getting it under or off the tabs is a PITA. I don't know if it's the FP cables/housing (plastic box up front, behind FP) or the poor routing/strain relief on the power cable coming out the side, but something prevents it from sitting right on the tabs near the front side of the case, and you can't see them so it's wiggle jiggle until it falls in place, then press down on the left side and slide forward.

The Power/Reset/*LED wires are all on the left side...except one. But they're all the same length! I bundled them together and routed them under the PSU power cable, will tie them to the support bracket above the MB... except the short one.

Here's what it looks like, all said and done:

View attachment 247660

Seems like cable management will be a cakewalk. Some wires may have to switch sides depending on board layout, but looks good to me. Undecided on fan placement

I have that case for 5 years now as plex server

 

[Nobu]

I have that case for 5 years now as plex server

View attachment 247761

They must have changed the design. That looks completely different – Mine only has a narrow vent on the wide side where the 1/2 height pcie card goes, and the whole length of the narrow sides are vented. It's longer front to back (about 1/2 the width of the motherboard longer), has a bit more room above the motherboard for a cdrom, 2.5" hdds, and an internal PSU.

Edit: You got the ISK 110 VESA, similar, but much smaller and VESA mountable.

 

[Ready4Dis]

You may or may not want to wait this long, but the new APU's are coming soon and likely much higher end than the 3200g/3600g with zen2 improvements (curse you AMD for labeling APU's with the wrong generation). Looks like a pretty small case to work in, but should be nice when done. What kind of cooling is available for the case itself?

 

[Nobu]

I'm seriously considering it, just I know I'm not going to like the price.

Case has two 80mm fan positions (one occupied by a tri-cool) on one side of the case, with the PSU providing a third. It works kinda like a 1U server, where all the air flows from one side of the case to the other. Wanted a 1U cooler from dynatron, but nobody stocked it for a reasonable price.

If you remove the fan bracket (seen in the background of the photo above) you can barely fit one 92mm fan, but there's no way to secure it to the case without modification (except maybe with zipties). You could fit a second 92mm fan if you remove the power supply, but I don't think a third is possible on that side of the case.

I'm thinking about swapping the PSU with a 160w PicoPSU from mini-box, but they only have 1 molex and 1 sata connector by default, and I'd prefer two sata connectors for this case. There's a header to add another cable, but that would be unnecessary if....

Edit: after measuring, looks like 2.032 92mm fans could fit with the psu still installed, but it'd be really tight.

 

[Nobu]

Purchased an A6-8570E PRO off ebay for $35, will hold me over for now. Will probably get a 3300x and an nvidia 1030 (half-height, or a higher end full size card with a riser if I can find one <75W and single-slot) later on, or something better if I can hold out that long.

Edit: Well, A6-8570E doesn't work...could be because the psu only has a single 4pin 12v plug, but that's supposed to work (according to mb manual) so I'm pretty sure it's just not supported by the firmware.

 

[Nobu]

Third CPU's the charm...got a 3400g, and that one actually works. Currently borrowing half the RAM from my gaming system, will eventually buy a set for this one.

Cable routing is TIGHT – a mini-box pico-psu or hdplex 200w DC PSU would really help clean up the case, although I think I did a half-decent job.
The SSD could only be mounted the "wrong" way, which sorta threw a wrench in my plans wrt the sata power cable routing.
Front usb isn't working, which I can only attribute to the tight bend making it hard to insert in the header properly (thus, it's not).

 

[Vengance_01]

You can cut the support bracket so you can still fit 2 drives and slim ODM and this way you have cpu height clearance for larger cooler. I ram mine with a Noctua LP cooler with 4 HPs and 92mm fan

 

[Nobu]

You can cut the support bracket so you can still fit 2 drives and slim ODM and this way you have cpu height clearance for larger cooler. I ram mine with a Noctua LP cooler with 4 HPs and 92mm fan

Yeah, but I think it's fine as is. It can keep it under 80c (according to lmsensors in linux, with `stress -c 8`) with the fans running full blast. If I had a second 92mm fan on the side it'd probably be cooler, and with a pico-psu I could put a third and run them at a lower speed.

Main thing is the vrm are a bit hot and the psu is pumping more heat into the case (it's fan is set to pull air in), so if I solved those two problems heat would be a non-issue.

 

[Vengance_01]

Yeah, but I think it's fine as is. It can keep it under 80c (according to lmsensors in linux, with `stress -c 8`) with the fans running full blast. If I had a second 92mm fan on the side it'd probably be cooler, and with a pico-psu I could put a third and run them at a lower speed.

Main thing is the vrm are a bit hot and the psu is pumping more heat into the case (it's fan is set to pull air in), so if I solved those two problems heat would be a non-issue.

Yup No worries. Just sharing how ran for 2 years as my main plex server. Sounds like you got a handle on temps.

 

[Nobu]

Power supply and parts comin' in:

ONE2 160w DC-ATX plug-in
Various adaptors for ONE2 and below PSU
Mean Well RPS-200-12-c 200W AC-DC PSU
All shipped, should have everything by tuesday or wednsday.

Also got some pins and connector housings going to modmymods for a custom extension from the rear power connector to the RPS-200, and I'll probably get an ATX pin removal tool from them, too.

The RPS-200 will be half the length and, with the ONE2, eliminate the bulky 24-pin bundle of wires and the huge power cable running across the side and front of the case. I'll also be able to run the sata and 12v aux directly from below, which will clean up the front even more. It'll be nice not having to take everything apart to remove the RAM. lol

Edit: Also ordered some EMI/RFI shielding braided tube for the power from the rear panel to the power supply, so I don't have 60hz rf in my case.

 

[Nobu]

So I got impatient, disconnected and popped the flexatx psu out. Turns out, there are four threaded holes hiding under the PSU (screws are from the bracket assemblies):

Not sure what for, but I appreciate it none the less Antec! lol

Also pulled the other noctua fan off the cpu cooler and tried to fit it in the front where the PSU fan was, but it gets in the way of the tab I forgot about, which holds that side of the enclosure down. So instead, I ziptied it to the one in the back. I'll put the 80mm fan which came with the case in the front.

As for the CPU, I threw a CoolerMaster jetflo 120 that had three of it's ears break off on top of it for now. I'll probably get a thicker 92 or a 92 to 120mm shroud later on.

Oh, and I pulled the USB3 cable– turns out I bent just one of the pins in the header. Managed to get it straight enough that it goes into the cable. I really hate USB3 header-cables. Bulky and difficult to plug, always in the way.

 

[Nobu]

Cleaned up the cable routing a bit, and destroyed the front USB3 cable trying to shorten it. Well, it's salvageable, but not with my level of skill. Ordered a shorter one that I'll just hack the plastic off of to replace it.

Also ordered a Noctua NF-B9 Redux for the CPU cooler, and a fan splitter so I can run the two NF-A9x14 fans off one header.

The Mean Well and One2 power supplies are both scheduled to arrive Tuesday, and my custom power cable should be here around Friday. Found out some mb standoffs I have work in the threaded holes, so I might use them with the Meanwell if they line up. Only thing I can't seem to find is a 90° sata cable under 12" (4-5" would be perfect...).

 

[Nobu]

Got the Meanwell RPS-200 in–fedex left it in the rain, but digikey wrapped the unit well so just the shipping box was soaked.

This thing is tiny...like, I knew it was half the size, but it is diminutive, and light! Unfortunately, a little to long to put sideways, and a little too wide to put on end, so only one way it can go. Well, I briefly toyed with hanging it over the cpu cooler, but decided that was a bad idea. lol

And, as I had already figured out from the spec sheet, none of the mounting holes quite match up, so for now I attached some magnetic tape to the bottom to hold it in place. I'll do something more permanent later once I've decided on the cable routing.

Anyway, the fan, splitter, and usb cable are ready for pickup, and the one2 should be here in a day or two (currently lost somewhere between utah and here). I'll post more photos tomorrow or thurs.

 

[Nobu]

Couldn't get the flat usb3 cable to bend through the housing in the case front like the round one did, so I modified it like it should have been in the first place and ran it straight out the back. One loop over the PSU and straight down into the header.

Installed the NF-B9 redux (long screws that came with the l9 were just long enough), and the silverstone splitter cable to the 9x14's (nice fabric sleeving on there–noctua needs to talk to their supplier...).

Now I'm just waiting on that magical "forever-in-transit" package from j-hack to arrive so I can power it up. :/

Will take photos with the drive cage removed once I get the stuff from j-hack, but here's what it looks like so far:

All that's missing is the C5 A/C connector and cable, the DC power cable to the one2, the one2 plugin PSU itself, and the 4-pin and sata power cables.

Edit: j-hack stuff finally in state, power cord is shipped, and shielding is...somewhere, prob in mississippi.

 

[Nobu]

Got the stuff from j-hack today. Put it all together and...it works! Had to trim the header side of the USB3 cable to clear the pcb of the one2 plug-in ups, and temporarily route the power out the side, but otherwise no issues.

As expected, the 80mm fan is the loudest, even on low. Still whisper quiet, and all the heat is forced out the side because of the layout. Might have to rethink it if I had a pcie gpu, though. Kinda wanna try it in my sg06 now...but don't wanna tear it down just for that.

And some questionable solder work...

 

[Nobu]

Put a piece of styrofoam behind the cpu fan to force air to go around or down into the cooler instead of flying across the top. Dropped max temp from ~82 to 74 with `stress -c 8` running (so fans only get to ~80% instead of 100%). Will make something more elegant and less melty later on.

Also put a ziptie around those two white connectors on the one2 because I didn't like how the 5-pin connector was flexing.

 

[Nobu]

Switched fans from intake to exhaust and tossed the styro out, max temp dropped to 70c now, much better.

Also, that one led on the plug-in board is super bright...

Lights up the wall on the other side of the room. D: