small form factor gaming computers - smallest possible [ 4 liter ] build

 This is my spot for describing the tiny, high performance computers that i have been building.

Although over 60 years of age, i continue to enjoy computer gaming.

And, i am not talking about tetris.

Lately, i am playing Doom 2016 at the ultra violence level, at 1440 p and at 180 frames per second, with all settings on ultra.

Even this somewhat modest level of play requires a high wattage video card and processor.

Trying to keep 500 watts of parts relatively cool in a tiny case is a real challenge.

In fact, it is a very cool game itself!

Feast your eyes on my smallest build, from the mother board side.

The case is sandwich style, with the mother board and graphics card on opposite sides of a divider.

The case is the A1 from a Chinese company called zzaw. Actually, a pretty good case, made of 2 mm thick aluminum. 

the power supply is the Enhance Flex 600W Power Supply ENP-7660B

it is costly, and you pretty much have to swap out the noisy fan that comes built in.

So, this is a pretty hard project for an ordinary builder of large computers.

In fact, i failed to get the Noctua NF-A4x20 PWM, Premium Quiet Fan, 4-Pin (40x20mm, Brown) to run on the internal pins of the power supply. i had to leave a 4 pin fan connector sticking out of the power supply along with the bundle of wires that depart it. So, i used one of the 3 fan headers on this particular mother board, which is the GIGABYTE B550I AORUS PRO AX.

Other items that i used are the samsung 980 pro m.2 drive with heat sink,

and a set of 2 * 8 gig ram sticks at 3.6 gHz and the amd 5600G processor.

In fact, the low end processor from amd can not run an m.2 drive at it's full speed, but an expensive, fast solid state drive is still a useful investment.

The processor is also not the right choice for using with a  graphics card, because it has on board graphics that displace some of it's ordinary processing abilities.

I chose it to run without a gpu during the chip shortage when it was hard to obtain one.

When it tried to upgrade the 5600 G with a 5900 X, i received a bad processor from Amazon. This problem was rampant with the mail order companies at the start of covid.

you would pay full price for a new part, and get an open box with a bad used part.

I also got an intel mother board in a taped shut bag with no gigabyte materials, and it was broken to hell. I tried to send it, and the i7 processor [that also arrived opened and used] back to Amazon, and they refused to take back the processor. 

I had already been banned from reviewing products, because i would reveal their various scams to customers. So, not a huge thumbs up for the company that has become our supplier of everything.

 

Are AMD processors good?

This was my first experience with amd.

These processors are just for gaming, and do not work well in tight cases or for anything outside of gaming. For an example, the 5600 G is limited to clock speeds of 3 to about 4.5 gHz.

That is great for gaming, but terrible for watching a movie. The AMD chip sits there trying to bake a batch of cookies while idling at 1 or 3 % of its wattage. Even for gaming, the intel processors work much better. An intel chip will ramp up to 5 gHz, and just stay there for the whole game. An AMD chip will start at 5 gHz, but pull down to 4.3 when it is loaded. Also AMD gave up on quality control and stopped testing the chips at the factory during the shortage. so, together with the scammy way that the same dead chips are sold again and again at Amazon, you were almost sure to get a bad chip and to have trouble selling it back to amazon. The flip side of the argument is that AMD is reusing the socket for many years, instead of creating a custom socket for each generation of processor. i was impressed with how much graphics power could be packed into the processor itself, but, in the end, this really does not matter. Modern gaming simply does not work well on a processor chip. It requires a card of it's own, with a separate way to remove hundreds of watts of heat.

on the gpu side of the divider, you can see the cute little dual fan gtx 1660 super from zotak. 

this gpu is actually way more powerful than the huge 1660s of the past, because it deploys modern memory that is twice as fast. It allows this tiny box to game for as long as desired at 1080p with ultra settings, or 1440p with pretty high settings and frame rates. there is no ray tracing, and even if ray tracing existed, you would turn it off when gaming using this 125 watt graphics card.

you can see the 4 terrabyte hard drive that is jammed into the slot that has been provided for cables to change sides. i was not sure that this arrangement would work thermally, but with the bare metal top of the drive pressed to the aluminum case, the slim 92 mm fan at the top of the case pulls enough air past the drive to keep it quite cool. It is good that the case maker provided the holes on the bottom, and the tall legs, so that plenty of air could enter the case to be pumped back out through the power supply, and to send a draft past the hard drive, and out through the top. The gpu draws fresh air from the side of the case, and sends it out the top.

All fans are from Noctua, which is the Austrian company that makes the most quiet fans in the world. If there is room, it is possible to swap the gpu fans for Noctuas as well. In this case, there is 1 mm between the fans and the case, so I tied the gpu back with a zip tie and left the stock fans in place.

Performance: the standard way to get smooth gaming is to use a program like msi afterburner, and a benchmark program like heaven, to tune the fan speeds and the voltage for the gpu.

the idea is to load the GPU fully, and to lower the GPU voltage until it looses stability, and then raise it back to the last stable voltage. the fans are tuned to give both cool temps and an acceptable level of noise.
I can go into way more detail, or even create a build video if readers wish to build their own small form factor gamer.  I has been fun to learn more about modern computers. They have become a sort of light sculpture or visual delight, as well as an expensive fun-oven to play with. 

finally, we need to get a feel for the size of this build...

here is my very lovely assistant testing the small build for sturdiness.  He is clearly coiling up for a huge jump, to see if he can reach a very high shelf where he likes to roost. Also, the size is pretty apparent. it is a little small for a cat bed, or maybe even for a cat podium. The A1 case fits in a Pelican 1400 Case.

the only thing better than a cat..... is Two cats!

do current events seem fictional?

 I have been reading and writing sci fi for as long as I can remember.

I mean, as soon as I could write, and was given materials, I began a sci fi story that had been brewing in my mind. 

It was not very interesting, suggesting that a previous period in human history had been more advanced in many ways than the present time.

Real life has never gotten very 'science fictiony'.

What I mean by that: events transpired in a predictable way, where the humans often seemed sane.

To put it another way, if the real events had been found in a novel, the reader would have had no trouble believing in them.

That is no longer true.

Many recent events seem like the plot of a bad science fiction novel.

Things happen, and I say to myself: 'self, that is not really believable!'

I imagine that I am reading the novel of a lazy writer or a writer that is just plain bad.

It is possible that I have gotten too old to accept new events.

Maybe that is what aging is, and each human eventually starts to think that they may be an actor in a lazily written novel.

a decade ago, if I had been shown this outline for a book, I would have rejected it as a stupid plot for a novel:

A new type of computer program is devised, where people visit with one another remotely. they quit visiting in person. This program gets so popular that it is used by an enemy country to help elect a decisively unqualified president.

This president restarts the American civil war, had simply been delayed for over for about a century and a half.

This president refuses to leave office at the end of his term, and leads a coup to remain in power.

The coup fails, but the United States is left with a supreme court packed with highly religious and conservative justices.

Even with a democratic president, a democratic house, and a democratic senate, this supreme court immediately begins to roll back the last 200 years of progress in human rights.

Women loose the right to abortion, and minorities take a step back toward enslavement.

With some irony, a civil war reignites in Russia. [A state that succeeded in leaving the Soviet Union is  retaken by force]. 

It is clearly bad writing, because the war is symmetrical with the American civil war that has also reignited.

The only difference is that the American states were prevented from leaving the US, while this large soviet state did leave, and is being grabbed back.

More lazy writing... The US arms the soviet state that is being retaken.

At first, the US sends tank killing shoulder launched missiles.

But later, the US starts sending billions of dollars in long range missiles to the breakaway state, and positions troops along the soviet border.

It is the Cuban missile crisis in reverse, but, having had more time to forget ww2, folks have more taste for world war. It seems like it will be profitable. Well worth the human lives.

In a later blog, I would like to explore this idea of a taste for world war. Howe and Stowe talk about an 80 to 100 year cycle that brings us back to total war every 4 generations. It is their 'seasons' theory.

In the Seasons theory, a generation is embroiled in all out war, and they do not like it. The next gen has almost no taste for war, but the next has slightly more, and, after a cycle of 4 generations, the folks who were alive during the last world war are all gone. A big war once again seems profitable, and not so bad to live through.

I regret that I have no solution to present.

I mean, other than we cease to sell land mines and missiles to everyone. And, that we once again strive to reduce nuclear weapons before someone makes a second use of them in war.

What happened to Hollywood ?

 This is a real question. The way that it stands now, American movies tend to be about crimes and people talking on their phones. So, stealing money and the cell phone experience seem to be what Americans are 'on' about.

The country is in economic default and deeply involved in a years long cold civil war, so it is no surprise that creative juices have flown the coup. The US is still reeling from Covid, even though we have a vaccine. Basically, about a tenth of the population have packed the supreme court, and are now changing voting laws and health laws. In effect, the black race is somewhat enslaved again, and women are once again becoming the property of men.

The 10% are the cheaters in our culture. the folks who copy homework and test answers in school. The ones who gang up, play dirty, and cheat while playing monopoly with their own family.

Hell, democratic supreme court justices can no longer go to the court in person, because the republican justices will absolutely not mask or vaccinate. And, I guess that people who are party to a slow coup and massive civil disobedience are entertained differently. We enjoy learning new tidbits that make us hate and loose more respect for 'the other side'.

Americans care mostly about the economy. The 'economy' is just a word for people's mental slavery. We have all bought into a system where there is a 'house' that wins no matter what we do. The economy is a system where we can exchange goods easily, but it has it's own overhead. There is a class of people who act as parasites on the money itself. They wear super nice clothes, and get very nice haircuts, but they squat over the flow of money. They take what they want from the flow, and poop into it without any regrets. They have been taught that 'it is only business'.

We used to value bravery and honesty. Now, we have been shown [by electing an evil US president] that bravery and honesty are for suckers. Truth is for suckers. Altruism? Hahahahahahahahaha! suckers! Science was big for a while, but now, we are working with hate and lies. Our culture is like a depressed person that is engaged in self harm, and thinking of suicide. Why else heat up the earth on purpose, and wipe out the other species of animals?

As it happens, I do have an explanation. We are where we are in history because we failed to pilot our ship. We let it drift on the currents, and we refused to guide it. Every time that we tried to let someone steer, that single person went crazy. So, we let money steer the ship of our history. That seemed perfect for a while. We created a new type of person: The corporation. The corporation could do what a person could not accomplish. It could not die like a person, but continued when the founders passed on. And, it was thought that a corporation could not go crazy. In trying to obtain all of the money in the world, a corporation would automatically do only good deeds for human beings.

We let the corporations steer the ship of our fate. Over time, more and more parasites formed on the blood vessels that carry the flow of money throughout the body of the economy. Again, the parasites have nice haircuts, and helpful sounding names. They provide 'energy' and 'search results' and 'social connection' and cheap consumer goods.

Now, it appears that money can not be used to steer a ship properly. Just like a human being, a corporation can go crazy. It can engage in self harm. It can have fights with other corporations and even with governments. And, it looks like chasing money to steer a ship runs it right into things. The prisons  and hospitals in the US are examples of systems that were arranged with the wrong notions of what success looks like. They maximize money for shareholders, but treat human beings like ball bearings to be ground up in the machine. Who the hell feels sorry for ball bearings? you just get angry with ball bearings if they go dry, and are ruined along with everything around them.

It is possible to re design the system, but humans like to do it with world wars. We have one around once per century, and they really shuffle things around. We wish to have one every time that the soldiers from the last world war die off. They remembered how crappy a world war is. That is where we are at now. The US is trying very hard to get a world war going. The best way is to interfere with another countries satellite nations. It is like messing with someone's kids. They will knock the crap out of you for messing with their personal stuff. China and Russia have not attempted to prevent us from building a stupid border wall. They have said little about our practice of torturing folks that were never convicted of a crime in semi-secret prisons. They have permitted us to chase people away from the southern border with US and Mexican soldiers. To punish families by taking their kids and locking them into small cages while driving the adults away.

We have done hundreds of things that other countries could take exception to. Deeds that no one in China or Russia or anywhere could take pride in. Deeds that look a lot like war crimes. We have attacked our reporters instead of toning down the obvious misdeeds. We have the best investigative reporters under investigation, and jail them or run them off  when they reveal too much. Yet, we seem eager to become involved in China and Taiwan. We wish to take part in a war between Russia and a satellite nation. I am sure that we would not love it if Putin decided to take down part of the border wall between the US and Mexico. What if Beijing decided to place an additional border between the US and Canada? It all sounds crazy, but how do you think that US aggression looks to these older and more established nation states? China is about 5 - 10 times as old as the US as a nation, depending on how you count it. We, on the other hand, do not count the US as a country while it was held by Native Americans. I am not sure why this is. It points to a deep problem with the people that 'settled' or 'attacked' north America.

From the Native American perspective, This place was attacked and largely depopulated and destroyed. It is only the good settlers that think that it was 'saved' or 'settled'. We are a newer nation founded on war crimes, and currently struggling with racism and a corporate takeover of the government. We should absolutely not be acting on China or Russia's borders. It would be a good time to stop purchasing humans from warlords and torturing them to death. We need to break up our monopolies and fix the broken systems of medicine and election and transportation. We need to break up cities. We need to switch from fossil fuel to renewables. We do not need to go to other planets or to fly through the upper atmosphere on a tail of burning oil products. We do not need to place mines or drop fossil fuel bombs on other nations.

The money system will select war and increased inequality. There are plenty of signs that we have fallen into the trap that caught Germany twice.  I have been reviewing video of ww2, and our current military gatherings look just like that. We have the snappy uniforms, and the blind nationalism. We built a bunch of new weapons, and sent them to the border of our traditional enemies. We let Germany take a bunch of countries in Europe before we took action. The US was once a fairly peaceful country.

Economic inflation is spiraling, just like it did in 1930s Germany. We have a pandemic that we were unable to deal with, race wars, new restrictive laws, and election problems. I learned more about the Cuban missile crisis, and was surprised at some of the facts. Russia had place nukes in Cuba because we had secretly placed them in Turkey. Both are great launch locations for short range nukes. The overt Cuban installation was dismantled along with the secret Turkish one.

Now, we are building 'anti ballistic missile sites' right along the Russians border. It is common knowledge that short range nukes can also be placed there with no obvious changes. Is Russia secretly placing similar missiles off of our coastline? Subs can be anywhere! What would you do if you were Putin?

Sadly, I have realized that we can actually have a pandemic, a civil war, and a world war at the same time. Right winger organizers are in the position of Nazi party members. They use 'gambits', where you purposely harm yourself in order to get what you want: Refusing the vaccination so that hospitals are filled with un-vaxed republicans on life support; Forming blockades to protest mandates by killing trade and travel; and, all kinds of gerrymandering and new voting laws intended to invalidate democratic votes.

I wonder if we can avoid starting a world war on purpose by splitting up the US at this point. The first US civil war is still simmering. It did not end in 1886. Not all the way. This time, we should not fight. We should split up somewhat amiably, as did the EU and Russia. China has too much history to split up into several Chinas, but they like economic war instead of shooting. And, they are kicking our ass that way! That is my suggestion. One group of US states can go back to lynching with ropes instead of knees. They can convert women into property, and maybe remove female suffrage. They can build walls, and conduct the doxing and the armed protests that they favor.

The world would see us as less of a threat. I believe that leaders and citizens all over the world see us as an ultra nationalistic threat. I may be the only US citizen that thinks that there is a plan for the destruction of the US that has been discussed between leaders of many nations. If they won this war, they would divide the US up, and take away our guns and ships and uniforms. that would probably create a situation similar to Germanys between the world wars. Another war would be inevitable. I doubt that the earth would be recognizable after ww3 and ww4.

anyway.... have a great day!