I'm just obsessed with tiny tiny builds, is all Thin Mini ITX and Mini STX are my specialties. There actually is a low profile 1050 out there IIRC, and I think I saw an article on this very site saying an LP RX 460 card was in the works.
Yep, there are LP versions of both the RX 460 and GTX 1050 (Ti). All are double slot, though. And no matter what, a half-height PCIe card is taller than a standard I/O plate, so why limit yourself to thin mITX? Are there cases out there fitting thin mITX + sideways-mounted dual slot, half-heigh GPUs? How would you then cool your CPU? Why not then go for something like the S4 Mini case, that fits full height GPUs and reasonably-sized HSFs? It also essentially limits you to oddball server motherboards. Still makes little sense IMO. I understand the interest/obsession, though. I'm leaning the same way myself. After building a combo HTPC/NAS in a Node 304 last year, I now want to make that into a dedicated NAS and make another, truly tiny (think Pico-PSU, ITX and iGPU) HTPC. That'll have to wait, though
You realize that Enthoo Envolv ITX case has a displacement of 34L?
All the following ITX cases have full GPU support:
Inwin 901 is about 24L
Silverstone ML08/RVZ02 is about 15L
Node 202 is about 11L
And then we have:
Kimera Cerebus is 18L ... its a mATX with dual full GPU support!
I don't understand why anyone that is building around an ITX motherboard (with its ITX markup) would be in a market for an ITX case that has the displacement more than some mATX cases. Just go the mATX route!
The problem is that the In-win 901 has
awful cooling. A single intake fan? A single exhaust? If you want water, you can mount a single 120mm rad
outside of the case? A case that's designed to look great, just with a tumor of a radiator hanging off the back? I agree, the case looks fantastic, and it has some good ideas going for it. It's just not suitable for a >250W PC. I'd hesitate to put anything above a stock-clocked 7700k and an RX 480 in there.
I'll (in all likelyhood) be buying an Enthoo Evolv ITX. Why?
-I can keep my Supernova G2 750W PSU that I bought 18 months ago (while you might argue that I should have bought an SFX(-L) PSU if I planned to go SFF, I'd counter with the fact that there wasn't a single model suitable for powering my Fury X available at the time. The Corsair 650W was out of the question due to its 92mm fan)
-I can fit 1x120 + 2x120 of radiators in there while still having a good supply of fresh, non-heated air over the motherboard from the front
-It's still
far smaller than most mATX cases. At least ones with decent water cooling capabilities.
-I can actually route/hide cables, and don't have to go with a fully custom power cable setup.
I
could go for a Bitfenix Prodigy M. That would
seriously limit my water cooling options, though. What's the point of going mATX if one of my radiators is blocking the last PCIe slots (and all the front panel connectors)?
And that's the whole point: stuffing high-end hardware into a tiny case pretty much requires water cooling (after all, if you look at any discussion of the ML08, Node 202, S4 Mini or other
tiny cases, the question isn't "Does it throttle?" but "How much does it throttle?" Making investing in high-end hardware a waste).
While I could fit everything I want into a Cerberus, a) it's not available, and b) it's $250 (+ shipping, import fees and VAT when having it shipped to Norway, which would land it at ~$350). I could also design a case myself, making it as small as possible while fitting everything I want/need. I neither have the time, money or equipment necessary for this, even if the idea is nice.