after finally having some free time between exams and work, and enough money to build it. i decided to assemble a decent pc, both for interference and general usage. due to limited budget i chose to pick up a refurbished thinkcenter m700 and a 12GB 3060. the problem? the thinkcenter is an sff pc. so it would have never fit the card, plus due to using a proprietary psu i couldn't upgrade it to something that could run the card.
so that's when the quest began to see how i could ever shoehorn a card+ psu in this mess.
the first thing that arrived was the thinkcentre, so i got to work trying to find a way to make both the pc's and the gpu's psus on at the same time. so i needed some power that would turn on as soon as the pc turned on to power a relay, and thus, turn on the gpu psu.
Luckily the pc had two SATA connectors for powers, one of which i opted to put an ssd in, so the 12V line was free. it was a bit annoying since it used a CPU molex, but the box of scrap parts took care of that:
i ended up adding the relay on the 12V line to turn on the other supply
and the original connector that was in the pc on the 5V to power the ssd.
then it came time to fit the harness inside of the pc, i managed to snake it in... even if i had to mess with zip ties since i had spliced the ssd wire the wrong way around. but in the end, the pc side came out pretty well:
fast forward a couple of weeks (courtesy of the postal system shipping my package to the other side of the country by mistake), i got the card, the psu and the riser.
since i wasn't able to find a riser that turned 90° to the right, i had to place the gpu above the psu, and make a bracket to hold it up, since the riser cable was as stiff as rock. plus i had the idea that after it was all buttoned up, the psu fan would pull air through the gpu as well, somewhat aiding it.
after mocking it up with books, it didn't look too bad so i went on with it.
so now i had to make the bracket, the holes in the top cover to allow both the riser and the switched line out of the case, and find out how to hold and protect this whole mess... so to the workshop i work at we go.
luckily they allowed me in on sundays so i could use all the tools we had in there. (the joys of working as a small artisan :-D)
i have to admit, having a card worth so mutch in the midst of alluminium shaving felt wrong in a way i can't explain, in a laptop next to a pool way.
first thing first, the holes in the case, i just roughly marked where they where supposed to go, and i added the leeway to allow the panel to slide open. the riser hole was done with an angle grinder, while the switched line hole was done with a christmas tree drill bit to 12mm:
now i had to find something that could cover up the sharp ends of the cut, both to not destroy the riser cable and my fingers.
luckily we had just bought new band saw blades, and the blade protectors fit perfectly for this job:
now to the psu and bracket for the gpu: my idea was to add two plates to anchor the gpu to the psu, using the card's pci mount to bolt it on. and then add some brackets to allow the psu to screw where the case screws went, locking it all in place:
it's ugly as sin, but in the end it was going to be covered up, so it didn't matter.
the card was locked in place with a nut and bolt in the hole where the screw to secure the card would go, and a bolt/washer/wing nut set to hold the other side, in between the two slot "teeth" the card has.
now i just needed something to hold up the back of the card, since holding it just from the faceplate felt like an extremely dumb idea.
an L extrusion with some of the blade protector on top did the job, i was even able to use the psu's fan screws to lock it in place:
now it was mechanically sturdy, it just lacked a shell to cover it up, in between the scraps i found a sheet of something that would work. i only know it from brand name, but it's essentially a foam panel sandwitched between two alluminium plates, if you cut only one panel, you can bend it and it looks pretty good. so i went with it.
i added L brackets on the pc panel with rivets to hold it steady, and made some holes in the panel to let the card exaust both out of the front and back.
(frankly if it wasn't for the psu cables i would have made it out of plexiglass, since seeing the card suspended like this is beautiful)
now it was just time to bring it out of the workshop and button it all up:
and that's it. i'm surprised it took around a week to build it all, excluding the exodus the gpu had to take to arrive to me.
the only problem i have left now is that during the heavyest workload i need it to run; the card reaches 77°C and i'm not sure if it's dangerous for the card to be cycled between 77°C and 51°C while it writes to the hdd. due to thermal stress.
the problem isn't the air flow of the case, but the fact that the pc is placed in an under desk shelf, the heat is pushed backwards and outwards by the gpu and psu fans, but the hot air still rises toward the top, where the card intakes air.
i'm already seeing if i can put fans in the cubby under the desk, but i'm also seeing if i can undervolt the gpu to have it heat less, since from what i could understand the performance loss is minimal up to a certain point.
the problem with that is that nvidia doesn't expose the core voltage in the drivers for linux (... torvalds was right in this front). i found that there is a workaround to do that with LACT but i'm afraid it's going to mess the card's warranty or the card itself. what do you think? (i'm going to post the question aside as well so people don't have to go through a bible worth of build montage)
i want to thank all the peeps in the !localllama@sh.itjust.works and !pcmasterrace@lemmy.world communities for helping me understand the technicalities of this whole mess, since i never had hardware this poweful at hand.
especially @Smokeydope@lemmy.world and @brucethemoose@lemmy.world from the locallama community for helping me figure out if it was even worthwhile to do this, and for giving me clues for setting up an enviroment to run it all.
and @fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com from the pcmasterrace community for helping me figure out air flow issues.