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Yeah, but I like the idea of using current hardware, so for now prefer the R9. I wish nvidia had its new chips out, but apparently that's still 4-6 months away.
I have been underwhelmed by every Intel CPU release since Sandy Bridge - that was truly a great step forward in every conceivable way. IMO, all we see right now are incremental upgrades and too much focus on the integrated graphics. I am pretty sure you would have seen this already, but the ITX motherboards only have 2 DIMM slots - thus you need to ensure that the RAM will be sufficient for your usage.
No experience with Silverstone PSU, but I doubt it will be bad - they have a reputation to uphold and can't see them using sub-standard parts. It is extremely nice that it is modular and that Silverstone included shortened cables. This will make building the PC much easier with just having less cable clutter to take care of. Cable clutter is a major pain when building in smaller cases.
The case looks very well designed and thought out. As always, heat becomes a concern in smaller cases - I read you plan on watercooling the CPU (assuming a Corsair AIO) which will allow you some flexibility in managing where you exhaust your CPU heat. Heat from the GPU is an unknown for me - I prefer the standard reference design for smaller cases since they blow air out of the expansion slots. The R9 Nano exhausts some of its warm air back inside the case which may be detrimental to other parts. If you place your radiator to exhaust heat from the case, then warm air from the GPU will cause CPU cooling (and other mobo parts) to be less efficient. Placing it as an intake may be the better option, but that could lead to slightly warmer temps for your mobo parts. In an ideal world, I would watercool the GPU as well (there are AIOs available for that - probably not yet for the R9 Nano), but you need to determine whether it is viable.
I assume you have thought of all of the above already - you seem to know what you are doing - these are just some thought on your planned build.
The nice thing about the R9 Nano is it's short. So I could fit an ATX sized PSU instead of SFX, and I can find a much quieter ATX PSU than SFX.
I haven't fully decided on water vs air, I don't intend to do much of an overclock, my days of using my workstation to backtest are over - the most CPU intensive thing I do is encoding video and it's not that often. I prioritize size, noise, reliability, over getting an extra 10% overclock on water.
Just struggling a bit knowing for certain the mITX is the way to go, one problem is all mITX boards only have (1) Ultra M.2 slot and the biggest NVMe I can find is 512GB. I'm currently running a 1TB SSD. I could move things around and make a 512GB work, but 1TB would be better (or 2x512GB M2 NVMe RAID 0).
I am a huge fan of Seasonic PSUs, in fact, they are the only brand I own and I have no complaints. However, standard PSU cables can become a pain to manage in tight spaces. As far as I know, Silverstone are the only company that offer shorter cables at a reasonable price.
For the cable kit - SilverStone Technology Co., Ltd.INTRODUCTION?PP05-E
For the PSU - HARDOCP - Conclusion - SilverStone Strider Gold S ST75F-GS Power Supply Review. You can read the review, but it seems to get noisy at 75% load.
Never used either of the above, but for my next mATX build this is what I will buy.
You can always have custom cables made, but the cost can be more than your PSU. Corsair (built by Seasonic) offers braided cables for sale, but I am not sure if they have shorter cables as well. Just be aware that even though Corsair PSU are built by Seasonic their pinouts differ, which means you can't use the Corsair cables with a Seasonic (or any other) PSU.
Regarding the M2 slots, you could always just place another SSD on SATA. I am not sure whether you could RAID-0 them, or whether you can create one pool with Intel SRT (SSD caching) - I have never used SRT and not sure if it would even work in this application, but in theory it could be a solution if you absolutely need one pool. Worst case, you have your OS and programs on the NVMe SSD and all your data on the SATA SSD.
You could always get a dedicated NAS running GB LAN to store your data. A RAID5 / RAID-Z1 array can read plenty fast and can be faster than an internal HDD (network allowing) - not sure how fast it will be compared to a SSD.
BitFenix Phenom M, but it's plastic (ugh). Dimensions are 13 H x 9.8 W x 14.7 D.
Dimenions are close enough it makes no real difference, pick based on preference.
By comparison, the Ncase M1 mITX is: 9.4 H x 6.3 W x 12.9 D.
I'm going to piece together a mATX build just to compare to the mITX build before I make a final decision. mATX gives an additional PCIe (or two) but still only 1xM2 NVMe slot. Have to move to full ATX to get boards with dual or triple M2 slots it seems.
If anyone can find a mATX board with 2xUltra M2 slots, please let me know.