Meshlicious Build Guide - Step by Step to an SFF Gaming Tower!

you can fit quite a few goodies in this 14.7 liter mini itx tower and you've made a very good choice in the soft mesh luscious for your next sff build i've done a few videos on this case already but today let's do a step-by-step build guide for your very powerful gaming rig well the machines are more i'm going to talk through some of the build components but then let's get right into it since this will be more of a detailed gaming build guide and i'm making this guide primarily for someone who hasn't built an sff case or someone who's new to pc building or walking parts over from in something like an atx build but of course i hope this is helpful to everyone who's interested in this case this build isn't going to be very difficult but i'm going to be a little bit more meticulous about the cable management the mesh solutions is a great starter case so let's just talk real quick about the case here the one i'm building in today is the white pcie 4.0 version and at least as of the time the video the dual mesh panel is the only panel configuration that's available with this particular riser cable and i definitely recommend going for the 4.0 version if you have a pcie 4.0 board and gpu for this build we'll be using the amd ryzen 5 5600x and pairing that with the evga xc3 ultra 3080 and this type of pairing is ideal for a serious gaming machine now those are your two main components one thing is because i'll be showing you the so-called standoff mod you do have to use a cooler with a low cpu block height so i'm going to be deploying this corsair h115i pro because it's the only 280 i have with a low enough pump height but this radiator is going to be a pretty tight fit in terms of the length so i would recommend going with something a little bit shorter and i'll list some options down below but if you use this radiator it's going to work marginally but just be where it's super tight so i'll talk through the remainder of the parts and i'll give you a bit more detail as we build let's get started all right you won't need any specialized tools for the build you just need a phillips two screwdriver and a micro screwdriver then uh some flush cutters or scissors to trim the zip ties so the first thing we're going to do is do a little prep work once you've got the case unpacked we can pop up the panels here and i'd recommend just taking off all of them right away that way we're not impeded by anything your case is not going to come with these cables pre-managed i've already done this to kind of show how i'm going to lay it out if you have a different version of the case that's fine the build steps are still the same and where there is a slight variation for the glass panel noted now if you have the pcie 3.0 ryzer cable version this is the 4.0 riser cable there's gonna be a slight variation for the glass panel and i'll note that when we come to that step if you have the pcie 3.0 riser version and you have a pcie 4.0 compatible board and you don't have integrated graphics you're going to have to make sure that you're able to force the board into pci 3.0 mode it's a bit tricky so that's why i recommend the 4.0 version if that's your build specs so right out of the box we're going to do a little bit of a mod it's a standoff mod pretty popular with a lot of meshlicious builds and we're going to locate this adapter here this is the standoff tool comes with your hardware kit and it just pops into your screwdriver like that so pretty convenient what this is going to do is it's going to give you a little bit more breathing room for cable management i've already loosened these up so i can just take these off so it should look like this you should have four uh standoffs right here so i'll leave this kit linked down below these are m3 standoffs which is a little easier to find if you have 16 32 standoffs you can just extend the stock ones with an additional 20 millimeter standoff and so pretty handy you can use it for other projects too so the way i've done it is i've taken one of these shorter standoffs put a nut on it and this is a 20 millimeter piece that approximates the roughly 26 27 millimeters we'll need and you'll see it's female threaded at both ends what we'll do is we'll pop a screw through okay the hole and then we'll just uh tighten it up this way so we'll just thread this through it's not actually engaging the the tree it's just it needs a little help to go through i'm going to do since i'm here i've taken off the screws from the riser cable i'm going to do the same thing here i'm actually going to extend it out uh this is only possible because i'm using a two slot card with the 380 xe3 and i'm just gonna pop these standards now these aren't the same these have a screw at the bottom so just make sure you don't lose that this is female threaded on both ends and then this again because i didn't get the good angle on this shot so so this is the standoff that i'm putting on the riser cable sign this is the 20 millimeter spacer and this will push out the gpu just enough it doesn't have to be in 20 millimeter increments you can adjust there's no real concept of slot spacing down here there's enough flexibility with a riser that you can kind of just anchor your gpu down wherever it's appropriate so i've just put two and then a screw through on the other side similar to how we did the motherboard risers and the nice thing of having a kit like this is that you can kind of play around and experiment find the right one that works for you you may have to add or subtract a multitude of combinations available like this the other thing we'll do make sure we just take this off and we're going to swap this one to the inside we're doing this because we did the standoff mod if you're not doing the standoff mod there's no reason to do this unless you're actually shifting your board out okay and that would require the whole divider to be shifted um here we're not actually changing the position of that divider so i've already done the build and i took it apart just so i had the optimal cable management to show you guys and i left it here but this is how i would run it and we'll work on the cable management first just because it's a little more challenging in this case uh for this build i'm going to be using this corsair sf600 power supply this is uh it's enough power for this cpu and gpu combo but you know it's totally fine too if you want to use a higher powered unit i'm also optionally using a set of mesh cables here that these are regular atx length this is fine for this case since actually the cables travel uh quite a distance to manage properly so first up i'll talk through the cables this is the 24 pin pretty easy to identify this will connect to your motherboard and we're gonna route it so it's gonna come out and around this way all right later on so we'll just kind of put it roughly into position here next up this is the eps cable this provides power to the cpu it's a little bit different you'll see this has a cleave in the middle here so this is how you identify that the psu cables they're often labeled as well so just make sure you know that you're riding the right one here and this one i would typically have it come around this way and that way it can still loop around and connect in this top left corner so this is kind of roughly where we'll position it and so this is the other end of the eps cable this is where it'll hook into the power supply these are going to be your pcie power cables you're going to need two of these and this will hook up to the gpu all right and so you'll see this is uh a six plus two you put it together for eight pins and this gpu will use eight plus eight so just make sure you got two separate ones have these kind of tidied up around here i i you'll notice this is not tight just because i want that slack once we fit the gpu in there and then we've got these to the right length we can kind of pull the cable back and then tighten this down if needed and this is another cable here as well finally because of the ao cooler that we're using we're going to say the power cable you can also use this for hdds or ssds if you're running one of those but i don't have the one of these cables where it just has a single end so unfortunately this is a little bit more cable to manage but uh we'll make it work so how you install your power supply that's going to vary if you're using the glass panel so if you're using the glass panel you can do one of two things you can flip the fan in and then that way it can draw air from the middle of the case but there's a lot of cables here and there's a partial it's partially covered here so that's not the best way if you're going to do the glass panel what i would do is uh instead of mounting it on these holes i'd inset it to this uh to this set here and then just screw it in there because that that gives you a gap for for the power supply to breathe but since this is the pcie 4.0 riser cable version and there's only a mesh panel version currently that's what we can mount this on the outermost part and we'll just make sure that you've got this rubber spacer in here for the sfx power supply pop this in like that and then these are your power supply screws that come with your power supply [Music] okay one two three four i'm just gonna start connecting the cables up these are all gonna be the same type along here along the outside so you can hook those three up first and then your sata power cable is going to go on on this end over here [Music] right [Music] but this one will come around so you can see i've got the 24 pin cable in here uh right here as well so that's where that is that's a lot of cables to manage but it will uh it will all make sense shortly this is roughly how we're going to do it say the cable's going to be here we'll tuck it in nicely later your pcie cables your state of data sata power cable and then the atx cable back here all right all right with all that done let's move the case aside and let's prep our motherboard a mini itx board like this is the best for this case even though a mini dtx crosshair impact 8 can fit for the motherboard we're going to go with this asus b550 itx board and the sport is just fine for the 5600x and there's no real need to go more robust on the power to the roof or 5600 x i think the gigabyte b550 itx is the better board but for the meshes just the asus board is actually quite ideal since it has this front panel usbc header the 5600x is one of the best gaming cpus you can get right now especially for the money it's not meaningfully far away from something like a 5900x either and it just makes mincemeat out of high frame rate gaming that single core performance is just so good on this one go ahead and open up this lever here on your board and then we'll pop this in just like that now you gotta be careful make sure it's in the holes the pins are engaged in there properly okay just feel it before you tighten anything down okay okay make sure ryzen that you can read it this way from the perspective of the rear i o and just press that lever down now the other advantage of going with chip like this is that if you're doing something more than gaming at full load it's not hard to keep cool power draw is just right for the meshlicious multi-core performance it's still very competitive with the cpu next we can pop our storage in for this build i'm going to go with a one terabyte crucial m.2 this is an nvme drive let's just unscrew the heatsink here two screws and i've already removed the plastic off of that but you probably will have a piece if it's a new board you'll have plastic over that's just to make sure it's removed um what we'll do is take a screw here on your board okay remember that uh standoff tool we can take that and let's just check our m.2 standoff make sure it's tight in there you might have to go to the slight angle you're not to over tighten it all right that's just to make sure that's good to go line the pins up slot it in right and screw it in all right and reverse the process just put this heatsink back on all right so storage is installed cpu's on there make sure you have these brackets on your board as well because we're gonna need that for our cooling solution we don't have to put the ram on just yet i like to reserve that for the end because it's kind of it gets in the way of everything else so we can bring the case back now and we can take our i o shield and pop that in okay from the inside out make sure it's all the way in we can now hook up some cables on our board beforehand okay before we put our board back in we're gonna connect this cable up and a few other cables just to make it easier on ourselves you'll see this one is the power switch this is connecting to the front panel right here and then this one is your power led there's a plus and a minus make sure you know which end is which and then your hdd led all right just take our board that is gonna be right here right underneath the 24 pin connector okay it's a little bit tricky handling this but what we're gonna do is just put the power switch right here pass which connects the top left these top left two pins all right [Music] and then it's plus on the bottom minus on the top for the power led and then the hdd led okay gonna be plus on the bottom right and then minus on the other end okay let's make sure so let's just check here real quick all right power switch like this minus power led plus power led and then hd hdd led minus on top and plus there right so that's gonna be the front panel switch you can also hook up our eps cable now okay make sure that's engaged all the way okay the corsair aio we're using uses a usb 2.0 interface cable and that's to communicate to the device and control the led and the fan speeds based off the coolant temps so we can do let's go ahead and just route this usb 2.0 cable in this bottom right corner you'll see one of the slots it's not available one of the pins it's covered there so at this point i think you can go ahead and just pop the board roughly into place make sure you know that riser cables right here so we gotta keep it out of the way all right so we're just i haven't screwed it down just because we want to make sure we have the cables where we want them let's snake this down under here just sneak it under there i can do that right here and check eps cable all right our riser cables here see the power cables out of the way all right so now we can thread in the screws so we can use the same two and a half inch ssd screws those will work just fine those are m3 okay one two three four then i'll snake the front panel i o cables right under the motherboard i should have paid a little more attention to it when i pumped the motherboard on but that's all right plenty of space here all right this is the usb c header okay looks like this and then we'll just pop that's the header right there okay that's one cable and this is the usb a it's just a single one uh there's a little notch here pay attention to where that is that's going to align with the notch here okay and then we'll just be careful how the pins are lining up okay that's good all right and then now we can connect up the 24 pin atx cable right here okay you can support this from underneath just because there's a little bit of flex in this case but just make sure that every single pin is in there and tight this is an important cable all right and we'll clean things up later on but you can kind of play with the cable comb as needed all right and so let's see that's why the standoff mod is so awesome because that's going to allow us a little bit more breathing room here and we're at a point where we can just go ahead and put this riser cable in so let's just make sure that this is uh clear okay make sure it's all the way in and it's going to be a little more of a stretch because one we've shifted it out and we've moved the board up but it it uh it'll reach just fine there's enough slack there just be aware that it's going to be a little tight but all right it's going to be okay all right the case is going to come with this extra plate on the middle this is where your rod is gonna attach you don't you don't need this this is for a 240 so we're just going to go ahead and take it off uh you're probably going to want to store those screws somewhere safe in case you do ever run a 240. just keep set this aside we're going to take out this top rib to pop the cooler in and then we'll put this back right away at the top just undo those now alternately you could do this at the beginning if you wanted okay so this frees up the space here to put the cooler in and to cool the 5600x i'm going to be using the corsair h115i normally you don't need this much radiator to cool a 5600 x but we're going to be running the fans in a way that um takes in a lot of the gpu's exhaust so that's are going to be doing it this way it's tight but it'll fit just make sure you take your time a little bit of stretching required but it it does all fit at the end of the day and we'll take there you could use the same screws that you used for the to take off the 240 and just use those as your rad screws with this radiator or you can use the one that came with the uh with the case either is fine they're all the same thread pitch okay so these are the last set here okay just like that and now we can put this bar back just make sure you get everything in place then we'll just slide the rad fans in and then you'll just put the screws in i wouldn't thread it all the way yet as you can see we're gonna it's pretty tight with the cables here so we'll make some adjustments all right i've tightened down all the screws here you can see this fan is okay we've just got to make sure that uh the cables don't impede the rotation that a fan grill would be optional but nice to have i just spin it and check okay you should be of this is bunched up here so that's gonna be just fine and then we'll work on tightening up the cables at the bottom what i'm going to do first is attach the pump and this is the mounting solution for am4 normally these come with intel mounting hardware so we'll just uh you'll take that off but this will just slide onto here like that pretty okay and you'll make sure that this will slide on here like that that the hooks are here and then we'll it's already got thermal paste pre-applied i'm gonna pull the cable through this top end just make sure the cable is actually here and then we can hook these up all right and what you'll do is tighten these down progressively you don't want to do it all on one side you want to balance out that mounting pressure this is a two-point mounting solution so we do have to make sure the tension is even again notice on the state of power cable there's the this is a attack cable so that's gonna give the speed of pump back to the motherboard we'll pull it off because we're going to run this underneath all the way under and because of the standoff mod pretty easy to just get this underneath here and as for this cable you can hook it to any header but connect it to your cpu header and that way your motherboard is not going to freak out that there's no cpu fan connected and that's the great one right there okay and we protect this cable nicely into this recess here okay you've got your fan cables here we routed our fan cables up here these are just the two 140 millimeter fan cables just connect it up at the top and we'll organize things into that recess as well okay just tightly connected and then we can kind of organize it into here this is that usb 2.0 cable we've got it running in this channel here everything is zip tied along with that eps cable back here so it's to keep things clean and i've routed the sata power cable down under here so that's where it's going to make the connection right here out of sight this is a usb 2.0 cable we'll just route it to the port on the pump head and that'll connect right there not the prettiest cable so minimize that whenever possible and you probably even tie the zip tie these all together so that it looks like it's one piece go ahead and fold these tubes down this way so that they will clear cinch up all these cables right here and to make sure these tubes stay flush here i've used a long cable management tie this i might want to move around so i'm not using a zip tie here and uh we'll just secure here for now you can see what that tie is doing is keeping this away from the fan blades go ahead and make that say the power connection back here and check it away nicely all right just a quick check on things we've got the cables managed uh just give the fans quick spin just to make sure they're not impeded both end both fans should be clear no problems there cables all the cables are plugged in here pca cables atx cable sata power cable connected there pump pad here look at that just once over usb 2.0 cable all these um fan cables are hooked up back that's connected to the cpu header front panel i o cables 24 pin atx power supply secured and then uh i'll show you how to manage things back here it there's a ton of space now because of those standoffs so you all you have to do is keep this out of the path of the fans and that's not difficult with all these zip tie points so you could do that alternately you could even just cinch the cable up on itself now it's time to let's just pop the ram in and then we'll finish with the side here before we do the gpu just going to make sure these slots are open the asus boards are just one set we'll just open them like that there's a long side and a short side long side short side we'll insert it like such okay [Music] all right so the ram is in there um this is team groups extreme 30 uh argb ram this i'm going to go with a 16 gigabyte kit here it's this one clocks in that 3200 megahertz cl 16. you can run 32 gigabytes if you want but 16 is perfectly fine for a gaming build and if you want a little bit more of a boost than i'd say go for a 3600 megahertz cl 16 kit all right we're almost done we can flip the case over you can go ahead and close up this panel if you want now we can pop the gpu and i've put in one of these thumb screws here you'll notice it's not threaded down all the way we've going to open this slot okay make sure it's open and then what we can do is just line it up and then you'll just pop it now be kind of careful here because we're not tightened down yet and then you'll grab another thumb screw [Music] thread that in just like that okay okay so our gpu cables are here and i'm just going to take this and you can just insert these both in to your card make sure you have enough cable here okay make sure you got both ends in there alright so we got the two power cables and we've inserted the card we are good to go let's just tidy up these cables a little bit and we'll just do that take up the slack okay we gotta make sure there's very little slack there otherwise it's gonna interfere with the fans okay make sure they look nice [Music] check everything all right then we can sure you close this guy up it's in there okay you see what this does here is it spaces out the card from the back plate by the the amount of the standoffs so here the card is pushed out a little more towards the mesh panel which allows more of a clean air intake and previously the car would have been shifted in in this case because the original standoffs are these six six millimeter ones uh we've pushed it up basically a centimeter and a half or so by 14 millimeters [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] alrighty i hope that was fun uh congrats you've finished your mess delicious build i'll give you a few thermal benchmarks right now so you know if everything is working properly for that i would just go ahead and fire up your favorite title once you get windows installed and your games loaded for cpu only performance you can pick a tool like cinebench i like to use blender benchmark and you know just run it for something extended at least 10 minutes just to check out the temps in a hardware monitoring application if you're using a corsair cooler like i did the iq software that will let you control the cooler will also give you that information as well at fan speeds of about 1200 rpm which is i think it's the fastest that we'll need to run these radiator fans and gpu fans of 70 gaming attempts with the graphics card at full utilization would be about 76 degrees and in the high 60s depending on the utilization on your cpu what title what frame rate you're playing at and this is on pbo auto set to max boost cpu clocks are hitting 4650 megahertz dependably so it's working well for cpu intensive multi-core renders i did lock the clocks here in the voltage to get some consistency but you should be looking somewhere in the high 60s you could do better with faster fans but again these fans aren't close anywhere close to be maxing out so it's just a point where i think it's not meaningful to go louder and faster for the rad fans anymore in terms of cpu performance anyhow hope that data point helps i hope you enjoyed this build guide and the build process you picked a really great case and i think you're going to have a lot of fun with this one for a long time i'll be doing a video soon just outlining the benefits and process and differences of doing the standoff mods that i discussed today so please go ahead and look for that please subscribe and give a like if you enjoyed the content today i'll leave links down below for the goodies and thanks for watching today [Music] you

Channel: Machines & More

Views: 49,060

Keywords: Meshy, Meshalicious, Meshylicious, Meshilicious, SSUDP, Meshlicous

Id: ESB4ZFE7Yps

Length: 36min 42sec (2202 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 26 2021