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Hello everyone

Today I got my Dan A4-SFX case delivered from Germany and I thought I'd make a post on my build in it.

Surprisingly small shipping box


It's very small in person


Just the skeleton, getting ready to put parts in!


The parts


But where is the storage you might ask


Starting with the motherboard


Next up is the GPU, lots of space for the reference AMD card here.


The case was not designed with the Corsair SF series in mind, the PSU power plug is angled the wrong way for this connector, making for a really tight fit with the cable.


All the parts in place


Thoughts after build:
For such a small case, it's really easy to build in, putting everything together only took me 20 minutes. The only issue I encountered was the PSU power cable extender as shown in the picture, I had to plug this in before mounting the PSU. The PCIe riser cable is of excellent quality and is operating at 16x.
I would have liked something thicker and sturdier than the thin piece plastic separating the GPU from the PSU, nonetheless it functions as intended.

Personally I would rate this case as the best SFF case on the market at the moment, it's small yet fits all the components you need for a powerful desktop computer.
Thanks to Daniel Hansen for creating this case through kickstarter.

Speclist:
CPU - Intel Pentium G4400(Skylake)
GPU - AMD Radeon RX480 8GB
Storage - Samsung 850 EVO M.2 500GB
PSU - Corsair SF450
MB - Gigabyte B150N Phoenix
RAM - HyperX Fury 2133MHz 8GB

That thing really is nice and compact.

My guess is that it was really designed with the Silverstone SX600-G in mind, and the Corsair SF600 having the power connector reversed is likely going to make things a pain in a lot of SFF cases...

Have you considered flipping the PSU so that it's taking its intake air from behind the GPU, rather than directly from the side panel (does the case support that)? That would fix the power connector orientation as well.

bhtooefr wrote:

That thing really is nice and compact.

My guess is that it was really designed with the Silverstone SX600-G in mind, and the Corsair SF600 having the power connector reversed is likely going to make things a pain in a lot of SFF cases...

Have you considered flipping the PSU so that it's taking its intake air from behind the GPU, rather than directly from the side panel (does the case support that)? That would fix the power connector orientation as well.

It might be hard to tell from the pictures, but there's a thin plastic sheet separating the GPU from the PSU, that would have to be removed in order for that to work.

Looks like a very nice build. Thanks for the pictorial documentation.

Would it be much trouble to take a couple more pics with a measuring tape beside the case? It's difficult to get a sense of scale with just the case on a desk. (If that's inconvenient now that it's in use, no worries.)

I did a build with the Cooler Master Elite 360 (most compact ATX case I've ever found/seen, but with sacrifices to GPU length) which used a PSU extension cable and had the same problem. In that case, it was a critical problem because either there was no room to run it in the "backward orientation" or the extension cable wasn't long enough to do so. I can't remember which. I'm fairly certain the orientation of the 3-pin plug on the PSU is not standardized. Regardless, in my build, I was able to open up the PSU housing, and turn the 3-pin plug mount around since it was was secured by 2 screws. That solved the problem.

Wow, Thank you for posting, I have been looking at these off and on again for a while. Please post some bench/temp numbers when you have the time, and let me know what the noise is like. I hope to build one of these maybe next year and use it as a steam-stream box around the house.

K-L-Waster wrote:

Looks like a very nice build. Thanks for the pictorial documentation.

Would it be much trouble to take a couple more pics with a measuring tape beside the case? It's difficult to get a sense of scale with just the case on a desk. (If that's inconvenient now that it's in use, no worries.)

Here's some pics to get a better sense of size, Xbox one controller and 1.5 liter coke bottle.


Tape measure in centimeters

Wow, that really is teeny. Sweet.

Anovoca wrote:

Wow, Thank you for posting, I have been looking at these off and on again for a while. Please post some bench/temp numbers when you have the time, and let me know what the noise is like. I hope to build one of these maybe next year and use it as a steam-stream box around the house.

The temp for the GPU is unchanged compared to open test bench, I don't have any numbers for the CPU yet.
Noise levels are not too different with the sidepanels on/off due to them being heavily perforated, since there are no case fans the only noise makers are the GPU and CPU fan, the PSU fan never turns on with my workload. My old X99 system in a Fractal Define S case was louder than this.

DPete27 wrote:

I did a build with the Cooler Master Elite 360 (most compact ATX case I've ever found/seen, but with sacrifices to GPU length) which used a PSU extension cable and had the same problem. In that case, it was a critical problem because either there was no room to run it in the "backward orientation" or the extension cable wasn't long enough to do so. I can't remember which. I'm fairly certain the orientation of the 3-pin plug on the PSU is not standardized. Regardless, in my build, I was able to open up the PSU housing, and turn the 3-pin plug mount around since it was was secured by 2 screws. That solved the problem.

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately opening the PSU will void my warranty, I'll leave it as is for now.

Thanks for posting. I'm thinking of buying that case for my main rig.

tsk wrote:

DPete27 wrote:

I did a build with the Cooler Master Elite 360 (most compact ATX case I've ever found/seen, but with sacrifices to GPU length) which used a PSU extension cable and had the same problem. In that case, it was a critical problem because either there was no room to run it in the "backward orientation" or the extension cable wasn't long enough to do so. I can't remember which. I'm fairly certain the orientation of the 3-pin plug on the PSU is not standardized. Regardless, in my build, I was able to open up the PSU housing, and turn the 3-pin plug mount around since it was was secured by 2 screws. That solved the problem.

Thanks for the tip, unfortunately opening the PSU will void my warranty, I'll leave it as is for now.

Pretty sure my build was using one of those $20 CX430 or $30 CS450M PSUs from Corsair (gosh I miss the CS450M, hands down the best PSU for cheap), so I wasn't worried about voiding the warranty on such an inexpensive unit. In your situation, it looks like the stock orientation works, so I'd recommend leaving it as-is.