As much as I loved my previous gaming build, Ghost, it was too “showy” for my conservative aesthetic preference. I decided to dive into the world of small form factor (SFF) cases for my new PC, dubbed Vulcan. Here’s a comparison of all of the PC cases I’ve built in with the format: PC name – case type – empty case weight – case volume
- Overmind – Antec 900 – 18.5 pounds – 47.4 liters
- Tassadar – Thermaltake Chaser MK-I – 25.6 pounds – 78.2 liters
- Zeratul – Fractal Define Nano S – 11 pounds – 26.8 liters
- Bahamut – Thermaltake Core P1 TG – 20.9 pounds – 53.5 liters
- Ghost – Lian Li O11D Snow Edition – 24.2 pounds – 43 liters
- Vulcan – Lian Li/DAN A4-H2O – 6.39 pounds – 11.1 liters
I retained Ghost’s RTX 3080 Ti and power supply unit (PSU) for Vulcan. I also decided to standardize the work area with Corsair iCUE RGB lighting (mouse pad, RGB lights under the shelf, etc.) Building in such a small case, I was concerned about thermals (and related fan noise), cable management, and assembling everything with limited wiggle room, but the A4 H2O case alleviated these issues.
In sleep mode, the system (including the monitor) uses ~ 3 Watts. In the middle of a Counter-Strike 2 match, it pushes 600 Watts. Geekbench 6 benchmarks are as follows at the time of this writing: 2719 (single-core CPU score), 18108 (multi-core CPU score), 144971 (Vulkan GPU compute API), 195454 (OpenCL GPU compute API).
Here are the complete specs with some pictures!
| Name | Vulcan |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 11 Professional |
| Motherboard | ASUS ROG STRIX B760-I Gaming WiFI Mini-ITX |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-13700K |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance DDR5 RAM 32GB |
| GPU | GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Vision OC 12G |
| Storage | Samsung 980 PRO 2TB M.2 |
| PSU | Corsair SF750 750 Watt 80 Plus Platinum SFX Fully Modular |
| CPU Cooler | Corsair iCUE H100i RGB Elite |
| Case | Lian Li/DAN A4-H20 |
| Monitor | Samsung Odyssey G9 49″ 240Hz Curved QLED Gaming Monitor |
| Mouse | Corsair M65 RGB Elite |
| Mouse Pad | Corsair MM700 RGB Extended Cloth Gaming Pad |
| Keyboard | Corsair K70 RGB Mechanical RAPIDFIRE (Cherry MX) |
| Controller | Sony PlayStation® DualSense™ |
| Lights | Corsair Lighting Node PRO |
| Headset | Corsair Virtuoso RGB Wireless Gaming Headset |
| Webcam | Logitech BRIO UHD 4K Webcam |
In December 2023, I was browsing Reddit and found a trick to help isolate the warm exhaust from the GPU inflow (cool air) through the case side panel. “Tape” marks where I’ve attached Scotch tape between the case and the top edge of my GPU. This simple modification has helped drop my system temperatures by a couple of degrees under load without changing fan settings. Might get some Plasticard to make it look more… legitimate, lol.
