For a while now I have been tring to design a new project for me to work on, This inspired me to make something similar to it. I plan to do a few things that the original designer didnt do such as add a PCIe card into it. I am looking for opinions on what I am dreaming is going to work out accordingly. The dimensions of the xbox 360 are here. I am not going to have a lot of room to work with. My main concern on this build is cooling. I chose the MSI K9VGM-V Socket AM2 motherboard mainly because there are no compacitors on the edge of the mobo near the edge of it.(If I need to add additional cooling for venting) Also, from the reviews of it it seems like a stable motherboard. I am not planning on OCing anything, so if anyone wants to suggest another motherboard im all up for it. Im not quite sure what video card I am going to get, I am going to have to get a low-prifile card without a huge heatsinc on it. My plan is to get a 90 degree PCIe adaptor. I may have troubles with this though, I am not sure how much space I am going to have from the motherboard to the bottom of the laptop drive and from the PCIe slot to the bottom of the 360. Another issue I am going to have is cooling the GPU, the way the 90 degree adaptor goes, The heatsinc is going to be facing the other PCI slots. Good news is I am not going to need to use thoes PCI slots for anything. I am worried about cooling though I believe I am going to have to get a good aftermarket heatsinc for it and possible rig a fan on the side to get airflow to it. I am going to get an external PSU, probably around the 400-500w area. Ill paint it if necessary to have it match the xbox. For a CPU cooler, I think I am going to need to get a low profile CPU cooler, with AS5 thermal paste. I will probably end up mounting an 80mm fan cutout on top of it for the cooling. Since the 360 is only 83 mm deep, I do not believe that I am going to have much room for anything else. I already have the Laptop Hard Drive and DVD drive I am going to be using, I just have to get the adaptors for it. I am also going to get one GB ram for now(1x1GB Stick) I think I am going to cut an exhaust fan on the top of the 360 also, something like a 60mm fan exhaust. I have several parted laptops from previous modifications that I have done. I am tring to preserve as much of the 360 as I can when I mod it, I dont mind having one or two 80mm fans on the side of the case sticking out for cooling, I just dont want to distort it so much that it doesnt look like a 360 anymore. Currently it looks like I am going to have one or two 80mm fan intakes on the side of the 360, and one 60mm fan exhale on the top to allow for venting. I think it is going to be doubtful that I will fit anything bigger then a 60mm fan on the top. As I said before, My main concern is cooling, and fitting the Video Card in there. I dont actually know if I will be able to fit a video card in there *and* keep it cool enough to function properly. I am looking for any opinions or suggestions you may all have. Money is a big of a concern, I just built a decent gaming rig about six months ago. I dont mind spending the money for what I need, I dont want to go to cheap and not get enough and I dont want to spend more then I really have too. Ill be back in an hour or two if you all have any questions and suggestions.
Well, most video cards that would be half-height (probably what you'd want to look at) use low-end GPU's, which frequently use a passive heatsink. The motherboard you're considering has on-board video, which might solve the problem of video out, depending on the specifics of this mod. It'd also save you money. The only downside is that you would be sacrificing some of the system RAM that'd be siphoned off for the on-board video. Look at low-RPM fans, like the Vantec Stealth or Panaflo (Panasonic). They tend to be decent performers without being terribly noisy, which for some reason I'm thinking you want. Dunno. Anyway, smaller fans tend to be noisier than larger fans, since larger fans can move the same amount of air, if not more, at a lower RPM. Also, heat rises, so take that into consideration. MSI? I have no problems with them. I've usually had good luck with them, so it's a safe bet.
I should have mentioned this before, But the whole project is going to be based around World of Warcraft, i am going to sketch a design around the whole box with a WoW theme and paint it on; with that, the 360 is going to have to be capable of playing WoW.. I dont think that the onboard video card is going to be capiable of playing it. I will have to measure the space I am going to actually have, I might have enough to fit a full size card in it, I am not sure yet. I wont know until i actually get the motherboard, which is kinda bad because once I start buying the stuff there is no turning back :-(
Okay. Yeah, half-height cards are going to be your best bet for your needs. You'll probably be maxed out with a GeForce 7300 or Radeon X1300, so I wouldn't look for any gaming past a 1024x768 resolution.
