I see many many posting from gamers that have made a so called slim box, only to find most are nothing more than a cut down stock case. No before anyone starts up, I am not flaming or dissing any of the hard work that goes on. All the slim boxes I have seen are nearly as big "displacement" wise as a stock box. Who has actually made the smallest box - width, height and depth (PSU inside)??

My "XCase" is on hold at the moment as I can't afford a decent enough VGA TFT for the front. The purpose of the system has changed so much so that it is no longer a games machine but a media only centre.

So I have started working on a "small" box for easy transportation, know what I want to do, but would like to know how small it has to be to be amongst the smallest.

i believe eminvil (think thats right) has the smallest and its some great work.

I saw one smaller then eminvil, it was like the one that Llamma sells except it wasnt powerd by DC, it was a regular xbox. eminvil's xbox isnt really that small, its not as deep or wide, not short. Now, If someone could make one as deep and wide as eminvil's and as short as Llamma's, that would be cool.

eminvil had to put his power supply ontop of the motherboard just to get it that small. If you made it shorter I don't think there would be a way to include the power supply in the case. The only thing I think could work is if you found a way to angle the MB inside the case and put the PSU on one side and a slim HDD on the other. Some thing like this:



(^nothing is to scale, its just to show how it might work^)

i am making a short one, probly the shortes i know of, the faceplate is cut so short, the Eject button was cut off. and the top is just a sheet of plexi

i had to redo parts of the power supply with one of my electroinic friends.
and i ordered new heatsinks

i am going to fill up the remaining space with laptop fans (slim 40mm)
just have to find a plave that has them 4 a decent price

sata hard drive (of coruse)
but the tiny ass ones that are like 20 gigs
(simaler to the 360's)
it will be a show stoper

I'm pretty sure I hit a pretty small record, not sure if it was the smallest. I used the original size harddrive mounted where the DVD drive goes. All the capacitors on the motherboard were relocated. The power supply had all of its capacitors relocated to about 9 inches away. The PSU was placed horizontal, roughly where you plug in the controller ports on the motherboard. All the capacitors and big coils and all those ugly stuff were insulated and stuffed between the heatsinks and harddrive. It's kind of hard. But the dimensions were the width and length of a motherboard, and the height of a motherboard and a standard 3.5" harddrive. Just add 1.4" plexi to each side. I forget the measurements..I need to figure out who I sold it to and see if they can take pics. But overall it was damn small (perfect rectangle), and even had two wireless controllers built into it.

EDIT: Referring to raceboy404: "sata hard drive (of coruse)", what you smoking buddy?

Pics, arjun?

I know adeon had a thin one. It was a DirecTV case I think. Not the smallest, but looked to be about the height of the heatsink.

arjun, how could you make something that badass and forget to take pics? I want to see it .

eminvil's xbox is actually very small, you must have not seen the picture of it beside a regular xbox.

I have an ultra small xbox, that I'm working on, but because of money, I cant do much more, until I get more money.

I'm getting a job that pays 14$ an hour soon, so hopefully I'll be able to put some more work into it. Hopefully I'll have an update in a month or so, but for now its kind of stuck, staring at me, when I'm dying to work on it and finish it.

Well you could make a really really small case if you did the following.
1. Replaced the origonal Xbox HDD with a laptop drive
2. Installed a mod chip so you can have the games on the HDD
3. Took out the optical drive

What you could do is have a big laptop hard drive that has an adaptor to IDE so you can plug it in. The mod chip would let you not only back up the games on the hard drive but also let you do an FTP connection to your comp. Because of this FTP connection you wouldn't need the optical drive because you can just copy the games that you want to play through FTP. I think that this would let you slim your case down A LOT. I think I might try it with an older Xbox that I can get...

EDIT: Wow yea that was all really bad English but I don't want to go fix it...

this is mine im still working on it but the only change i might do is dropp the contoller ports lower givves it more of the lowered look but it works fine

i saw one that was really smal but i for get who did it. i know mine is not anywhere close to being the smallest. would like to see one that had to have a new motherboard made for it but that would about be impossible unless your just an excellent hardware modder. it's between eminvils an arjun. maybe raceboy404 will have the smallest after he is done.

i hope to see something like a slim box made with a 360 after modchips come out.

Me and adeon's I think are the smallest. Smaller then eminevil's by about an half inch in all dimensions. 8x2x12 exactly. We used a directv case d1-200.


There's a link in my sig.

more pics here

http://forums.xbox-scene.com/index.php?showtopic=468118

DAMN!!! I really like the white slim one with the LCD. I really want to make a slim one now but I would need ot get another Xbox because I'm in the process of making my first Xbox mod...

i can get mine done really quick, just have 2 wait for parts
i have the case cut down 2 size, i need to learn how to cut plexi without craking it than the case is done
i have my sata all set, but need 2 buy a power converter and a mobo

Birdtales, I believe, has made some pretty small xbox cases.

Would post pics if I could..

Hope he doesn't mind.. Here's Birdtales' beautiful X-MINI w/external PSU.

Nice. It would be fun to do one like Birdtale's, but my wife would probably divorce me.

Hi Guys,

Some interesting and intense projects there. I have never been a light mod man, and would never need a TFT on the front of a xbox used for gaming, but so far the best looking box I have seen on XBS is mine... Nah just kidding I ain't even finished the f**k**g thing yet. No the best I have seen is the white box of Adeon. Apart from the visible TFT fixing it looks like it came that way.

Personally I think 2.5" HDDs are way to expensive especially considering the need for a 100Gb HDD to get some half tidy storage.

My small XBOX aptly named LANOX (LAN + XBOX) will be started on Saturday afternoon. I have a week to build it before my next LAN party so for once you may appreciate something I get to finish.

Features it WILL have.

• No Fans
• 3.5" HDD 160Gb
• X3 + X3 VFD
• 4 port Netgear Switch with internel PSU
• XBOX PSU internal
• Standard AVIP
• Two pad ports
• 5mm panels front and back in aluminium
• 3mm sides in aluminum
• 3mm top and bottom in aluminuim
• Standard XBOX jewel in the lid.

This is not a wanted list but a list of parts already aquired for construction. I already know how big it will be but I'll say nothing in case I need to add or subtract a few mm here or there.

The finish has yet to be decided, but I may mirror polish, laquer and bake it, or paint black or silver, laquer then bake it.

It is my opinion that a small xbox can only qualify if the only external items are the mains lead the Video lead and a pad.

wow, that's impressive. How does he mount the external psu.

easy, i did it by getting a 25 pin connecter and running it through. like 1 of these. http://www.rentron.com/PicBasic/Ecable.gif

but you will have to make a seperate plexi psu box with fan
those things are cool as hell, can be used for anything

How will it be cooled if there won't be any fans, or will it not be coooled at all? I think this project sounds like it will be pretty awesome, hope to see a finished "LANOX" soon

I'm back in development on that X-Mini. Using a Mini ITX PSU instead of the external Xbox PSU. Will hopefully get back to work on it soon. Need to get a new LCD as I messed up the one in the front of that one. Thanks for remembering though.

Put some masking tape over where you are going to cut on both sides and that works fine. I think that an external PSU kinda defeates the purpose... In less if some how you can make it like a PSU that plugs into the wall and have a semi small cable that runs into the Xbox... I might try that actually lol. (I'm getting really good ideas for my next Xbox )

Yea, the only way something like that could work is if he used a pretty large heatsink/heatpipe cooler which probably wouldn't fit in a small Xbox. From the looks of it though, he might be trying to use the actual box as a heatsink. Not sure how well that would work, aluminum that thick without fins would probably retain a lot of heat.

I would have if I made it at my house. It was done at the customer's house (in Virginia somewhere). They wanted to watch me do it or something, and even paid extra to have it done at his house. I didn't mind, I did over the course of few weeks.

Yea, I'd imagine that an Xbox inside an all-aluminum case with no fans would get quite hot. I'm sure he's probably already thought of this issue, but I can't think of what could be done to cool it, at a small size, without using any fans. Why not use fans is what I'm wondering

slim boxes are sweet...

a little OT.. but arjun, your sig makes me feel sad. I thought i was an ub3r cool modder with my white and red xcm cases

what if i add flashy lights? Then will i be a cool modder?

We'll see

If you really want to be an xbox modder you gotta do something hard

You would have serious heat problems if you had a mobo on top of a psu. I wouldn't trust it for anything.

As for the slimmest someone might win, but not to sound like a complete dick I plan to have a small one very very soon.

Plus you really cant say "whos the smallest" because you have to take into account if they left the psu in, or if they left the dvd drive in. There should be a catagory for each. If I make a xbox that has an external everything, youd expect it to be tiny...now if i make a slim with everything internal- of course its going to be bulky.

Well the whole point of a slimbox is that it doesn't have a dvd drive. I think mine is the slimmest at 2 inches but while working on the xbox you have about 1/8th of an inch height clearance. So it is possible to go smaller, albeiit a little.

Not really... the point of a slimbox is the name....to make it "slim". I want to meet the man who wrote the rules that said we had to take the dvd drive out to make it officially "slim".

Well I never said it was a rule. Just that with a dvd drive you can't decrease the size very much and it's hard to make it a "slim" I mean a lot of dvd case transfers are smaller then the xbox but it's hard to consider that a slim. At least it is for me.

Yea it seems like Arjun and MickRaider used the same DirectTV box which is pretty dang small. I'm not sure what the exact dimensions of eminvil's xbox, it is certainly taller than both Arjun and MickRaider's boxes, but it isn't as wide, and is a tad bit longer.

The only fair way to judge who has the smallest is to calculate the volume. And I agree that only boxes with internal PSUs should be counted.

Honestly if you used an external PSU, and changed the heatsinks to something like this:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/ind...roducts_id=1012

Something like this might even work:
http://svc.com/vaicproprvga.html


You could probably make an Xbox that is like 25mm tall, then I would be impressed.

here goes our slim boxes.


stock xbox >>>> our current project >>>> my normally slimmed box


the middle xbox its like 1.93 inch's tall. we are going to post a lot more pics of it once we get the mod chip installed. other than that it runs perfectly fine now.

its smaller then the DirecTV box...


Oh, and my xbox is in the middle of being repainted white.. so dont mind the cameleon painted front...

Sorry, by Arjun I meant adeon, no edit button on that post for some reason?

You mean adeon

As for eminivil it's 25cm x 7cm x 26cm, which equates to 9.8in x 2.7in x 10.2 in. So it's slightly narrower but deeper and taller.

My xbox is 192 cubic inches, and eminivil's is 269.9. So a bit of a difference.

Nic beats me in terms of height but the d1-200 is incredibly compact. But freiking imposible to work on, so you pay the price.

As for height. The psu can only be slimmed a little bit untill you start running into problems with the hard drive fitting. As it were I only have about a half inch to spare before it's resting on the mobo.

I think the smallest possible case with an external psu would be 8x2x8.5 and even then that leaves almost no room for play. So 8x2x10 would be best imo.

well here are the dimensions.... u have us beat tho..

in inches
1-7/8Height*9Deep*12-1/2Wide=210.9375cubic in.


how bad are ur temps with the one fan?

I dunno, if you used a laptop hard drive, a 1U cpu cooler, and an external psu, you could fab a case that was pretty darn small. Maybe not an inch tall, but perhaps lower than 2, but the stock Xbox case is not the ideal design for compactness.

I don't really have the work area to mess with it in the dorms at VT, but I might try something like that over the summer.

It's actually a pretty powerful fan for only being 50mm however I'm currently only running it at 7v due to it being very loud (34db). This however gives temperatures of 64 degrees inside my entertainment console, which has my surround sound unit which gets intensley hot and the back is sealed off so it's not a model for cooling by any means. However I believe if I remove the back and when I convert it to 12v it should drop it down to around 57 degrees. It's only overheated once. I need to work on dropping it but don't plan on openening it till I get my xerc2 back to install (so hopefully tomorrow) and adeon gave me some tips to cool it so we'll see what I can work up.


And funny, I did all my modding in the bathroom, I think you can find a way

The only reason you'd need to use a laptop hard drive is if you do shorten the heatsinks because the current setup gives you ample room to fit the hard drive in the area below the heatsinks to the left, see my box for example.

ours run 59C and i was trying to get it lowered by buying a mod chip(allows us to remove the dvd-drive circuit board). we have two 40mm fans in the back and one 50mm fan on the gpu. it can get pretty loud. I wanted to add two more 40mm fans to the front for some extra cooling. we have been using xbmc to auto-adjust our fans for now...

a 50mm fan is to big for the case. the best 40mm fan i have found is 10cfm... which its really crappy. we am using two 7cfm fans right now. they are from radioshit and cost 12 bucks a piece. I want to buy 4 fans online and return the two from radioshit.


i used a single-platter hard drive for our xbox. its only 9/16 of an inch tall. btw, its a maxtor diamond max 8. 40gig. - around 48 bucks (can be locked for soft-modding and live). laptop HDs should be last resort cause they are to damn exspensive


I do all my modding at my computer desk..
http://www.exilemods.com/downloads/public_...es/workarea.jpg

hehehe sigged it

nice looking xboxs, thats a nice workbench u have there NiC_CC



Sam

Lol, that gave me the craziest image of my suitemate taking a shit while im sitting on the floor trying to solder something.

If I really wanted to I could mod in my room, but it really would be more hassle than its worth with the amount of space I have. I will definitely bring my tools with my next year when I am off campus, but for now it just ain't worth it.

If I was to try making the absolute thinnest xbox possible, I would figure out a way to mount a nice 1U heatsink like this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16835151105

I guess I was wrong about a case being 25mm high, but 30-35mm could be possible. A nice copper 1U heatsink with air holes on top of it would probably cool that 733mhz Celeron pretty well, and there are plenty of low profile gpu heatsinks that would be overkill for the Xbox GPU (and mounting is simple with thermal epoxy ).

Nic_CC, I think your best bet would be with blower fans like this one"
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16811999038

Or maybe this one running at 12V:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item...4;_BLOWER_.html

Or how about this one:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item...D_CONTROL_.html

It even got a reccomendation from an Xbox modder on their site lol.

They don't push that many CFM, and is kind of loud, but directed airflow like that is much better than the breeze type airflow from a radial fan, and of course they have a pretty low profile so as to not disrupt the slimness of your box. Although, I'm not sure if you have the lateral space inside your boxes for that.

A slim case to me if one with everything inside except the DVD drive. Originals can be loaded by using LAN and my "X"Case which is complete.

I am getting help with the cooling so far as a mate of mine is an aerodynamics engineer, he designs airframes and wings. He is fully upto speed on aluminiums properties, so he is working that out for me.

Some nice low profile HSF's in those links.

I have been listening to many people of XBS reading lots of posts, and have moreorless finalized my cooling backup plan. I have managed to make a few changes that will allow me to use two 40mm fans for an in/out air change. The fanless idea stems from the simple fact that I haven't seen anyone else do it, so I am going to try.

I am ready to fall into a few traps when it comes to the cooling. Two processors, an HDD and the already delicate MCPX chipset are likely to get warm. I know I have issues with airflow inside the case especially considering the switch and its PSU will be inside as well. The switch may be the first to go. My LAN community uses a 16 and 32 port Netgear so my inclusion is simply to allow etc flexibility for strange shaped houses.

We will see. Anyway first pics will be up tomorrow - Saturday - in the evening (GMT)

none of those fans comes close to fitting. u would understand if I had a current pic of the internals. anyway, i just bought (3) 40mm fans that are relatively quite and good enough airflow.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?...N82E16835166041

I will replace the two I have in the back and put one in the front. now I can return the ones i got from radioshit.


spillage, i do have everything inside both of my slim boxes. two of the controller ports are on the back of the black slim box. we even have the dvd circuit board in the black slim box right now(not after i get my modchip from sickmods).
I can finally remove the big bullshitty airflow-blocking crap called the dvd drive.

I'm confused here spillage, you say you are making a fanless Xbox, yet you talk about 40mm fans for the front and back. Do you simply mean that there will be no direct airflow to the CPU/GPU heatsinks?

One thing I envisioned when you said fanless is having aluminum rods going from teh heat generating elements to the aluminum box creating one big flat heatsink (perhaps your friend could investigate the plausibility of such a scenario). You could even drill holes in the rods from every direction so that it doesn't retain heat and can be cooled from the inside as well. The harddrive could simply have the casing touchign the aluminum case.

And if it gets too hot you can just put a bag of ice on the case .

funnyperson1, the 40mm fans I mentioned are for backup only if the fanless idea is a non starter. The fans if needed will both be at the back - one pulling air in and one pulling air out.

Because the whole case will be made up of thermo-coupled aluminium, the whole case will act as the heatsink. I have smashed up an original CPU heatsink and note that the total surface area is less than half the total proposed area of my new case. Heat retention is a concern.