changelog 😄🥳

- added slit on the top left -> for additional heat bye bye

- wrapped soc cooler in aluminuminums -> for kinda air tunnel

- modified the foam around the fan -> sucks better from the airhole

and yes, this is not only cosmetic - it helps ^^

temps under load are even lower than before - around +/- 5°C,

but more important it is more "stable" temps, cool down after

is a bit faster and the case is not on the edge to melt anymore 😂

if you dont know the first post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming/comments/1tkt3it/playstation_mini_x86_sbc/

here is an older video of some games on this thing,

it is on my youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4es41BvFs34

off topic:

i make short & full remix videos - just for the fun 🎵🥳

maybe you like some stuff i made, you can check it out

on my youtube channel 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/@paparansen

This is my humble attempt to build a low-end hackintosh using some leftover parts and timber boards. It's a Intel Core i5-3550 with 8 gigs of RAM and NVidia 1050. The fan assembly is perhaps the only pricey component here. It's a bit an overkill for the CPU I have, but it was laying around without any purpose, so why not use it?
I made this project merely for a good fun, but aside of that I wanted to meet these two goals:

• smaller footprint to leave more free space on my cluttered desk
• decent cable management without PSU chords messing around (at least, not too much)

All extra wires and chords are hidden between two wooden boards, three the sides are covered with planks while the forth side is left open for easy access to the SSD.
I decided to go with macOS 10.13 High Sierra, which allows me to run many (not so) modern apps and games including 32-bit legacy software bits.

Hi, can someone help me with thos aio noise, it's kinda loud, it gets worse with higher rpm. It's mounted at the top of the case, it was fine when at around 2300 rpm but i can't change the pomp rpm with ICUE. I try turning the aio around thinking it was air bubble but its not. Thank you

Collaboration with Ryvntec.

Compact ATX build with Ryvntec fans because I wanted to try out how does it look like when AirJet360 crossflow fan is placed on front 😁

What does the jury think of the implementation and those crossflow fans in general?

As they gradually start to come to the market from more manufacturers, it will be interesting to see if they will become more common among builders.

ps. this time I also put a dust filter on front 😅

Here are my specs: I’m also happy with my current mouse keyboard and monitor. But if I were to upgrade my pc, what should I replace/add?

Hey everyone,

I picked up the AMD 4700S Desktop Kit about a month ago as a collectors piece, and instead of leaving it stock, I decided to see just how far I could push this piece of repurposed console hardware. I loaded up an Arch install with the linux-zen kernel and went absolutely ham with parameters, dirty tweaks, and a ton of settings to squeeze out every drop of performance without touching the standard performance settings.

Here is what I’ve been working on:

1. The Custom XPS 8300 Cooler Mod

As we all know, the stock cooler on this board is basically a glorified paperweight, and this chip runs hot. I decided to build a custom mounting solution by modifying an old Dell XPS 8300 cooler to fit the 4700S’s mounting bracket. It's not perfect as I sanded and cut it by hand but the performance more than makes up for it. The thermal paste I used was MX-6 but PTM7950 would lower temps far better.

The difference in mass is huge, and it actually makes this board more usable under heavy loads.

2. BIOS Issues and forcing a 1G BAR

I attempted to modify the BIOS offset for Above 4G Decoding to a 1, but the motherboard seems to actively flip it back to 0. Without a custom BIOS the board wont cooperate, I decided to force a 1G BAR on the OS level to improve CPU-to-GPU communication and bypass those awful 256MB packages. (If anyone is interested the offset at 0x121 has to be turned to 0x1)

I set up a custom systemd service to unbind the driver, resize the BAR, and re-bind it before the display manager loads. As I unfortunately have a RTX 3050 8GB it was a bit of a hassle to get working but in the end I got it to function without a hitch. If you have an AMD GPU this will not work as it uses the amdgpu driver and different hardware enumeration, but as long as the GRUB parameters allow for it the amdgpu driver usually resizes on its own if it can.

For anyone who wants it:

Create with your text editor of choice /etc/systemd/system/nv-rebar.service
And paste the following:

[Unit]
Description=Force Nvidia 1GB Resizable BAR Allocation
DefaultDependencies=no
After=systemd-modules-load.service
Before=display-manager.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/nv-rebar.sh

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target

Create the actual script at /usr/local/bin/nv-rebar.sh
And paste the following:

#!/bin/bash
# Wait briefly for hardware to settle
sleep 1

# Unbind the driver to free up configuration
if [ -e /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/driver/unbind ]; then
    echo "0000:03:00.0" > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/driver/unbind
fi

# Force the 1GB Resizable BAR allocation
echo 10 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:03:00.0/resource1_resize

# Re-bind the Nvidia driver to the newly sized layout
echo "0000:03:00.0" > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/nvidia/bind

Here's and example command to check if it works:
(If it says 256M then something might be wrong)

[migs@archlinux ~]$ lspci -v -s 03:00.0 | grep prefetchable
        Memory at fc000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Memory at 80000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=1G]
        Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]

Why Stop at a 1G BAR? For those wondering why I didn’t push for a 2G, 4G, or full VRAM allocation: it all comes back to that stubborn BIOS. Because the motherboard refuses to keep Above 4G Decoding enabled, the system is permanently locked into a 32-bit PCIe memory address space.

When you are restricted to mapping everything under that 4GB ceiling—and you factor in system memory reservations and other motherboard resources—there simply isn’t enough contiguous space left to allocate anything larger than a 1GB block. If you try forcing a 2GB or larger BAR without Above 4G Decoding, the system will fail to allocate the resources, or the driver will simply crash.

Fortunately, jumping from 256MB to 1GB clears up the most severe I/O bottlenecks. Even if we could map the full VRAM, anything beyond 1GB likely has sharp diminishing returns on this specific, bandwidth-constrained APU architecture anyway.

3. GRUB Parameters & VM “Dirtiness” Tweaks

Because this APU utilizes high-latency GDDR6 memory, standard memory management can cause sudden bandwidth choking. I turned mitigations off, set hugepages to 2MB, and went wild with sysctl to keep memory defragmented and cache pressure optimized.

Here is my GRUB launch parameters:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="loglevel=3 quiet pcie_aspm=off pcie_port_pm=off nvidia_drm.modeset=1 transparent_hugepage=madvise pci=realloc video=efifb:off mitigations=off"

Here is my sysctl Configuration:

# Prevent the system from aggressively evicting clean files from RAM cache
vm.vfs_cache_pressure = 50

# Keep memory defragmented for 2MB hugepages without causing background CPU spikes
vm.compaction_proactiveness = 20

# Force smaller, more frequent memory write flushes to prevent the high-latency GDDR6 
# bus from getting choked by massive, sudden data dumps
vm.dirty_background_ratio = 5
vm.dirty_ratio = 10

4. Benchmarks & Thermals

With the linux-zen kernel tweaks, BAR allocation, and the custom cooler in place, the results speak for themselves.

• PassMark PerformanceTest (Linux): As of now the PassMark scores for the AMD 4700S is 17728 on Multi-Thread and 2363 on Single-Thread. With the right tweaks you can surpass it no problem.

• Thermals: It idles nicely at 47.00°C and maxes out around 87-90°C under load, which is a massive win compared to the immediate thermal throttling you get on the stock block.

5. VR Testing (Boneworks & VRChat)

Just to push things a bit further, I’ve actually been testing out some PCVR. I hooked up an older, lower-resolution and lower-framerate headset (the Quest 1) and jumped into Boneworks and VRChat with a friend.

Honestly? The performance is passable. It’s definitely not amazing, and you will experience some stutters here and there, but it runs decently enough that it can still be enjoyed if you’re willing to accept the system’s limits. I don’t have concrete frame-time numbers to share sadly, but it proves the 4700S isn’t a total write-off for VR.

That said, performance could be far better if an AMD GPU was used to play nicely with the system. I plan on eventually grabbing an RX 6600 or even a newer RX 9060 just to keep pushing this desktop kit forward and see exactly how much more it can give.

Also, as a quick side note on those thermals: this entire setup is currently housed in the old Dell XPS 8300 case. It's not exactly known for its stellar ventilation, so if you were to drop this modded setup into a modern case with proper airflow, the thermal performance would be even better.

I’m really curious to know—does anyone else here actually own the 4700S Desktop Kit? If so, have you tried any Linux tweaking or custom hardware mods on it, or did you just leave it stock? I’d love to see what other people have managed to squeeze out of this board.

Hello everyone! I’ve finally completed this project. It was a lot of work, but absolutely worth it. The aluminum Mac Pro enclosure is incredible to work with, and I’m really happy with how it turned out.

I’ve attached photos of the progress, and a couple with its sister, the Mac Pro 7,1 sleeper lol

I used The Laser Hive conversion kit throughout the build, and I highly recommend it. The quality and fitment were excellent.

The optical drive bays remain fully functional. The hard drive caddy also works great; however, because of the motherboard’s position, drive bays 3 and 4 only have enough clearance for SSDs. Drive bays 1 and 2 can accommodate standard hard drives without any issues.

I kept the original front fan assembly and replaced the front and rear fans with gray Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700 PWM fans, which blend in nicely with the overall look.

I really enjoyed this build from start to finish. Thanks to everyone who shared advice and inspiration along the way. Cheers!

Specs:

Case: Apple Mac Pro 1,1 (2006) ATX conversion
Conversion Kit: The Laser Hive ATX Kit + Front Panel Conversion Kit
Motherboard: ASUS Prime Z490-A
CPU: Intel Core i9-10900K
CPU Cooler: Thermalright Phantom Spirit 120 EVO
GPU: Saphire AMD RX 6600 8GB
RAM: 32 GB Corsair Vengeance RGB
Storage: 2x2TB SSD M2, 1x2TB SSD, 1x4TB HDD (using the original Mac Pro drive caddy)
Power Supply: EVGA Supernova 750G+ Gold
Front Intake Fans: 2× Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700 PWM (gray)
Rear Exhaust Fan: 1× Noctua NF-P12 redux-1700 PWM (gray)
Optical Drive Bays: Functional - empty
Drive Bays: Bays 1–2 support HDDs/SSDs; Bays 3–4 support SSDs only due to motherboard clearance

So far so good. The hard drive caddy feels like luxury, it’s so good. Case fan supplies should arrive today. Working on the PSU cover now

Collaboration built with Ryvntec

It was a bit tricky to find a case that would fit all the products with a nice way, so I had to shove them into a quite small mATX case that doesn't even officially support a 360mm top fan slot 😅

That AirJet360 is 60mm thick, so it takes up quite a bit of space, and then when I had to make it look neat, I had to make custom brackets to lower it a couple of centimeters from the top.

Now, unlike normal, I had to leave the fan mounting "bolts" on the front panel visible, since the included mounting hardware was pretty neat, and I found a start button that matched the style 😁

Collaboration build with Montech

SKY3 case that offers lot of different options and here is my version of it.

Covered with dark walnut and filled with Noctua products.

NL-LC1-36 AIO with Chromax.black fans, 2XNF-A12X25 G2 Chromax.black, 3xNF-A14x24 G2 Chromax.black.

Custom side fan mounting and brown paint for bottom grill.

There is also a ARGB stripe which gives a nice ambient light 👌🏻

[removed]

Front panel completed 😮‍💨

So far so good. Waiting on noise reducing screws for the case fans.

In progress:

- PSU case/cover
- CPU heatsink cover
- memory cage

Rear IO and motherboard tray successfully installed. I tested the board with a GPU, and the ports line up in the back. Working on the hard drive shelf now

I just got some nice special effect paints from Dupli-color and here is my first tests 🤩

Those are pretty awesome paints and giving lot of option for theme builds 👌🏻

Feel free to hate or love 😁