240mm Water-Cooler Mounted ITX Gaming PC

Unique PC I designed and built a few years ago that takes conventional case design and throws it out the window! I fondly call this design the Bonsai PC because it reminds me of a traditional Japanese bonsai pot with a “miniature pc” mounted to it.

Fair warning, the cooling performance on this design could use some work since the pump/CPU block is at the highest point in the loop making it a PITA to fill without any bubbles in the system. I might try to do a vacuum fill next time I build this system to see if that can be improved at all. 

This system uses a 240mm AIO with a 3d printed motherboard, PSU and GPU mount all in one with a short riser cable to connect the GPU to the motherboard. The CPU is cooled by a pump/block combo of your choice (most of them should work but I tested it with an alphacool block and a Barrow(ch) pump/block/res combo) but be mindful of the clearance requirements.

I also designed a foot to allow the PC to be balanced at a 53 degree angle (based on my original setup) but this may or may not work for you depending on the GPU you decide to use. Technically, the GPU support is infinite dimensions since the width, length and height dimensions are unlimited and since the GPU is facing outwards and pulls in fresh air, cooling performance is amazing.

With the PC raised, the cooling performance is improved by a good bit since the fans don't have as much restriction but the intake for the fans is fairly restricted which will limit the water-cooling performance. I also ran into some issues with the motherboard flexing if the CPU block was tightened too much resulting in some random instability under load so I designed a backplate to stiffen the board a bit but never produced/tested it due to cost limitations.

This was a fun design that I made for the sake of aesthetics and is very specific about the fittings/components/radiator so please don't complain that something doesn't fit right as it wasn't designed for ease of assembly or component compatibility. I'd love to see what kind of cool systems you guys build on this platform (literally) so please share a “make” when you complete your build. 

Assuming you have all the PC components, this build is really cheap to put together and a fun art piece to have on your desk (just be weary of the tip factor if you have it in the lifted configuration)

The PCIe Riser I used is the ADT-Link R33SH which is available in both 3.0 and 4.0 configurations. the length is about 10cm