 On paper, today's project is pretty much the simplest thing ever. After many hours of troubleshooting, I've identified the problem with my VR gaming PC. The onboard USB ports are not compatible with the Vive trackers that I'm using to enable full-body tracking when I'm streaming VR. Now, the solution to this on the surface is very straightforward. You need to just install a PCI Express USB card that uses a different chipset and run the trackers off that. Unfortunately, because it needs to fit inside my tiny home theater console, my VR gaming rig uses an ITX motherboard. So I went out on the prowl for the smallest mini ATX case that I could find, and this is it. The Sliger Cerberus. Now, on the surface, this project is super straightforward. Take a basically working computer and transplant it from one case into another with a different motherboard. But with how much has gone wrong with all of this so far? What the f***ing f***? Why are they drifting? I think it's pretty safe to say that I should probably have a camera rolling for it. So why don't you come along for the ride? Brought to you by GlassWire. With GlassWire, you can keep track of the weird stuff that's connecting to your PC even when you aren't using it. You can see if a strange device joins your Wi-Fi and block it instantly. Get 25% off by using code Linus at the link in the video description. Okay, I misrepresented the ease of this project a little bit. I am also going to be adding water cooling to the rig, and the reason is that this right here is the RTX 2080 Ti that was used for the, ah yes, hydro dipping a graphics card project. In the process of hydro dipping it, what happened was the PCB that handles fan control was actually damaged, or one of the connectors was loosened in some way that makes the fan ramp up and then ramp down constantly. It's super annoying. That is literally the only reason I'm going water cooling, to quiet down this now defective card. This case is not really billed as a water cooling focused product, but I've seen enough builds from other users online that have water cooling in them to suggest that it shouldn't be too challenging. Front I.O. is already a bit of a hassle for my setup, just because these are coming out the top, and I think this is basically exactly the height of my media cabinet. The cold hard truth is there's no way around it, because you can see here, the motherboard is going to be basically the entire height of the case. All they've added that might be considered extraneous is this fifth PCI express slot, which actually could come in handy for me big time in the future if a motherboard arrives that has a PCI express 16x slot on the bottom, because then I could put my graphics card right down in the bottom of the case, and that would give me three more expansion slots. That's a bigger factor for me than you might think, because one of the other things that I might want to add to the system in the future is a wireless card for wireless VR. So that's already two right there, just for USB and wireless. Crap. This is my first time hands-on with this case. It's reasonably solid feeling, but the construction is very basic. Pretty much every piece of it is some kind of, you know, table cut steel. That's about it. Really easy to get it opened up, so you can start working in it, though. I opted for a few accessories. There's a handle kit in here. We've got a handle bracket, SFX, power supply adapter. Oh, no. Did Jake screw me over already? He didn't send me an SFXL power supply. I'm gonna give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I don't need it. Anyway, first order of business is to get all the old hardware stripped out of my VR gaming rig. This two terabyte hard drive has got to go for sure. I'm gonna replace that with a high capacity solid state drive. I probably assumed I have a lot of this stuff. I don't. I actually love bottom-mounted SSD. I kind of wish I had another matching industrial fan for this system. Jake sent over an FF12, so I'm just not sure if they're gonna have enough gusto. 2080 Ti and a Radeon 3900X. This project is frustrating for a couple of reasons. One is that it feels pretty stupid to have to upgrade a motherboard because the onboard USB has a compatibility problem. But that's what you lock yourself into when you buy a system with no expansion, whether it's a compact, you know, ITX or rather DTX-based one like this, or whether it's, you know, a laptop with all the stuff soldered onto it. That's the trap that you stick yourself in. And another is the timing. We are a month away from B550 boards being available, and here I am picking up a B450 board. B550 is gonna be way better. PCIe Gen4, bifurcation support. I mean, probably better support for upcoming processors. Just it's a bad time to buy a budget motherboard because it'll probably be at a kind of similar price. If I'm stuck with it, the B450M Steel Legend from ASRock looks pretty good. A couple M.2 slots, the two expansion slots I need, and it's reasonably priced. I know people get triggered by reusing thermal paste, but it's pretty well established that it doesn't make a performance difference at this point, so. For memory, I'm reusing this 3200 CL16 kit from Team Group. It's nothing particularly special, but I'm also not going for bleeding edge performance here necessarily. If I miss a frame or two, then it is what it is. Normally, I wouldn't go straight for putting the motherboard in the case, but in this instance, I'm gonna kinda need to put it in there to visualize what's going on and how everything else is gonna fit. The Cerberus is also extremely open, so I'm not expecting that putting the motherboard in is gonna limit my options too badly as we go forward. And I remember how hard we all used to cringe at the like camo color schemes on motherboards back in the day. Who's laughing now? Motherboard manufacturer selling motherboards to kids, that's who. Oh, that's cool. I don't know what this is, but it's cool, so. Interestingly, it looks like I've got a fair number of options for radiator mounting. Could I even put one on the side if I really wanted to? It just comes down to finding the best way to Tetris your own components in. So let's keep putting stuff in and then see what we end up with. So we came up with the idea of salvaging parts from an all-in-one so that we could just get a CPU block with a pump built into it and putting that on there. But I'm actually worried that this is going to interfere with a full ATX power supply. Oh, man, if this fits, it is going to be absolutely borderline. Holy smokes. Hold on. Wow, that might actually fit. Okay. Jake took one of the fittings off this for me already just to make sure that they were barbed fittings that we could adapt to custom water cooling equipment. But he left the other one for me to do and it's really hard to remove. And if there was ever a time I was likely to slice my hand open, this would be it. I chewed it up a little bit, not too bad. So it goes on this way, which is going to have these tubes come up right away from the power supply here. That's lucky. And I know for a fact we didn't plan that because I know that Jake did not open this case before he sent it over to me. So there we go. Let's go ahead and throw this on the CPU. Do you want to go get me a power supply, actually? I bet you could be back by the time I need to install it. What are the odds that you feel like doing that? Slim. Got it. Dang it. We're going to try and build this thing without a power supply. While normally I wouldn't put the graphics card into a machine until at or close to the end, in this case, it makes sense because I need to be able to see how we're going to plumb up the loop before I can decide where to mount the radiator. It's a shame, though, because the front of it was actually the more successful part of the hydro dip. Now for the special sauce. This is a really cool USB card. It has not one, but four independent controllers. So each of these five gigabit per second ports is actually a full five gigabit per second port without being shared between any of the other ports. That's why it actually requires a PCI Express 4X interface. There we go. The solution to my problem. I got all the USB. Oh, you know what's crazy? I didn't even think of this. This board's got two M.2s and an extra PCI slot. So even if I don't put a graphics card in the very bottom, I could actually still squeeze another PCI Express slot out of it. Wait, is this even going to fit? Oh, right there. Three millimeters, maybe? Nice. For ease of plumbing, I would actually prefer to have my barbs on the bottom. But to make it easier to bleed the air bubbles out of this loop, because I'm going to have kind of an underpowered pump, I actually think I'm going to put them on the top up here. Now that is a color scheme and a half. It doesn't seem like much, but I actually really like this cutout in the back here where the SSDs go. That is a really nice touch because it means that you'll have access to plug or unplug it, even if you've got a radiator installed there, just by reaching around from the back. That is awesome. The SATA data cables are crammed behind the radiator here. You can easily access them like that. And then they plug into the motherboard right under the graphics card. You can barely even see them. The madman did it. Just got back from the office with an SFXL power supply. I went with Silverstone's SX800LTI. It's an extremely efficient and really cool power supply. It's 800 watts and it's just this teeny tiny little thing. I would have to be actively gaming for that fan to even spin up, which is pretty freaking cool. Silverstone doesn't get enough credit sometimes, you know? And we're at the point now where if you've got an 800 watt, 80 plus titanium unit available in this size, it kind of raises the question why we need bigger ones. Another advantage to going this route is I now have tons of room around my CPU cooler. So that's good. That gives me room to, you know, run the tubing and all that kind of stuff as well. Very nice. The fact that all the panels in this case pop off makes it a lot easier to work with than I was letting myself believe there. Look at that. All right. No problem. This really is such an ingenious way to handle these. I've talked about it already, but I can't get over it. I really like it. I'm using a tubing standard I don't normally use for this, partly because Jake sent it over and partly because it makes sense for such a compact build. But these are 10 millimeter inner diameter, 13 millimeter outer diameters. Just helps it take up a little bit less space, which is going to be at a bit of a premium once all this is in there. These are Corsair fittings. And if I recall correctly, they partnered with Bitspower on them, which was a good move because these are super nice. Putting a little bit of spare tubing over the fitting and then using that to get a better grip while you're tightening it is a pretty good little trick. My loop is going to be really simple. So I'm going to go straight down there, then I'm going to go out from here to this guy over here, and then out from here over to this one back here. It's not going to look like anything special, but it should work pretty well. Now the keen item on you might have noticed I cut that a little short. That is because I have a pretty clever trick planned. I had wanted to use a proper tee fitting, but not being able to find that I'll settle for this. This is just a nice little EK multi fitting block here. So I'm going to open up the top of this, and then we're going to open up the other side, both of them up at the top of the loop. And I'm going to use that to allow the air to come out while I'm filling the other side with water, and then to allow me to top it up once the air settles up in the top there. It's funny, some of the things I'm doing here feel like wrong. Like this is a pretty ugly way to implement this, considering how nice the hardware I'm putting in it is. But like it or not, this is water cooling done practical. Another not pretty, but practical thing. Using zip ties to secure tubing on barbs. This is what peak performance looks like, all right? My brilliant theory is that if I just pour water into this, it will fill. Huh? Huh? Okay, we're dripping a bit. Fortunately, that is what paper towels and GPU backplates are for. Oh, you spilled your water cooling? Surprise Pikachu face. I was a fool. Our water bottle is for hydrating humans, not computers. LTDStore.com. All right, these tubes are full of water now. So I'm just going to tip this back. Ooh, okay. Here we go. And we are going to see the water run down the other tubes. Hey, there we go. My theory was that filling it this way would make it so I won't have to power on the system in order to bleed the air bubbles. So let's see how well that's working out for me here. Actually, looks like there's still some air bubbles in the graphics card, but not too bad. I really wish I had a couple more fittings, because if I could just run tubes over to the sink and then into the faucet and just kind of fill it and flush it. I wonder if I do have them. Test time. That's pretty good. Now, I know masking tape is not ideal for this, but I need the life to not wake up and be like, hey, why is there a bunch of tape residue all over our faucet? Here it goes. Oh, it's splashing. Oh, wow, there were definitely lots of bubbles left in there. Oh, sweet. Okay, this is officially how I'm bleeding every loop from now on. I ended up having to wiggle the case around a fair bit to get it all out, but I am pretty sure this loop is completely bled of air bubbles now. That is a full water cooling loop. And the system doesn't boot. Already tried a new power supply, already tried different RAM. That leads me to believe that I probably need to swap out the CPU for an older one and update the BIOS. So it's daytime now and I'm back from the office with another CPU. If you want to help, come on over here, kiddo. So you want to do a CPU swap, do you? Yeah, please. All right, step one, remove the CPU. Remove this power supply because we need to get at the CPU socket. Oh, that's going to take the fan off. We don't want to do that. Good try though. Back here. Four screws. Okay, careful. Don't touch the pins on the bottom. Those are very fragile. And if we break that, I have to drive all the way back to the office to get another one. This is a pretty tight build and there's not a lot of slack. Radar sensors. What are you talking about? Okay, let's go test this, see if it works. Think it's going to work? Hey, it's working. Nice. Daddy, what are these? Those are packing foam for the case. You can't stand right in the front there, sweetheart. And this is why I wanted to stay up late last night to get this finished. I think there might be a ghost under my table. What's it going to do? Bad ghost things, presumably. Does anybody want to put on a panel for me? Me please, me please. You got to push so hard. Go for it. Okay, good job. You're going to go look for it. Okay, good job. You don't have to punch it, you just push on it. You got to use your weight, you got to push. No, you don't have to punch it. All right, little man, you want to give it a shot? I'm not a little man anymore. You sure are, you're my little man. Now that I'm closing it up, what's more impressive than how much stuff I have in here is how much stuff I could still fit in here. I could put a 120 or 140 mil rad in the bottom with some 90 degree fittings without too much trouble. If this isn't enough cooling, that's what I'm going to do. I could put another fan here blowing down on the system memory. That could also be a good idea. I didn't even explore the handle kit just because I found the clearance was so tight in my media console that I wasn't going to be able to add that. But I think there's a fan mount that's part of it. Just a really thoughtful case with a ton of options. I actually really like it. And simple construction, but top notch. That's it, that's a lot of power in a tiny container. In comparing the size to the old case, I realized that height shouldn't have been my only concern. It's actually quite a bit deeper as well. Now for the big conclusion, the system performs admirably. Temps are around 75, 76 degrees on the GPU. Very nice, not great for water cooling, but remember guys, this is only a dual 120 radiator in a tiny case. And our CPU tops out at around 79, 80 degrees. Remember though, that's with both components heating up the loop to the max at the same time for about an hour and a half. So this is an absolute worst case scenario. That means it's finally time for us to play some video games. You guys want to play Take Links? I'm going for it. I'm going for it, boys. Get wrecked. Yours nothing. Get wrecked, my literal son. Well, that was a lot of fun. This video is brought to you guys by Manscaped. Manscaped makes manscaping safe and easy with their perfect package 3.0 kit. 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Daddy, are you right?