A fully 3D printed ITX PC case popped up on Reddit’s r/3Dprinting, and a few other choice subreddits, earlier this week on September 28, and we’re taken by the small, sleek design. The unique PC build is by Cole Anderson, who goes by Colebob222 on Reddit, and makes use of its radiator and GPU waterblock on the build’s outer frame as the solid exterior pieces not 3D printed.
The radiator used is a Phobya Xtreme 200 85 mm V.2, which measures 280 x 220 mm. Its size seems to have determined the whole build’s X and Y, aside from some cheeky GPU power cables and a small thermistor cable peeking out its sides, making this one heck of a compact ITX build.
Anderson has been building custom PCs for about eight years, they said, and enjoys sharing their knowledge by helping friends and family build their own PCs for heavy applications like gaming or video editing. But this isn’t the first creative build Anderson has made for themselves.
“When it comes to my own personal builds, I’ve always tried to come up with something unique,” Anderson said. “True uniqueness is difficult when the best options for parts are fairly common in the DIY PC community, though.”
Anderson’s first foray into a system they felt really stood out was about three years ago when they built their first PC using custom water loops, an impressive open-case build they also shared on Reddit. But that success just pushed Anderson to be more creative this time around:
“When I felt the itch to upgrade again, I needed to come up with something even better to challenge myself with. I wanted to try a compact ITX build, but none of the cases on the market were exactly what I was looking for.”
Fortunately, Anderson has picked up 3D printing as another hobby since their last build, having been introduced to it by a friend who 3D printed Anderson’s custom game assets. Just this past Christmas, Anderson received their own 3D printer – an Ender 3 V2 – as a gift from their wife, and more recently upgraded to an Original Prusa Mk3S+, which was used to 3D print this ITX PC chassis.
To ensure the build’s dimensions matched the ITX standard Anderson used the free software Protocase Designer to generate an STL file with the right conformity, then Blender to make it a custom design of their liking.
All 3D printed parts were made from Overture PETG to ensure their build had the heat tolerance required for a computer functioning under heavy workloads. With presently hard-to-find components like the Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3070 Gaming OC, there’s no doubt Anderson will want to push it as hot as it can go. Though PETG will leave its solid state at around 85 °C, and certain PC parts can easily exceed that under heavy workloads, it would be abnormal for a case to reach anywhere near that temperature, and Anderson’s ample ventilation and water cooling will do well to keep even their hardest working parts cool.
At various stages Anderson paused the print to swap between filaments, allowing them to add the transparent RGB-lit stripes and to drop in some M3 nuts for more effective threading.
Once the rest of their parts were ready, Anderson went through the assembly process to complete their 3D printed masterpiece.
We can’t help but be impressed with Anderson for completing a complex hobby-bridging project like this after having their own 3D printer for less than a year. Given their success, Anderson decided to share their design on Thingiverse and even had some advice to share with eager 3D-printing newcomers and those interested in 3D printing their own PC chassis:
License: The text of "3D Printed PC Case for Water-Cooled ITX Build" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.