The same enthusiast who transformed an Xbox One S console into a full-blown gaming PC has come back and done the same thing to Microsoft's latest Xbox Series X console. YouTuber PhaseTech published a video showing how he completed his Series X PC mod from start to finish, going over parts selection and the 3D printed parts he created to make the Xbox chassis compatible with the new components.
For part selection, PhasedTech opted to use Intel's NUC 12 Extreme PCIe compute card, equipped with a Core i7-12700, 32GB of DDR4, and a 1TB NVMe SSD. The YouTuber initially wanted to go with a Mini-ITX solution, but found the Xbox Series X clamshell is not wide enough to support ITX boards. At just 4.75 inches thick, the NUC 12 Extreme is almost 2 inches thinner than a Mini ITX board, making it more than thin enough to fit inside the Series X.
The rest of the build was comprised of a low-profile Gigabyte RTX 5060 graphics card and a 600W Flex ATX power supply. This combination allowed the YouTuber to fit the power supply above the graphics card in the Xbox chassis with height to spare. A full-height graphics card would have made this configuration impossible and forced the YouTuber to use an external power supply.
Article continues belowThe chassis was modded to provide the necessary mounting points to connect the compute card, graphics card, PSU, and a 120mm cooling fan to the chassis. The YouTuber created a plethora of 3D brackets to provide reinforcement and hook all four components to the Xbox shell, and created a 3D printed back panel for the console featuring all the necessary cutouts to support the rear I/O.
Several of the brackets were made to prop up the compute card and graphics card in the baseboard and prevent both cards from bending inside their respective PCIe slots. The rest were used to support the 120mm cooling fan, PSU, and DVD-ROM drive. The DVD drive was salvaged from the real Xbox Series X internals and modded to work with the PC. Work also had to be done to make the front power button compatible with the NUC.
After creating all the necessary brackets to connect all of the components together. The YouTuber put the computer board, baseboard, GPU, power supply, and DVD-ROM drive together, then dropped and secured the components into the Xbox clamshell, and finally secured the 120mm exhaust fan at the end. PhaseTech reported good performance from the system after booting it up, with temperatures hovering around 75C for the CPU and GPU.
The project demonstrates what is possible with a small-form-factor build when a dedicated enthusiast is armed with a 3D printer. The Xbox Series X chassis is not the smallest computer chassis in the world, but it is one of the smallest that someone has been able to install a full-fledged PC into, including an integrated PSU and DVD-ROM drive (for context, the Corsair One i500 is 3.62 x 1.42 x 5.87 bigger than the Series X). PhaseTech's build serves as a sneak peek of what Microsoft's future Xbox consoles will be capable of. The company has already confirmed that Project Helix will be capable of playing Xbox and PC games.
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