Building a PC, Part IX: Downsizing

I just doubt you’d get that kind of workload on a desktop, personally. Plus these desktop cores are 5.0 Ghz.

Note how close that is :wink:

I went ahead and installed the Noctua fan reducer on the 92mm fan since it’s the smallest one in the system and thus most likely to spin fast and noisy.

Minimum speed went from 779 rpm to 556 rpm.

This thing is kinda fun Motif Monument – Yuel Beast Designs

I build for quietness now. The only fan in my system is directly over the CPU – fanless power supply, fanless GPU, etc. I miss when computers weren’t noise polluters, and now we can have that again.

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Yes, this is very easy in today’s world, efficiency is fantastic! It used to be far harder, see: Building a Quiet PC

I ended up getting a 3 fan 2080 Ti to help, the Founders Edition is a dual fan and seems to lock in at minimum 1500 RPM for no reason :exclamation: The 3 fan model indeed works better in an open air environment, defaults to under 1000 RPM at idle, and fits well in this case particuarly with the bottom dust mesh removed.

So yeah, my recommendation is to get a 3 fan style card here, and avoid blower rear exhaust cards in these kinds of builds.

what makes you NOT considering a water cooling system :bowing_man:‍♂

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Just the bad experiences I had circa 2003. I’m sure the kits are better now, and the case I used (Streacom DA2) seems tailor made for a 280mm radiator…

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I’m trying my best to find a MoBo that says it supports 64GB of RAM and actually has qualified vendors that sell ram for it, and am… struggling.

Ah, well in that case you’re welcome to try mine, the Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro WiFi … it definitely supports 64GB RAM because that’s what I have in it now:

If you build up a DAN A4 SFX you may want to put in the 92mm slim fans at the bottom. I personally feel this is only necessary if you’re really pushing the limits of high end CPU and high end GPU in such a small form factor?

Note that you might need to install these fans in as part of the initial build because it’ll get quite tight with cable routing.

Thanks!

I had originally gone with : https://www.amazon.com/ROG-Strix-Z390-I-Gaming-Motherboard/dp/B07HM57LVH due to its reviews; and it notionally supports 64GB, but neither crucial.com nor its own vendor list show any 64GB kits that work.

That’s funny, Crucial still shows only 32GB max ram usable with that Gigabyte 390

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Speaking of fast/loud cooling fans, I’ll derail this a bit with a story.

I took this photo ca. 2011, showing the preposterous integrated heatsink/fan I’d then-recently acquired along with the motherboard it was mounted to. (From the trash pile in an office building, I think one of the tenants had closed up shop.) So, while I used it for several years, I have no real idea what its story was since I didn’t buy or even choose it, and in fact I would never voluntarily CHOOSE anything even remotely this impractical and overcompensating. It’s important to me, going into this, that I know that’s understood. And so:

image

The CPU it was mounted to was a Core 2 Duo, which did run kinda hot, but still. The flippin’ thing was so large I had to leave one of the motherboard’s RAM slots unpopulated because the memory was too tall to fit under it, and I had to bend most of the 24 wires coming off the main power connector practically 90° for the same reason.

This monstrosity had a translucent-blade fan on in, which naturally was paired with a blue LED for glowy fan effects. The silver thing at the very front is indeed a knob. (Which had excellent, buttery-smooth knobfeel, I’ll give it that.) Said knob controlled the fan speed, because that makes sense for an internal cooling device. Since it was only a 3-pin fan, the knob was how you selected between the two speed extremes of “way too loud” and “ARE YOU F—ING KIDDING ME?!”

Everything about it was terrible, the end.

(Edit: Believe it or not the thing was a Thermaltake product — the top says “MaxOrb”, which is what it was called — and while they aren’t exactly synonymous with high-class or anything, they’re still a recognized brand you wouldn’t expect to participate in such nonsense. A disappointing relaxing of company standards, on par with the $500 crossover ethernet cable Denon once (briefly) sold to interconnect two of their DJ player units. Then again, even Thermaltake’s current product line run the full gamut from reasonably sensible to comically unnecessary, so maybe I should expect less of them.)

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Did you consider the Louqe Ghost SFF case?

I picked the Ghost over the Dan because of the better looking design. And it fits all off the shelf parts. I have a big GTX 1080 Ti running inside with an i7 8700k and a 600w PSU. No complaints and I think it’s smaller than the Dan case.

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I did not, I don’t think I knew about it at the time, but the Ghost S1 is a very cool case as well!

According to this reviewer:

  • Best overall, Ncase M1
  • Best for gaming, Dan A4 SFX
  • Best design / most premium, Ghost S1

There is also the new Coolermaster MasterBox NR200 as well.

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Another brand that caught my eye in the past few years is Sliger. I got their SM550 case with both sides vented. The fans on my cpu cooler, gpu, and psu are all intelligent enough to stop spinning until they are actually needed. They also suck in air directly through those side vents for maximum cooling. I added two Noctua fans on the bottom to exhaust the air through the bottom.

Overall I’m quite happy with how well it cools everything without being ridiculously loud.
(They also make the SM560 for triple slot GPUs which is less common in the SFF world)

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I’ve been in the market for a while. Currently, I’m running a 2014 mac mini. It is dreadfully clear, upgrade time is here. I strongly dislike bulky stuff on my desk. I’m not a gamer, so mostly built in graphics is fine. Micro ITX?
It does not look like I can build a system double the size of the mac mini.

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Ah, you will want to look into the Intel NUC series. They have the perfect mac-mini form factor. Note that there are a few sizes:

  • half height (smallest, no SATA drive space) 117 × 112 × 37mm
  • full height 117 × 112 × 56mm
  • Skull / Hades / Phantom canyon gamer size 216 × 116 × 23mm

All of them will have external power bricks, the gamer versions have fairly large power bricks.

The official Intel page with detailed specs is here.

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I’ve built four (!) AMD Ryzen mini-itx systems in this case and it is pretty great. Here’s the latest one:

The NR200P Max is the exact same case, but with the 280mm water cooler pre-mounted at the top, and an 850w gold power supply pre-installed with appropriate cable lengths and routing. That does make setup easier. Plop in the motherboard with CPU, RAM, and M.2 SSD installed, and you’re halfway done!

For super high powered GPUs you really gotta be careful on form factor, I’ve miscalculated twice now and burned up power supplies by sticking too hot / power hungry of a GPU in a small case. This four-fan all blowing up :arrow_up::arrow_up::arrow_up::arrow_up: config is a really effective one… and it takes advantage of all three fan headers on the mobo (there’s a splitter cable on top and bottom) … heat rises!

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building your pc for firs time is a amazing task everyone love to do

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