Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Ninja 4

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edh
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Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Ninja 4

Post by edh » Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:37 am

Edit: updates added to this system are shown further down the thread


Here is my tiny Skylake build:
Image

Case: Raijintek Metis
Controversial perhaps. Pretty much every review of the Metis has slated it for it's cooling however time and time again the reviews make a silly mistake running the CPU cooler right opposite the PSU fan, each fighting each other for air. That just won't work. It's more of a damning of their own review technique than the case itself. I have a way around this: use a passive PSU and let the air be drawn backwards through it.

I had for an awful long time been set on using the NCASE M1 for this build however the arguments for each case made it obvious:

M1:
- Smaller size, although it's advertised at 12.6L when including the feet it comes to 13.12L versus the 13.36L of the Metis.

Metis:
- Readily available for next day delivery from multiple retailers
- Completely modular, you can dismantle everything
- Allows up to 160mm CPU heatsink and wider graphics card heatsinks
- Steel backplane and motherboard tray add rigidity
- Doesn't waste space on water cooler or optical drive support
- Costs £36 - that's literally 20% of what I'd have to pay to get an M1 imported into the UK

PSU: Seasonic X-400 (reused)
This PSU is only 3 and half years old, Gold rated and passive so I was going to use it. It's a tight squeeze in a small case at 160mm deep but being fully modular helps.

Motherboard: Asus Z170i Pro Gaming
A stupid name but a very nice little motherboard. I was set on Asus for the quality of their fan control plus I needed M.2 and DDR4 support.

CPU: i5-6400
No great surprises, it costs about what I wanted to spend.

CPU cooler: Scythe Ninja 4
At 155mm tall you can't fit one of these in an M1 but you can in the Metis. The rear 120mm fan slot is just in the right place to act as an exhaust but I chose to dump the stock Raijintek and put the included Glidestream there instead so that the cooler works under negative pressure and modded the Ninja mounting system to enable the cooler to be nudged about 2mm further back until it butted up right against the fan.

Here is it part assembled:
Image

Yes, the Ninja 4 really does take up that much of the system!

RAM: 2x4Gb Kingston HyperX Rage DDR4 2400MHz
8Gb is plenty for now plus the motherboard supports 2x16Gb so if ever I upgrade in a few years it will be to 32Gb, not 16Gb. The 2400 was actually 7p cheaper than the 2133 for some reason, hence I went for it.

Storage: Crucial MX200 M.2 2260DS 250Gb
I was very set on M.2 and this size is OK for me for now.

Graphics card: Zotac GTX 950
This is a fairly basic GTX 950. I needed a 170mm long PCB because of the size constraints of the case and I tend to change coolers anyway so the included cooler doesn't bother me much.
Edit: Subsequently reviewed by SPCR - http://www.silentpcreview.com/Zotac_GeForce_GTX_950

OS: Arch Linux x86-64

Here are things coming together:
Image
Image
Image
Image

...and finished connected to my existing SM245B monitor:
Image

The CPU cooling results of the Ninja 4 are amazing and give idle temps of around 28-29C even with the Glidestream fan switched to low mode and running of the PWM header at around 300rpm idle. I had to lower the CPU low speed warning in the BIOS to 200rpm to enable it to boot reliably! Under stress testing the highest CPU temp seen was 50C.

Unfortunately with this being such a new motherboard support for the sensors isn't great in Linux yet, probably a new kernel update will fix this. At present I can only see the fan speed in the BIOS so have no idea of load fan speeds (probably about 500-600rpm I think) as lm_sensors doesn't detect it plus there are two jammed ACPI temperatures always showing. A kernel update and rerunning sensors-detect may improve this.

Graphics card cooling is a mixed bag. While the fan doesn't normally start at idle and only starts at 61C, sometimes it starts of it's own accord at lower temps and it won't switch off until it's back down to around 40C. The lowest speed supported is 1200rpm which is noticeable but under load I have seen 77C in Unigine Heaven at which point the fan was doing 90% speed at 2700rpm which was loud.

Noise wise without the graphics card spinning the system is virtually silent. The 300rpm fan can not be noticed over the gentle buzzing of other components. If anything the loudest component is the 100Hz buzzing of the monitor which I never noticed before. The ticking of the clock in the next room is also very audible now!

There are a few future improvements I am thinking of:
- Some recabling work. I only have 7 cables in the whole case but I could add a few extra holes around the back of the motherboard and the PSU so tidy some of these away better, clearing more space around the top of the PSU.
- Fan replacement with something better than the Glidestream? Would need to be able to do the same low RPMs. I could also double the fans up into a push pull arrangement as there is just enough room between the PSU and the Ninja 4 for a 25mm thick fan.
- Graphics cooler replacement. I could mod an Accelero S1 Plus/S3 to fit passively or use a slow spinning fan on top to push air through it, possibly combined with a case mod to add ventilation to the top of the case.
- Heatsinks for the M.2. There has been some testing showing that M.2 drives can get very hot and start throttling, I've seen 50C idle which is quite typical. Will need to do some research to see if this particular drive starts throttling in normal use. It could probably do with a couple of small RAM sinks stuck to it and I'm sure I can find some in my collection of spares.

Hope you like the build and let me know if you have any comments.
Last edited by edh on Mon Dec 28, 2015 11:07 am, edited 3 times in total.

Abula
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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by Abula » Sun Nov 15, 2015 1:01 pm

Nice build edh, really seems very well though.

Btw how is Asus bios fan control? did you run the tuning on it?

edh
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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Sun Nov 15, 2015 2:10 pm

Thanks.

I haven't experimented with the fan control much. All I've done for now is set it to the silent mode and lower the fan error detection to 200rpm. Once I have got fan speed monitoring working properly in the OS I will be able to experiment some more as I will be able to see what it is doing in real use. Right now I know the fan will speed up under load but I'm unable to monitor by how much so there is no measurement to allow useful experimentation. Maybe a BIOS or kernel update will fix this or perhaps it may be fixable by manually setting the fan divisor.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Nov 15, 2015 9:08 pm

Seeing the Ninja in there makes me chuckle. :)

Thanks for the build log. I have concerns about m.2 temps/throttling as well. Interested in seeing what you find out.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Mon Nov 16, 2015 2:23 pm

I logged some M.2 temperature numbers while doing a copy of around 70GB on my home directory:
Image

A peak of 70C was reached but this is not a usual everyday thing to do for me. It's also very hard to lock one of these disks up for minutes at a time to generate all of this heat when they are so fast! I've looked up the specs for the drive which suggest a thermal throttling limit of 78C. This should protect the hardware so there is no chance of it breaking but will slow it down. It is entirely possible that in warmer weather this limit could be reached but will it really have a big impact? Anandtech seem to think it won't but sadly they didn't log temperatures:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9396/sams ... d-review/2

The temperature max and min numbers appear to be stored in SMART data so can be queried from the drive at any point so I can perhaps see overtime what is reported in normal use. I could write a simple shell script to log temps and some kind of speeds from a synthetic test which will provide the best proof but I perhaps need to wait for summer so that the limit is reachable. I can then plot the temp versus the speed to show any throttling.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Nov 16, 2015 3:02 pm

Are your summer time ambient temps >8C higher than now?

Did the file copy complete around the 521s mark and the long tail is it's slow cool down to it's idle temp? ...and, is the long tail eventually going to get back down to 53C or is it settling down to idle at 62C after the system warms up?

Either way, you may need a bit more airflow through the case.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Mon Nov 16, 2015 3:42 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Are your summer time ambient temps >8C higher than now?
It's about 17C inside today according to my thermometer. During the summer it will get hotter than 25C everyday during the long, dry, hot summers for months on end without a cloud in the sky that Britain is renowned for having. :lol: Seriously though, it probably will do some days.
CA_Steve wrote:Did the file copy complete around the 521s mark and the long tail is it's slow cool down to it's idle temp? ...and, is the long tail eventually going to get back down to 53C or is it settling down to idle at 62C after the system warms up?
Yes, the file copy ended somewhere around the 530s mark and then it's a cool down to idle. Back to 54C now. Without a heatsink the surface won't dissipate heat fast so a long slow temperature change is to be expected.
CA_Steve wrote:Either way, you may need a bit more airflow through the case.
My numbers seem consistent with what I've seen elsewhere for SSD temp and aren't especially alarming. Watch the following video complete with reggae soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hhdWwvh5kI

The M.2 is rear mounted so case airflow won't effect it much. The M.2 is largely visible from the CPU cutout in the motherboard tray and there is some ventilation on the side of the case. If I was to change something I would cut a bit more of the motherboard tray to make the whole drive open to the air and then the next step would be a set of small ram sinks. However, more research is really needed first.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by Abula » Mon Nov 16, 2015 5:20 pm

edh wrote:The M.2 is rear mounted so case airflow won't effect it much. The M.2 is largely visible from the CPU cutout in the motherboard tray and there is some ventilation on the side of the case. If I was to change something I would cut a bit more of the motherboard tray to make the whole drive open to the air and then the next step would be a set of small ram sinks. However, more research is really needed first.
What i dont get is why the manufactuers arent doing something like the memory heatsinks, it shoudlnt add to much width.

When i looking to aid the cooling my laptop, this was long time ago on dual cores, some people believe using copper heatsinks would help the pipes disipate the heat easier, the ones we used were Copper VGA RAM Cooling Heatsinks cooler attached with SEKISUI #5760 Double-sided Thermal Adhesive Tape for Heatsink 100mm X 200mm, but im not too sure if the bottom of the case would clear the heatsinks, they are small but really depends on the case standoff height, as an alternative you could try Heatsink Copper Shim Thermal Pads for Laptop GPU CPU VGA.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Nov 16, 2015 10:11 pm

<shrug> I see a long thermal tail like that and I think it's just barely acceptable.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by Cistron » Mon Nov 16, 2015 11:22 pm

edh wrote:
CA_Steve wrote:Are your summer time ambient temps >8C higher than now?
It's about 17C inside today according to my thermometer. During the summer it will get hotter than 25C everyday during the long, dry, hot summers for months on end without a cloud in the sky that Britain is renowned for having. :lol: Seriously though, it probably will do some days.
That's alright: In those rare cases, you'll be chasing sun rays outside with eeeebody else in the UK. :mrgreen: But 17°C room temperature? Brrrrr.

It's a lovely little build. Have you toyed with the thought of using something along the lines of a picoPSU to gain some space?

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by Cistron » Mon Nov 16, 2015 11:29 pm

edh wrote:My numbers seem consistent with what I've seen elsewhere for SSD temp and aren't especially alarming. Watch the following video complete with reggae soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hhdWwvh5kI
Looks like heat output is very localised to one side of the SSD stick. So at least the flash cells don't heat up that much.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Mon Nov 16, 2015 11:54 pm

Abula wrote:What i dont get is why the manufactuers arent doing something like the memory heatsinks, it shoudlnt add to much width.
I don't think the throttling will effect most peoples use cases. If your normal everyday use is synthetic benchmarks constantly moving 100GB files around then perhaps it will though. There have been some users who have improvised with RAM sinks and I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising individual starts making M.2 specific heatsinks. Here's a nice example of an improvised set of heatsinks:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1516058/offi ... t_22990734
Cistron wrote:But 17°C room temperature? Brrrrr.
Nothing wrong with that for me. I can quite happily go down to around 14C at home. I don't get cold easily and it saves money and the environment.
Cistron wrote:Have you toyed with the thought of using something along the lines of a picoPSU to gain some space?
I've been thinking about PicoPSU before but in the end you have a lower powered, lower quality, lower efficiency PSU with an external power brick which I don't like. If the power brick goes internally then you still have the size of the power brick to deal with. They will work for some very small systems well but I don't see them as a solution for every use case. The PSU in my system takes up around 20% of the case volume so it is wasted space but it does not take up room that I would want to use for anything else, except for the sticking out power cables getting in the way of a full length graphics card heatsink. SFX or SFX-L might be an alternative if they could run passively but the X400 is a PSU I already have so it's a no brainer to carry on using it.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Tue Nov 17, 2015 1:41 pm

Just checked up on something I wasn't quite sure about with this Crucial M.2 SSD. The SMART min/max temperatures are persistent. This means that any time the system is booted you can see
the maximum temperature that has been logged over the entire life of the drive. Very useful and not something I have seen in SMART before. Here's the readout I get from smartctl -a /dev/sda:

Code: Select all

ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   100   100   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0032   100   100   010    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       36
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       22
171 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
172 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
173 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       1
174 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
180 Unused_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot 0x0033   000   000   000    Pre-fail  Always       -       2591
183 Runtime_Bad_Block       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
184 End-to-End_Error        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
187 Reported_Uncorrect      0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   047   030   000    Old_age   Always       -       53 (Min/Max 21/70)
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   100   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
202 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x0030   100   100   001    Old_age   Offline      -       0
206 Unknown_SSD_Attribute   0x000e   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
210 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
246 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       621047944
247 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       19413681
248 Unknown_Attribute       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       11527213
So in it's lifetime so far the minimum is 21C (obviously includes a bit of heat from being switched on so above minimum ambient) and maximum is 70C as recorded yesterday. All I really need to see is over the months whether the 70C temp gets broken and if it gets close to the 78C throttling temp for the drive.

Has anyone else seen a drive that logs the min/max temp? May be very useful to look at. Windows users can find SMART data through Speedfan or other tools.
Last edited by edh on Wed Nov 18, 2015 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by MikeC » Tue Nov 17, 2015 2:53 pm

Nice case -- never even heard of Raijintek till I saw your post!

Re the M2 temps. If the main chips are exposed by the hole in the motherboard tray, you could improve cooling by using a block of aluminum or copper of the right size/thickness to conduct heat from the SSD to the side panel. Use thermal glue or just bolt it to the inside of the side panel using flat screws from the outside. Since the panel will flex a bit, you don't have to be super-precise about the thickness. I bet it would bring down the temp a whole lot.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Wed Nov 18, 2015 10:36 am

MikeC wrote:Nice case -- never even heard of Raijintek till I saw your post!
Thanks Mike. I can't say I had really heard of them until a few months ago. When I first saw it there were the usual doubts: it's too cheap to be any good, not enough airflow provided, made by some company with no reputation etc. Only when I realised all of the reviews slagging off it's cooling potential were bad tests did I realise I was on to something. Even if it had turned out bad it's so cheap that it's not much money wasted.

It would also be a good starting point for anyone wanting to build their own custom MiniITX case. Keep the motherboard tray, backpanel, power button, USB ports, fan, screws and other fixings bin the rest! Actually not such bad value for that versus buying the components separately. :lol:

Do you think it might be worth redoing the SPCR Quiet MiniITX build guide with this? Replace the M1, use a push-pull Ninja 4 on Skylake, passive PSU and an Accelero S3 with a 120mm fan on a GTX970. 8)
MikeC wrote:If the main chips are exposed by the hole in the motherboard tray, you could improve cooling by using a block of aluminum or copper of the right size/thickness to conduct heat from the SSD to the side panel.
I have considered this. It would need a bit of re-machining of the motherboard tray to expose the whole SSD as it is partially hidden. Also it might make the drive subject to pressure on the side panel which maybe isn't a good idea.

One other problem I have considered with this SSD is that it is a 2260DS, not the more common 2280SS. It is 60mm in length rather than 80mm but the chips are on both sides and the hidden side is not going to be well ventilated. It was cheaper and will have packaging advantages but might perhaps run warmer.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by CA_Steve » Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:41 am

Is the SSD controller chip exposed? Might try sticking a RAM/VRM heatsink on just that and see how it affects temp/performance.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Wed Nov 18, 2015 12:51 pm

CA_Steve wrote:Is the SSD controller chip exposed? Might try sticking a RAM/VRM heatsink on just that and see how it affects temp/performance.
Unfortunately with the included stickers on the drive you can't get at any of the chips. The stickers don't tell you to remove them and likewise don't tell you not to remove them but this is also something I may try down the line. However, with it being brand new I feel happier leaving the stickers on right now in case I have to return it. They themselves might effect the temperature but you would think Crucial should have thought of that before putting them on.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Sun Nov 29, 2015 4:11 am

Just a small update. Still no progress on getting the fan speeds to show up as the asus-isa-0000 chip doesn't appear to report correctly to lmsensors. It could be a divisor needs changing but also it could be that a kernel update will fix this. At present Arch Linux is still on kernel 4.2 but it could be that 4.3 or 4.4 will improve support for what is of course brand new hardware.

I have also now been able to distinguish a faint ticking sound from the Scythe Glidestream fan included with the Ninja 4. It needs me to put my ear on the case to hear it but then it becomes quite distinct even at the 300rpm idle speed. Not sure if anyone else may have noticed this with the Ninja 4?

It probably isn't Scythe's best fan effort but with Christmas coming up I will be asking Father Christmas for a few cooling toys. At the same time I will want to do a little rebuild to improve the cable runs a bit with some additional cutouts and maybe open the M.2 up to a bit more air.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Mon Dec 28, 2015 11:03 am

I have now changed a few things on this system. Hope you enjoy.

I've drilled a few 20mm holes in the motherboard tray. Here is the modded tray before being cleaned a bit:

Image

This means I can remove the M.2 drive without entirely dismantling the system. Also the ATX 12V and front panel cables are now routed behind the tray.

I have replaced the Scythe fan with Noctua NF-S12A PWM running on ULN at ~300rpm. This is a better fan than the Scythe which I have noticed a light ticking on sometimes.

I have also got out my heatsink shoehorn once again - not only does this system have the Ninja 4, the biggest heatsink that can fit in the Metis but it also has an Accelero S3! That's the biggest heatsink combination you can fit in this case.

Image

Image

This took some work to do. The Accelero didn't quite fit the GTX 950 properly without the backplate (not possible in this case) so I had to improvise with other screws. The plastic cowling was stripped and some of the fins cut for cable clearance around the back power cable and the PSU cabling.

I've reused the Scythe fan on the Accelero with cable ties and set the fan switch to low speed. The fan is fed from the graphics card via a Gelid PWM adaptor cable. This gives some slightly odd fan control as of course the card doesn't expect such a slow fan. Therefore at idle it runs it at 12%, equating to 360rpm at 32C. Under extended use of Furmark it revs up to 890rpm at 30%, giving a temp of 77C. This compares to the stock fan which would ramp up to close to 3000rpm and still allow the card to get to almost 80C. This is a slow fan speed and very quiet in comparison but maybe a more aggressive curve could be used to cool better under heavy load.

There are still some things I would like to do:
- Add some cable tie mounting points to the motherboard tray for better cabling.
- Add another NF-S12A to the front of the Ninja 4?
- Add ramsinks to the graphics card
- Replace the Scythe fan on the graphics card with an NF-S12A
- Experiment with fan control curve on graphics card
- Add ventilation holes into top of case to improve graphics cooling?
- Heatsinks for the M.2
Last edited by edh on Tue Dec 29, 2015 12:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by nagi » Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:25 pm

Damnit, man, I wish I saw this earlier, I just placed an order eerily similar to yours: Metis, X400, though with 16gb ram, an i7, scythe fuma, and no GPU since it's for work. I just hope the Fuma will fit...

Great work, by the way, and love the GPU cooling hack. I was playing with the thought of adding an AMD R9 Nano, just for fun, but your solution takes the cake.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Tue Dec 29, 2015 5:32 am

nagi wrote:I just hope the Fuma will fit...
It will depend on the motherboard CPU placement. Height wise you will have plenty of clearance to the case and in fact a slightly taller cooler is preferable as it will align better with the rear 120mm fan. The width shouldn't be a problem unless your chosen motherboard has a very unusual layout. Depth may be interesting particularly with the twin fans you will have which will allow different arrangements. How were you intending to arrange them?
nagi wrote:Great work, by the way, and love the GPU cooling hack. I was playing with the thought of adding an AMD R9 Nano, just for fun, but your solution takes the cake.
Thanks. It'd not optimal right now and it looks like air is not being used very well. One little thing I've done today is to drill out the small plastic cover to the right of the expansion brackets to get more hot air out of the back. Maybe top ventilation is the next port of call but as it is a one way process I will want to get it right!

Have fun with your Metis! I'd suggest drilling a few cable holes in the tray before you build as putting them in later has been a long job and really helps.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by nagi » Tue Dec 29, 2015 5:57 am

edh wrote:
nagi wrote:I just hope the Fuma will fit...
It will depend on the motherboard CPU placement. Height wise you will have plenty of clearance to the case and in fact a slightly taller cooler is preferable as it will align better with the rear 120mm fan. The width shouldn't be a problem unless your chosen motherboard has a very unusual layout. Depth may be interesting particularly with the twin fans you will have which will allow different arrangements. How were you intending to arrange them?
Well, I'll be fitting the ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac, and the plan is to have two fans in the case, as first, that's how many headers the mobo has, (although I could fix that with a pwm splitter...) and second, because I'm not sure the third would fit. If only two will fit, then most likely the one that won't fit is the one between the Fuma and the PSU. If all will fit, it will basically be a tube of fans from the PSU to the exhaust fan. Or at least would be, if the CPU placement is optimal, which I don't dare to hope. (Murphy...)

I was thinking about the airflow a lot. Pulling in through the PSU seems to be the cleanest possibility right now, as that way the hot air is easier to exhaust through the otherwise better closed-off back.
edh wrote:
nagi wrote:Great work, by the way, and love the GPU cooling hack. I was playing with the thought of adding an AMD R9 Nano, just for fun, but your solution takes the cake.
Thanks. It'd not optimal right now and it looks like air is not being used very well. One little thing I've done today is to drill out the small plastic cover to the right of the expansion brackets to get more hot air out of the back. Maybe top ventilation is the next port of call but as it is a one way process I will want to get it right!

Have fun with your Metis! I'd suggest drilling a few cable holes in the tray before you build as putting them in later has been a long job and really helps.
Thanks for the tip, although I don't plan on using too many cables, so I'm hoping I'll get away without any. I mean, I only have the ATX, the CPU and a SATA power cable attached to the PSU.

Aaaanyway, the whole pack will arrive tomorrow. Yes, I chose the perfect day to build a mini-PC. :D

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Tue Dec 29, 2015 8:20 am

nagi wrote:I'll be fitting the ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac
I've had a look at the layout and compared it to what I have. The CPU is around 3mm further back and something like 20mm further up (or in the Metis, down). The CPU cooler should fit but may not be ideally placed for the rear fan to be used on it's own. The triple fan idea may well fit but only if you can get the ATX connector in first as the bend radius will be tight. A PWM splitter would be the best way to control the fans as the different headers on a motherboard will probably not be synchronised so you would get different speeds across them.
nagi wrote:Pulling in through the PSU seems to be the cleanest possibility right now
That's the same idea I've followed. It's surprisingly dust free after a month and a half of operation and the heat pulled from the PSU will be less than 10W under load so it's not like the CPU will be getting a blast of hot air.
nagi wrote:Thanks for the tip, although I don't plan on using too many cables, so I'm hoping I'll get away without any. I mean, I only have the ATX, the CPU and a SATA power cable attached to the PSU.
Don't be surprised if the front panel cables become a nuisance. The USB 3.0 cable is quite long and inflexible so running behind the tray might help you. Without a graphics card you should be able to take the ATX12V connector up to the top and along but there is no way of getting behind the tray from there as the tray has a lip which runs right up to the side panel. The ATX connector you will probably want to come upwards with given it's position above the CPU socket centre. The X-400 and it's 160mm depth does make cabling tight around the top so you can if you're not careful end up with a bundle that won't allow the side panels to be reattached. Putting in the holes may help you greatly.

The biggest tip I would give though is to completely dismantle the case to begin with. It makes it much easier, especially if you have a big CPU cooler.

This is the assembly order I have worked out:
Mount the motherboard to the trap complete with CPU, RAM (and M.2 or similar onboard cards), then mount the rear fan to the rear panel, attach the rear panel to the tray, connect all modular cables to the motherboard, then attach the bottom panel (with drives and cables if needed), then attach the front panel, then attach front panel cables, then install the PSU, then install graphics card if needed, boot and test, then install top panel (with any drive and cables), then install side panels.

...Just don't leave it until the last moment to realise that you didn't put thermal paste on the CPU or something else silly. Many hours of frustration will result!

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by nagi » Thu Dec 31, 2015 5:57 am

Again, thanks for the tips. I got the pack, assembled the beast, but not without problems.
edh wrote:
nagi wrote:I'll be fitting the ASRock Z97E-ITX/ac
I've had a look at the layout and compared it to what I have. The CPU is around 3mm further back and something like 20mm further up (or in the Metis, down). The CPU cooler should fit but may not be ideally placed for the rear fan to be used on it's own. The triple fan idea may well fit but only if you can get the ATX connector in first as the bend radius will be tight. A PWM splitter would be the best way to control the fans as the different headers on a motherboard will probably not be synchronised so you would get different speeds across them.
Apparently the Scythe Fuma had an actual PWM splitter in the box. That 20mm difference though made my life much, much harder. The Fuma is literally straining against the bottom, and I had great difficulty in screwing all together. I Think I'll have to look for another large sink that is about 15-20mm thinner in that dimension. And even then, the bottom SSD slots might not be usable. Right now I'm thinking a Mugen 4, if the heatsink can be rotated. I'm waiting for official confirmation for this, although If I'm seeing correctly, it should be possible, as the LGA1150 cooling mounting holes are 75*75mm.

The extra CPU power cable was a nasty bit to get in, as it is just under the heatsink.

Oh, and the triple fan idea did not fan out, as there just wasn't enough space between the heatsink and the PSU, with the cables there.
nagi wrote:Pulling in through the PSU seems to be the cleanest possibility right now
That's the same idea I've followed. It's surprisingly dust free after a month and a half of operation and the heat pulled from the PSU will be less than 10W under load so it's not like the CPU will be getting a blast of hot air.
edh wrote:
nagi wrote:Thanks for the tip, although I don't plan on using too many cables, so I'm hoping I'll get away without any. I mean, I only have the ATX, the CPU and a SATA power cable attached to the PSU.
Don't be surprised if the front panel cables become a nuisance. The USB 3.0 cable is quite long and inflexible so running behind the tray might help you. Without a graphics card you should be able to take the ATX12V connector up to the top and along but there is no way of getting behind the tray from there as the tray has a lip which runs right up to the side panel. The ATX connector you will probably want to come upwards with given it's position above the CPU socket centre. The X-400 and it's 160mm depth does make cabling tight around the top so you can if you're not careful end up with a bundle that won't allow the side panels to be reattached. Putting in the holes may help you greatly.
Thankfully the fact that I only needed to connect 3 cables helped in this, so this was perhaps the least painful part of the assembly.
edh wrote:The biggest tip I would give though is to completely dismantle the case to begin with. It makes it much easier, especially if you have a big CPU cooler.

This is the assembly order I have worked out:
Mount the motherboard to the trap complete with CPU, RAM (and M.2 or similar onboard cards), then mount the rear fan to the rear panel, attach the rear panel to the tray, connect all modular cables to the motherboard, then attach the bottom panel (with drives and cables if needed), then attach the front panel, then attach front panel cables, then install the PSU, then install graphics card if needed, boot and test, then install top panel (with any drive and cables), then install side panels.
Yeah, after completing it all, I can completely, utterly agree. This is the only way one can assemble this case with anything more than a stock intel cooler in it. although you can wait with the modular cables till you got the front, rear, mobo panel and bottom if your mobo has all the connectors at their bottom (or assembled in this case: top).
edh wrote:...Just don't leave it until the last moment to realise that you didn't put thermal paste on the CPU or something else silly. Many hours of frustration will result!
My facepalm moment was when I realised I did not remove that plastick sticker at the bottom of the CPU. Oh well. :D

Soooo, right now I'm halfway there. With the straining cooler, the temps are almost OK, I have no problem with idle (35°C in a 24°C room) or generic work, but Prime95 will raise the temps to 80+°C, which is simply not acceptable.

edit: oh, and both fans included with the Fuma are clicking like crazy on low speed. They are standard SY1225SL12M-CJP fans, AFAI the only distinguishing feature they have apart from the SY1225SL12M is the grey blade color. Plus, our local Nexus fan distributor stopped importing nexus fans. :-/

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Sat Jan 02, 2016 9:07 am

nagi wrote:That 20mm difference though made my life much, much harder. The Fuma is literally straining against the bottom, and I had great difficulty in screwing all together. I Think I'll have to look for another large sink that is about 15-20mm thinner in that dimension.
Sorry to hear of the problem. The Fuma looks to have the same mounting hardware as the Ninja 4 (and the Mugen 4 for that matter) and with a bit of drilling the heatsink could be modified so that it fits better. I did this to move the cooler back by about 2mm so that it is right up against the rear fan.

That motherboard has a particularly northern CPU position which may make the task more difficult. Perhaps look at another motherboard? What you would need to do is take accurate measurements inside the case for positioning of the motherboard tray versus the rear fan, then look at pictures of motherboards and scale off from them the CPU position. This is what I did to calculate that the Ninja 4 could be fitted and by how much I would need to adjust the mounting hardware.
nagi wrote:Right now I'm thinking a Mugen 4, if the heatsink can be rotated.
You could do it as it is the same mounting mechanism that all modern Scythe's use however they do tell you in the instructions for many heatsinks to only mount one way around. Maybe this is because of heatpipes (questionable) or cooling other components, I don't know. The Fuma is 137mm wide so it is more likely to cause problems because of the fan mounting clips which stick out the side so one which is 130mm might fix this. Using a motherboard which puts the CPU right in the path of the rear fan would make a big difference.
nagi wrote:Oh, and the triple fan idea did not fan out, as there just wasn't enough space between the heatsink and the PSU, with the cables there.
From the picture this might be able to be resolved. You would need to get the ATX cable to turn very tightly (less than 40mm away from the motherboard) upwards so that the fan could fit in next to it.
nagi wrote:Pulling in through the PSU seems to be the cleanest possibility right now
That's the same idea I've followed. It's surprisingly dust free after a month and a half of operation and the heat pulled from the PSU will be less than 10W under load so it's not like the CPU will be getting a blast of hot air.
nagi wrote:With the straining cooler, the temps are almost OK, I have no problem with idle (35°C in a 24°C room) or generic work, but Prime95 will raise the temps to 80+°C, which is simply not acceptable.
That doesn't sound right. It is possible that the pressure on the heatsink means that the cooler is no longer in good thermal contact. Alternatively there is the problem that the CPU cooler just isn't in the right place for the rear fan to have good effect.
nagi wrote:both fans included with the Fuma are clicking like crazy on low speed.
What speed are they spinning at? The Glidestream generally doesn't seem to be as well reviewed as the Sycthe's previous fans and seem prone to PWM noises. Mine has ticked a bit which is why I have demoted it to graphics card duties at least temporarily.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by nagi » Sat Jan 02, 2016 9:51 am

Hi,

I actually just posted a new topic with some extra info and pics so as not to litter your topic so much with my less-than-adequate job.
edh wrote:[...]
Sorry to hear of the problem. The Fuma looks to have the same mounting hardware as the Ninja 4 (and the Mugen 4 for that matter) and with a bit of drilling the heatsink could be modified so that it fits better. I did this to move the cooler back by about 2mm so that it is right up against the rear fan.

That motherboard has a particularly northern CPU position which may make the task more difficult. Perhaps look at another motherboard? What you would need to do is take accurate measurements inside the case for positioning of the motherboard tray versus the rear fan, then look at pictures of motherboards and scale off from them the CPU position. This is what I did to calculate that the Ninja 4 could be fitted and by how much I would need to adjust the mounting hardware.

[...]
You could do it as it is the same mounting mechanism that all modern Scythe's use however they do tell you in the instructions for many heatsinks to only mount one way around. Maybe this is because of heatpipes (questionable) or cooling other components, I don't know. The Fuma is 137mm wide so it is more likely to cause problems because of the fan mounting clips which stick out the side so one which is 130mm might fix this. Using a motherboard which puts the CPU right in the path of the rear fan would make a big difference.
Unfortunately this is the only mobo that will do for now (I could not find any other locally that had the feature set I was after: 4K DP/HDMI, 6xSATA (I'll need this down the line after I demoted it from work machine to storage server mobo)).

I did rotate the heatsink, and apart from a slight pressure to the first RAM from the heatpipe, a bit reduced space between it and the PSU, it solved the problem of too high temps. I was just too used to AMD's fan mountings which made it impossible to rotate a cooler by 90°. :) Oh, and yes, mounted rotated the fan clips do clip into the fan on the back of the case. I removed one of them until I get a noctua cooler.

As for drilling the heatsink, there is just too much, and I'd lose all fan mounting possibility on that side. I'd rather not have the fans flappin' in the wind freely ;) especially as I'll be transporting this little beast to and from work a couple times.

I'm most likely going to buy another CPU cooler, a noctua tower with 92mm fans. The fuma will get used in another, standard ATX case.
edh wrote:[...]
From the picture this might be able to be resolved. You would need to get the ATX cable to turn very tightly (less than 40mm away from the motherboard) upwards so that the fan could fit in next to it.
Yeah, I just wasn't ready to put even more strain on the cooler, with the case bottom alrady pushing on it. Plus, it was way easier to tuck cables there as well then it would have been to tuck them all to the top of the case.
edh wrote:[...]
That doesn't sound right. It is possible that the pressure on the heatsink means that the cooler is no longer in good thermal contact. Alternatively there is the problem that the CPU cooler just isn't in the right place for the rear fan to have good effect.
Yep, my thoughts exactly: the contact is compromised. Core temp actually jumped to 100°C, at which point I scrambled to shut down the test. Rotating the cooler by 90° confirmed this, as even with the botched airflow, it managed to keep the temps to 70°C. The fans were at 100% from 70°C (set with speedfan) on both attempts.
edh wrote:[...]
What speed are they spinning at? The Glidestream generally doesn't seem to be as well reviewed as the Sycthe's previous fans and seem prone to PWM noises. Mine has ticked a bit which is why I have demoted it to graphics card duties at least temporarily.
They are actually 120 mm 1200rpm Slip Streams according to the manufacturer and their part number. (I had a few from my Mugen 2.revBs, but they did not exhibit this problem.) Anyway, to answer your question, above 750 rpm the wind noise drowns out the PWM clicking. I usually set my fans to be at ~3-400 rpm till about 50°C, which I found to be generally adequate for normal browsing and the like if you use a big tower and decent airflow.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by Blitos » Sat Jan 02, 2016 10:04 am

Hi edh,
great work and beautiful build.
I was wondering what kind of modding did you do in the Ninja 4 mounting bracket? I'm planning a similar build but with a Fractal Node 304 and fear there won't be enough space for a rear case fan (like you did here). I have printed scaled pictures and made calculations and it should just fit, but I would like to be sure before I buy the components.
Thanks!

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Sat Jan 02, 2016 11:36 am

Blitos wrote:I was wondering what kind of modding did you do in the Ninja 4 mounting bracket?
Thanks for the question. Take a look at page 3 of the SPCR review:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1462-page3.html

In the first picture the mounting hardware has a crosspiece at the top - the bit with two screws going through it. What I did was grind out a small amount of metal on each hole to allow some more movement to the side. The bolts are tight so it won't move once assembled. Here's a rough pic I just made up to show the material to grind away:
Image

Definitely good to take measurements and do calculations. I have done the same for every component fitted.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by edh » Sun Jan 17, 2016 2:37 pm

I've now had a chance to put a power meter on this system.

Off: 0-1W
Idle: 33W
Linpack: 93W
GPUTest Furmark: 130W
Linpack + GPUTest Furmark: 170W

As a Linux system the programs used may be unfamiliar to Windows users but GPUTest has a Linux port of Furmark and Linpack can be considered similar in load to Prime95 if configured for it.

The Off usage is pleasing. It shows how legislation like ErP has had a big effect as a decade ago there were systems that used 10W when off. The idle is nice but compared to some Skylake idle wattages I've seen (24W in the SPCR 6700k review with iGPU) it's not the best.

I was a bit surprised how high the max power usage is. I was anticipating maybe 150W given the TDP of CPU and graphics card and assumed that in actual use it would be a bit less than TDP. It's not bad really but may show how stress test tools are intended to get maximum TDP rather than reflect any kind of even remotely real world usage.

These form useful baseline numbers before any modifications can be done.

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Re: Silent MiniITX Skylake in 13.4 litres: 6400, GTX950, Nin

Post by CA_Steve » Sun Jan 17, 2016 4:59 pm

I would have used a conservative 185W (DC) for stress load, with 30W for the mobo, RAM, and SSD. So, 170W (AC) stress load looks pretty good to me. :D

Take a look at how Asus sets the CPU core voltage..perhaps it's a littler higher in your board. You can also try disabling features you don't use to drop the idle power - that's what I did with my little HTPC.

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