IN WIN Mt Jade/BK623, 780G , 4850e, HD 4830

Show off your quiet rig.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
afa3
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:56 am
Location: Milwaukee, WI USA

IN WIN Mt Jade/BK623, 780G , 4850e, HD 4830

Post by afa3 » Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:54 pm

First, a big thanks to Mike and everyone else at SPCR for a great site. I learned a lot here, and it helped me put together a really nice little general-purpose PC.

Most of the components I used are familiar to everyone here, but I thought you might like to see how they work in the IN WIN Mt. Jade case.

Here's what it looks like:

Image

Image

We needed a new PC for general family use, including some video editing and moderate gaming. Priorities were: cheap, fairly quiet, and small in that order. I also want it to be useful as a HTPC/media-extender when it gets too old/slow for gaming and general use.

A mATX 780G MB, low-power Athlon X2, and low-end HD 4xxx card are perfect for this. I chose:

IN WIN Mt. Jade case (aka BK623)
ASUS M3A78-EM 780G motherboard
Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 45W CPU
4 GB DDR2 800 RAM
Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 card
WD Caviar Green 640GB drive
LG DVD drive
Vista 32-bit

Overall, it worked out great. Total cost was about $575 shipped, including Vista.

Despite the case's size, ventilation, and power limits, it handles this setup very well. The only two big issues are:
1) The internal partition in the case needs some minor modding to work with AMD motherboards.
2) The Sapphire 4830 board is a little loud at idle.

I'll post more notes and pictures as I have time. Follow the photo links and you can see my other pics.

QuietOC
Posts: 1407
Joined: Tue Dec 13, 2005 1:08 pm
Location: Michigan
Contact:

Post by QuietOC » Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:25 pm

Interesting little chasis. I came up with something similar many years ago, except I put the power supply behind the optical drive and above the CPU. That allowed me to stuff a full-size ATX motherboard underneath. I put the hard drive under the CD-ROM, and put a 120mm fan opening in the front left side of the case. With positive pressure I just had a hole on the right side of the case with a duct around the CPU heatsink. I could fit both a Radeon 9700 and a Voodoo 5 5500 in it. Not bad for a 6"x12"x10" case.

Image

Looks like a Radeon 8500 was installed in this picture.

Image

You can see the hole for the exhaust in the back right corner.
Last edited by QuietOC on Sat Nov 15, 2008 9:56 am, edited 3 times in total.

afa3
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:56 am
Location: Milwaukee, WI USA

Case and PS

Post by afa3 » Fri Nov 14, 2008 2:20 pm

Notes on the case and included PS...

Here's the bare Mt Jade case:

Image

The case doesn't have a case fan. Instead, it uses the CPU fan to bring air into the case and the PS fan to exhaust it. The case has a partition/duct to direct incoming air to the CPU fan.

Here's IN WIN's product page showing how the case fits together.

It comes with a FSP FSP300-60GLS 300W SFX power supply. Efficiency is rated at >75%.

Image

The PS is rated 12V1@8A, 12V2@16A, so it probably has 280+ VA available at 12v assuming it's all coming from the same 12v source and we don't exceed 300W total output. One site lists 22A over-current protection on each 12v rail.

The PS has the normal MB power connectors, 3 4-pin molex and a floppy connector split between two cables, and two SATA power connections on one short cable. It has no PCI-e power connection.

afa3
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:56 am
Location: Milwaukee, WI USA

Post by afa3 » Fri Nov 14, 2008 3:11 pm

Notes on initial assembly...

Motherboard, CPU, RAM, and stock retail heatsink and fan went in easily. Everything wired up well, although I did need a couple of extensions for the power leads.

Bare motherboard:

Image

Main power and SATA connectors are at the front edge (bottom of pic).

Motherboard and drive wiring:

Image

Not much room around the edges except at the front. Everything fits there pretty well, however.

The hard drive is in place in it's removable bay in the lower left. The built-in bay in the lower left corner is for a card reader, floppy, or second hard drive. DVD wiring is hanging loose in the lower right.

The cable with the two SATA power connections is too short to reach the DVD. The DVD power connection will be sitting above the center of the CPU fan. I used a molex/SATA adapter on one of the molex taps to reach.

The ATX12v/P4 motherboard connection barely reached the connector in the upper right. In order to reach, it had to go right through the PCI-e card area. Instead I used a 10" molex/ATX12v adapter which let me route it around the front and right side of the case.

The way I wired it means that all the 12v power is coming off one PS rail. The HD 4830 and 4850e combined should stay well within the 20A current limit, however. Someday, I'll get an ATX12v extension to get the 4850e 12v back on to the 12V2 rail. For a hotter CPU, that would probably be necessary.

Sapphire HD 4830 board in place:

Image

The 4830 has one PCI-e power connector. I attached this with a molex/PCI-e adapter to the remaining molex tap.

afa3
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:56 am
Location: Milwaukee, WI USA

Post by afa3 » Fri Nov 14, 2008 7:00 pm

Notes on the partition and final assembly...

The DVD drive and cage in position (partition not installed):

Image

View through the DVD cage/duct to the CPU:

Image

The plastic partition sits under the DVD cage and creates a plenum above the CPU fan for the incoming air. It was designed for Intel boards, however, so the AMD fan doesn't line up:

Image

You can also see from this shot that the left edge of the partition lines up with the PCI-e x1 slot, which is to the right of the x16 slot. The partition has an angled corner along the bottom, but a tall PCI-e x1 card might still hit it. A low profile card should be no problem.

With the adjustment plate removed. you can see there's still interference at the corner:

Image

With a little trimming and a new plate, it can be modified to fit. I didn't want to start carving right away however, so first I ran it without the partition and without the HD 4830.

Then I made this cardboard version to see how much it helped cooling:

Image

The partition makes a noticeable difference. It dropped the CPU temperature at idle by about 3 C, and full load temp by 6 C.

Once I decide whether to keep the stock CPU fan or not, I'll modify the partition to fit. In the meantime, the cardboard one works pretty well.

Case top on with vent over the CPU fan (no partition in this shot):

Image

Shot of the back with vent behind CPU (no partition in this shot):

Image

The partition blocks off the rear vent from the CPU, it just feeds into the open case area. The PS fan does draw some air in here.

afa3
Posts: 8
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2008 9:56 am
Location: Milwaukee, WI USA

Post by afa3 » Sat Nov 15, 2008 8:27 am

Final notes on noise, power, and temps...

I measured power using a Kill-a-Watt, CPU temps and fan speed with the ASUS PC Probe II, and GPU temps with Catalyst Control Center.

I can't get GPU fan speeds. GPU-Z 0.2.8 doesn't recognize the Sapphire card, and CCC doesn't report GPU fans speed, only fan %.

I can't measure northbridge temps. The only other temperature sensor on the ASUS MB is a "MB" sensor that seems to be more of ambient case temp.

All performance and cooling settings are stock. ASUS Q-Fan and AMD Cool and Quiet are enabled.

I first ran without the HD 4830 to get a baseline.

Without the HD 4830, the noise is from the PSU fan and stock CPU cooler only. Both are about the same sound level at CPU idle and fairly quiet, although certainly not silent. If you're familiar with a stock AMD CPU fan running at 2300 RPM, then that's about what the PSU sounds like.

Overall, it's very quiet by normal PC standards. The IN WIN product page claims 30dB at idle with a low-power Intel CPU and power saving features. I don't have any way to measure my setup, but it must be about the same using the 4850e, C&Q and Q-Fan.

For general use, it's not intrusive, even sitting on the desktop. In a quiet setting, it is audible so for HTPC use, I would probably look into fan swaps to try to quiet it down just a little. For a cheap, stock case it's great though, especially if you need room for full-height cards.

The Caviar Green drive is also great. If you get within 2 feet and concentrate, you can hear it over the fans, but it's hardly noticeable. It's hard mounted in this case. A foam pad or suspension mount would probably make it inaudible over the fans.

The LG drive I used (GH22NS30) is fine overall. At times the seeks seem nosier than the other drives I have.

The power measurements are very similar to those reported here in the SPCR review of the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H. I've got 4GB RAM, so some of the power readings reflect a few extra watts compared to the Gigabyte setup reviewed.

Code: Select all

Measured Power/Temps/Speeds (IGP only)

                    Power   CPU temp    CPU fan
Idle                 43W      29C      2250 rpm
CPUBurn only        101W      48C      3050 rpm
CPUBurn + ATITool   111W      49C      3050 rpm
Next I installed the Sapphire HD 4830. Sapphire used their own cooling design. The good news is, it's much better at cooling than the ATI reference design. The bad news is it's apparently much louder at idle.

At idle, the Sapphire fan is much louder than the PSU or CPU fan. With the Sapphire installed, the overall noise level is no longer "quiet" but more like "on the quieter side of average". This is very different from the almost unnoticeable effect of the ATI 4830 at idle reported here in the SPCR review.

The GPU temps are also much different, however.

Code: Select all

Measured Power/Temps/Speeds (With Sapphire HD 4830)

                    Power   CPU temp    CPU fan    GPU temp
Idle                 65W      29C      2250 rpm      39C
CPUBurn + ATITool   165W      47C      3000 rpm      58C
Compare to 55C idle/85C load for the ATI card.

Ironically, I'm in the opposite situation as many HD4800 series owners. I'd like to give up a little idle cooling for less fan noise. Unfortunately, the manual fan control in Catalyst Overdrive do not allow reducing the stock fan speeds, only increasing.

The 165W (input) total is well within the PSU 300W (output) rating. Even assuming all that power goes to one 12v rail output, it's also well under the PSU 12v capacity and a 20A rail current limit.

A side note on the Sapphire - the driver support seems to be lagging. I didn't see the manual fan control option in Overdrive until I just updated to the new 8.11. It wasn't there in 8.10 for this card. I also had to manually select the 8.11 4800 series driver for installation by Vista. For some reason, it didn't install automatically.

Part of the issue may be that the Sapphire card (and apparently the HIS 4830 card) reports the GPU as "944C" rather than RV770. This also confuses GPU-Z.

Overall, I really like the Mt. Jade case. It's a cheap, quiet, compact case. The PSU looks small on paper, but has plenty of power for my configuration plus some headroom for another expansion card or a mid-power Phenom in the future.

The Sapphire HD 4830 is a great card for moderate gaming on a budget. It's better cooled than most 4800 series, and from reviews seems to overclock better than most 4830s. The cooling comes at the cost of increased noise, particularly at idle. For my purposes, that's OK. If you're more concerned about noise than GPU temps or overclocking, then look into other versions of the 4830.

Post Reply