Seems everything I read about the NSK1300 is negative, horror stories about CPU's close to or above 70ºC, everyone warning to stay away from it. But is there anyone successfully running their system on one of these cases? Preferably a non-overclocked system perhaps with a mid-range graphics card instead of onboard graphics. Or is it just not possible to run such system in this case?
Also I wonder why Antec didn't show any shoebox style case at CES2007, is it because the NSK1300 is a failure and they're not gonna venture making a better case?
Any Aria/NSK1300 cooling success stories?
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Hi
I've built many systems (not by choise ) in the Aria case, and every one was fine until you put some load on the cpu, and it would end up sounding like a microwave. These is 0 airflow through the case. It just needs some slight mods to make it an amazing case, such as 2 very slow spinning 80mm fans, 1 each side, 1 blowing in and 1 blowing out, then maybe some kind of grill over the fans. Im sure it could be done for under £10. I really dont know why Antec done bring out a second revision.
I've built many systems (not by choise ) in the Aria case, and every one was fine until you put some load on the cpu, and it would end up sounding like a microwave. These is 0 airflow through the case. It just needs some slight mods to make it an amazing case, such as 2 very slow spinning 80mm fans, 1 each side, 1 blowing in and 1 blowing out, then maybe some kind of grill over the fans. Im sure it could be done for under £10. I really dont know why Antec done bring out a second revision.
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digitalfeed
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2006 5:57 pm
- Location: Toronto, Ontario
I've got a scorcher in an Aria; Pentium D 820. Temperatures are great but I had to make modifications to improve the air flow.
I've got a posting in the gallery but I've included the link here. viewtopic.php?t=35646
I've got a posting in the gallery but I've included the link here. viewtopic.php?t=35646
Ok thanks guys. So really there's no way to make this case acceptable without modding it. I would hate to use a hole saw on such a cute little case. 
However I think that with just a few more rows of square holes in the PSU enclosure, the airflow would improve dramatically. I can't believe Antec didn't thought of this. Can the reason for so very few vents be because of RFI interferances with the components inside? Yeah maybe that's why they used a honeycomb grill over a regular wire grill.
However I think that with just a few more rows of square holes in the PSU enclosure, the airflow would improve dramatically. I can't believe Antec didn't thought of this. Can the reason for so very few vents be because of RFI interferances with the components inside? Yeah maybe that's why they used a honeycomb grill over a regular wire grill.
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digitalfeed
- Posts: 32
- Joined: Wed Jun 28, 2006 5:57 pm
- Location: Toronto, Ontario
Yeah, you won't be able to improve cooling unless you do some modding to it.
You should be able to cut the front side internal metal frame and add 1 or 2 80mm fans. You wouldn't have to cut the plastic bezel but you'd have to take into consideration all air would be coming through the two narrow vertical vents.
You should be able to cut the front side internal metal frame and add 1 or 2 80mm fans. You wouldn't have to cut the plastic bezel but you'd have to take into consideration all air would be coming through the two narrow vertical vents.
I've had my Aria for a couple of years now. My first build was an XP-Mobile based system. With a fanless 9600 and the CPU @2000 MHz my idle/load temps were 45c/65c. At the time I had dreams of running that Mobile @2200 MHz with a midrange video card. Once I saw the temps I was getting I gave up on that idea. When I upgraded to A64 cool n quiet became my best friend. I currently run a X2 4400+ @stock speed and with CnQ it idles @36c (40-42c w/o). I've actually tried my current setup with a Gigabyte 7600GS but with little air circualation inside the Aria, the card would overheat after about 25 minutes of mild gaming. Plus the heatpipe got so hot that I was afraid it would melt the rubber off any cables that came in contact with it. I've resigned myself to no OC, one hard drive and onboard graphics - which with my Geforce 6150 board isn't too bad. You might be able to run a midrange card if it vented to the outside and you added an intake fan. Personally, I love the looks of the case and I've seen very few mods to the exterior that I felt didn't take away from it.
Antec Aria
MSI K8NGM2-FID
X2 4400+ (89W)
Stock AMD Heatpipe Cooler w/ 80mm Panaflo
1GB Corsair Value Select DDR400
Western Digital WD2500KS
NEC ND-3540A
Onboard GeForce 6150 Graphics
Antec Aria
MSI K8NGM2-FID
X2 4400+ (89W)
Stock AMD Heatpipe Cooler w/ 80mm Panaflo
1GB Corsair Value Select DDR400
Western Digital WD2500KS
NEC ND-3540A
Onboard GeForce 6150 Graphics
Re: Any Aria/NSK1300 cooling success stories?
My aria is fully stable, but it's certainly not quiet and the temps are usually in the upper 60 C's when under load. It makes a handy little lan gaming machine though. Heck it's even overclocked, although still lower speed than some barton/tbird's out there.Shaman wrote:Seems everything I read about the NSK1300 is negative, horror stories about CPU's close to or above 70ºC, everyone warning to stay away from it. But is there anyone successfully running their system on one of these cases? Preferably a non-overclocked system perhaps with a mid-range graphics card instead of onboard graphics. Or is it just not possible to run such system in this case?
Also I wonder why Antec didn't show any shoebox style case at CES2007, is it because the NSK1300 is a failure and they're not gonna venture making a better case?
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Bluefront
- *Lifetime Patron*
- Posts: 5316
- Joined: Sat Jan 18, 2003 2:19 pm
- Location: St Louis (county) Missouri USA
My Aria which I sold some time ago.....is running just fine, cool, quiet, with a P4-2.8. The secret was to remove the stock PSU completely, and replace it with a Pico AC/DC converter, using an external 12 power supply.
This removes the major hurdle in making this Aria acceptable as a quiet computer. With the std PSU removed, you have a big 120mm hole for a fan. I blow mine inward toward the CPU heatsink, an XP-120, using a simple air deflector/duct.
I removed the stock top completely.....replaced it with a custom built sloping top, the exhaust being toward the rear. One of my best setups. Sold it to finance a new project....
This removes the major hurdle in making this Aria acceptable as a quiet computer. With the std PSU removed, you have a big 120mm hole for a fan. I blow mine inward toward the CPU heatsink, an XP-120, using a simple air deflector/duct.
I removed the stock top completely.....replaced it with a custom built sloping top, the exhaust being toward the rear. One of my best setups. Sold it to finance a new project....
Thank you for your input ajemm and merlin, I've sort of grown out of this idea since I made this thread, so I forgot to check on this thread. 
I had that idea for a while, but the PicoPSU is very limiting in terms of what components you can use, I'm even surprised you can run a P4 2.8GHz on it. I imagine you must be limited to onboard video and audio and only one hard drive (2.5" perhaps?).Bluefront wrote:My Aria which I sold some time ago.....is running just fine, cool, quiet, with a P4-2.8. The secret was to remove the stock PSU completely, and replace it with a Pico AC/DC converter, using an external 12 power supply.
im currently thinking about building a system on this case.
I too would take the PSU out completely, and use a pico-psu for powering the motherboard (a socket M core 2 duo *merom*). I already have an external 12v, 18.3a, 220w power brick from another project that didnt work out right. I was planning on running one 12v line to the pico-psu to power a merom system, and then a seperate 12v line from the external psu straight to the 12v input on the motherboard, 4pin 12v connector and also have another 12v line for a pci-e power connector.
I also will completely remove the drive bay. I'll suspend a 2.5 drive near the front of the case, and just use an external slim optical drive for when i need an optical drive (which isnt often for my uses). Mostly just during initial program loading when i install the OS.
This will allow a great deal of room inside the case. So i'll be fitting a large tower heatsink, probably the thermalright ultra 90 with a quiet 92mm nexus fan undervolted. Then get the fastest graphics card i can cool passivly, probably a 7950gt.
The pico psu will supply enough power to the motherboard, and the seperate 12v lines from the 230w external brick will supply enough power to the seperate 4pin motherboard plug as well as the 6pin pci-e graphics card plug.
External PSU is passive. Video card will be passive. I already have an ultra-90 heatsink with an undervolted nexus on it on my current rig, and it is undervolted to the point where it cannot be heard. Then do the same with a 120mm nexus exhaust fan exhausting hot air.
If you take the psu and drive bays out, and look at it. The internals is basically the exact same layout as the NSK3300 without the top part for the PSU. Its almost exactly the same demension if you ignore the top portion where the 2x 5.25" bays and psu area are.
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Considering i will be using the exact same fans and heatsinks as my current rig, on an almost identical thermal dissapation, it should be completely silent like my current NSK3300 gamming rig, and actually run faster since it'll have dual cores and a faster video card. The nsk1300 system will actually have 1 less fan than my NSK3300 system, the psu fan.
The Aria/NSK1300 is definately a very usable case, and can be made to run silently, you just have to actually think out your thermal dissapation beforehand, and choose low power hardware. People that say it sucks are people who just throw w/e into a box and expect it to work silently. Its definately not a case for everyone, or for the inexperienced.
I too would take the PSU out completely, and use a pico-psu for powering the motherboard (a socket M core 2 duo *merom*). I already have an external 12v, 18.3a, 220w power brick from another project that didnt work out right. I was planning on running one 12v line to the pico-psu to power a merom system, and then a seperate 12v line from the external psu straight to the 12v input on the motherboard, 4pin 12v connector and also have another 12v line for a pci-e power connector.
I also will completely remove the drive bay. I'll suspend a 2.5 drive near the front of the case, and just use an external slim optical drive for when i need an optical drive (which isnt often for my uses). Mostly just during initial program loading when i install the OS.
This will allow a great deal of room inside the case. So i'll be fitting a large tower heatsink, probably the thermalright ultra 90 with a quiet 92mm nexus fan undervolted. Then get the fastest graphics card i can cool passivly, probably a 7950gt.
The pico psu will supply enough power to the motherboard, and the seperate 12v lines from the 230w external brick will supply enough power to the seperate 4pin motherboard plug as well as the 6pin pci-e graphics card plug.
External PSU is passive. Video card will be passive. I already have an ultra-90 heatsink with an undervolted nexus on it on my current rig, and it is undervolted to the point where it cannot be heard. Then do the same with a 120mm nexus exhaust fan exhausting hot air.
If you take the psu and drive bays out, and look at it. The internals is basically the exact same layout as the NSK3300 without the top part for the PSU. Its almost exactly the same demension if you ignore the top portion where the 2x 5.25" bays and psu area are.
=======================================
Considering i will be using the exact same fans and heatsinks as my current rig, on an almost identical thermal dissapation, it should be completely silent like my current NSK3300 gamming rig, and actually run faster since it'll have dual cores and a faster video card. The nsk1300 system will actually have 1 less fan than my NSK3300 system, the psu fan.
The Aria/NSK1300 is definately a very usable case, and can be made to run silently, you just have to actually think out your thermal dissapation beforehand, and choose low power hardware. People that say it sucks are people who just throw w/e into a box and expect it to work silently. Its definately not a case for everyone, or for the inexperienced.
I've had the Aria for 1.5 years, so I'll share my experience.
Initially, I had a Sempron64 2500+ Palermo with the stock heatsink and a Zalman fan controller. Fanless Radeon 9600, 2 hard drives. Loudest fan was the Antec stock power supply's 120mm fan. System ran at a decent temp. I seem to recall mid-30C for CPU, and high 30C for system.
I replaced the Sempron setup with a E6300. Used the stock Intel 4-pin PWM fan heatsink, but removed the 3-pin Zalman fan controller. Same 2 hard drive, onboard 945G video, etc.
Having read the 120mm fan comparison in SPCR, I bought a Noctua 1200 fan to replace the Antec fan in the power supply. Having opened the power supply, I also drilled a bunch of holes on the hole-less narrow verticle side of the power supply closest to the CPU. Closed the power supply, remounted everything. F*K! The power supply connection was maxing out at ~7V to the power supply fan - I was hoping it'd ramp up more. The Noctua was silent, but it was not spinning fast enough to exhaust the hot air, and the CPU was heating up past 60C and the PWM fan ran like a jet engine. Cut the Zalman controller to accomodate the 4-pin PWM fan and the PWM fan was still speeding up - couldn't control it via the BIOS.
I had to open everything back up, re-solder the 3pin wire on the Noctua and fed that to the mb's fan header. Speedfan can't control the fan header on the Asrock Conroe945G, so I'm going to buy another Zalman manual fan controller. At the same time, I didn't want to use the uncontrollable PWM fan, so I bought a mounting bracket for my old Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu to mount it on the socket 775 mb.
To control the heat, I decided not to overclock. It's stable at 300fsb, but I decided to go back to 266fsb while enabling EIST to slightly lower the voltage while idle.
With the Zalman CNPS7000B at a pretty low speed (~1000rpm), and the Noctua at 1200rpm (12V), the Noctua seems to be louder of the two. My cpu is about 40C, case is in the low-40C range. I'll be happy if the CPU and case temp stay under 50C, so I'll tweak the Noctua a tad slower to take the edge off the noise. Since I don't want to hack the case, I'll probably have to settle with this noise/temp compromise.
Initially, I had a Sempron64 2500+ Palermo with the stock heatsink and a Zalman fan controller. Fanless Radeon 9600, 2 hard drives. Loudest fan was the Antec stock power supply's 120mm fan. System ran at a decent temp. I seem to recall mid-30C for CPU, and high 30C for system.
I replaced the Sempron setup with a E6300. Used the stock Intel 4-pin PWM fan heatsink, but removed the 3-pin Zalman fan controller. Same 2 hard drive, onboard 945G video, etc.
Having read the 120mm fan comparison in SPCR, I bought a Noctua 1200 fan to replace the Antec fan in the power supply. Having opened the power supply, I also drilled a bunch of holes on the hole-less narrow verticle side of the power supply closest to the CPU. Closed the power supply, remounted everything. F*K! The power supply connection was maxing out at ~7V to the power supply fan - I was hoping it'd ramp up more. The Noctua was silent, but it was not spinning fast enough to exhaust the hot air, and the CPU was heating up past 60C and the PWM fan ran like a jet engine. Cut the Zalman controller to accomodate the 4-pin PWM fan and the PWM fan was still speeding up - couldn't control it via the BIOS.
I had to open everything back up, re-solder the 3pin wire on the Noctua and fed that to the mb's fan header. Speedfan can't control the fan header on the Asrock Conroe945G, so I'm going to buy another Zalman manual fan controller. At the same time, I didn't want to use the uncontrollable PWM fan, so I bought a mounting bracket for my old Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu to mount it on the socket 775 mb.
To control the heat, I decided not to overclock. It's stable at 300fsb, but I decided to go back to 266fsb while enabling EIST to slightly lower the voltage while idle.
With the Zalman CNPS7000B at a pretty low speed (~1000rpm), and the Noctua at 1200rpm (12V), the Noctua seems to be louder of the two. My cpu is about 40C, case is in the low-40C range. I'll be happy if the CPU and case temp stay under 50C, so I'll tweak the Noctua a tad slower to take the edge off the noise. Since I don't want to hack the case, I'll probably have to settle with this noise/temp compromise.
The picoPSU, at 120W, is pretty limiting, though the 200W DC/DC converters used by Bluefront and me, leave enough headroom for a decent CPU and and some sort of GPU. I've tested my nsk1300 with a passive 7600gs in it, with no problems. It's using a 2.5" HDD, for silence. I think I could easily upgrade to one 3.5" drive and a midrange (7600gt or maybe 7900gt) GPU, before starting to run out of juice. It is true that anyone who tries putting a P4, a couple of drives and a hot GPU into an Aria/NSK1300 with the stock PSU, is guaranteed to end up with a toaster oven. But with an external power supply, it's possible to build a decent desktop that stays cool and is pretty darn quiet.Shaman wrote:I had that idea for a while, but the PicoPSU is very limiting in terms of what components you can use, I'm even surprised you can run a P4 2.8GHz on it. I imagine you must be limited to onboard video and audio and only one hard drive (2.5" perhaps?).Bluefront wrote: My Aria which I sold some time ago.....is running just fine, cool, quiet, with a P4-2.8. The secret was to remove the stock PSU completely, and replace it with a Pico AC/DC converter, using an external 12 power supply.
Just finished testing my NSK1300 last night. Idles at 48C, got up to 56C whilst playing C&C3 for about 2 hours. GPU, when I checked it (about 2 minutes after exiting the game), was at 50C, and dropped to 48C as well.
Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 Mobile 3400+, with Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu, 12V
2GB Corsair DDR RAM
7600GT, with Zalman VF900, 12V
160GB HDD
DVD Burner
WiFi card
Everything is stock, and it's too noisy for me. But on the positive side, this is only being used as a gaming/LAN box, so it won't be on 24/7, hence noise isn't that big of a deal. My main box is whisper quiet, that's all that matters.
I'll admit that the air coming out the PSU was certainly warm, but, going by the temps reported, the system wasn't cooking itself.
Oh, and I left the slot fan out... I mean really, is it going to help enough to warrant the extra noise/loss of PCI slot? The VF900 takes 1 slot, leaving only 1 PCI slot, which the WiFi has, so the slot fan would have to sit at the end. If the thing starts to get warm (ie. in summer), I might have to think about using it.
Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 Mobile 3400+, with Zalman CNPS7000B-AlCu, 12V
2GB Corsair DDR RAM
7600GT, with Zalman VF900, 12V
160GB HDD
DVD Burner
WiFi card
Everything is stock, and it's too noisy for me. But on the positive side, this is only being used as a gaming/LAN box, so it won't be on 24/7, hence noise isn't that big of a deal. My main box is whisper quiet, that's all that matters.
I'll admit that the air coming out the PSU was certainly warm, but, going by the temps reported, the system wasn't cooking itself.
Oh, and I left the slot fan out... I mean really, is it going to help enough to warrant the extra noise/loss of PCI slot? The VF900 takes 1 slot, leaving only 1 PCI slot, which the WiFi has, so the slot fan would have to sit at the end. If the thing starts to get warm (ie. in summer), I might have to think about using it.