Received my first ever Noctua fan. Removed the heatsink of my GPU because the shroud is held by screw accessible underneath it. And the fan cable was a pain to remove. At the end, it was just the whole casing that I removed, and I discovered there was two tiny pins that you’re supposed to push when it is blocked by a choke.
Then I discovered I couldn’t use a 120 mm low profile here as the heatsink is higher than I thought. I assumed it was about 20mm but no on the thickest part it is about 30mm and would not fit within the 43mm constrain of the Velka 3 (and in the Dan case) (and also I didn’t find it aesthetically pleasing)
92mm Noctua chromax fans are hard to come by here and are more expensive than their 120mm variant and I didn’t want to return the fan and have to wait, so I wonder if I could use it later on the CPU cooler. With the help of @Den-Fi, he confirmed I would be able to fit it on top of the cooler with the Asus Strix B450-i board. So tomorrow, I gonna received the Noctua NH-L9a-AM4, will take the 92mm fan and cut it to fit in the GPU shroud, and the 120mm gonna be use later for the mobo.
I managed to make a PWM to mini 4pin GPU header with what was lying in the house and it works! So no need to have a fan cable going to the motherboard.
I feel dirty of having cut a Noctua fan. The cable fan and the adapter are a tight fit in the shroud as there almost no space to work with. And had to do a new adapter because I bend the first one in a way that made the shortest cable do the longest bend, so it snapped. Discovered when I power on the pc and the fan was running at full speed.
Yesterday I’ve received my second PCIE riser and rgb lights. The first riser I bought was a standard 300mm one, but quickly realized it was not flexible enough, so bought a 250mm flexible one instead. People seemed to say online that you absolutely need a 300mm, the one prescribe by Velkase, but they are wrong because it works nicely. And I received vynil stickers from that guy that make the Homura vinyl to use as a logo, but they are not shiny enough. So maybe will plastidip using the outside vinyl.
However, going with the EZDIY-FAB PCI Express 16x 25cm riser brought me some compatibility issues. First, the mounting holes do not seem standard, so I could only screw the last hole. Second, there was the retaining mechanism that was interfering with the backplate of the mobo, so I had to cut it. And to be sure the GPU will be solid with only one screw, even if it already seemed so, I used the 3d printed GPU bracket that was among the screws. There is no mention of that bracket anywhere in the manual, but figured out its usefulness. I think it is still beta because the second bottom hole did not aligned with the case.
I think I built and unbuilt the PC 3 times before being happy with how everything is laid out. Also I don’t know why I wanted only the phanteks neon because they had a diffuser, but it complicated my life just a little. But everything fits. When the PSU will arrive, I will just mod the cable right away because oh god some spots will be difficult. Just the CPU cable, because of the positioning at the uppermost left corner, it is really tight to bring a cable to. Now powering it with the SFX PSU outside the case (because I think my Flex PSU is stuck at the customs -_-). The Noctua fan is on the way to replace the blue Silverstone one.
Right now the top fans are removed, but I think I will put them back into place as now I know more how to use ASUS AI Suite 3 and was able to stop the annoying ramp up and down of the CPU fan. Will probably use double tap to dampen vibration. Surprisingly, even if I undervolted my Ryzen 3600 to 1.2V, the software applied a slight overclock to 3.8Ghz. Tend to over around 40-42C.
So I more seriously focused on the issue of noise and heat in the system. Having tinkered with the 10mm fan, in part by lubing them and using them at low rpm, I decided to just remove them because their whiny sound was still annoying.
I undervolted my GPU so that the really slightly overclocked max frequency of 1950 Mhz is reached at 887 mV. Temps are 44C at idle with a quiet custom fan curve. I overclocked slightly my Ryzen 3600 to 4Ghz while undervolting it at 1.225 V. Temps hover at 40C at idle with a fan curve similar to the one of the GPU. I could have worked more on those, but I don’t seek to squeeze all the performance. The PC is now quiet, and not really noisy under load, while giving good results, so I’m happy. I think max temps I’ve seen on both were around like 66C.
I thought sleeving the cable would be easy, it was not.
I replaced the fan by the noctua 40mm, only to realized after the whole day after I assembled everything that it was not working because the polarity of the fan are inverted in the case of the PSU. Had to unbuild everything to switch the polarity. But it didn’t really seemed to spin by itself despite being of lower amperage than the stock fan. So I reput the stock fan, only now to realize the fan ramps up because now I have a jet engine next to me.
The stock “sleeving” on the cables is the worst kind. They put glue with the heatshrink! Was so much of a bitch to remove. And the crimper I bought is bad because it always twist the rear part of the crimp at the end, so I need to rotate back into position. I cheapen on that part so ya will buy a better crimper. And I realize I didn’t had enough heat shrink on hand. So had the end of 4 mobo cables and of 2 gpu cables shorten, but that’s it. And I really badly sleeved two cables. And my fingers hurt.
Will remove the PSU tomorrow to continue the SFX outside in the mean time. Will do the close the loop thingy during at least 2 days to empty the capacitors and I will take everything out of the casing with a proper place to work on the PSU. But at least my 6 now 8 pins gpu cable is working ¯_(ツ)_/¯
It looks kinda cool but the PSU question is what kills most small cases for me. I still love my handbag build in the Lian Li PC-TU100, though I almost never use it.
When you have to deal with SFX is pretty easy. There is a variety to choose easily purchasable. Flex is another story.
In the meantime I made a wire schematics for the SST-FX350-G so i don’t loose track of the wires. Let it here in case someone is crazy as me to play in it.
Btw, does anybody know if I can just bring the wires of the 2 extra pins on the 8pin gpu to the empty ground hole left by the removal of SATA and molex? It is ground, so it should not cause any problem, eh?
And fuck why did I had the idea to sleeve a flex psu. Took me two days and was not really fun. Already at the beginning my prep was wrong because I inverted the order of my mobo cables which would had required a spin in order to connect to the mobo. So had to redo that.
I kind of cheaped out on the crimper again, but at least now it was the right variants for psu connectors. Still the crimps were not the best. And sleeving was so difficult. Everything is so cramped. Wanted to use heat shrink tubes, but was not working really well and on the psu side trying to apply heat I melted a little bit some plastic things of the psu… So at the end just secured the sleeves with knots.
Ant the idea to desolser the unuse cables went of the window because I was never able to melt the solder they use.
I’ve not tested if everything is fine and working properly, I need to vacuum inside the psu before turning it on. And will widen the opening at the back of the psu.
So I thought I did something wrong because when I plugged the PSU and turned it on the fan was not spinning. Fun fact: PSU fan header deliver 4.3V at idle, but the Noctua NF-A4x10 only begin to spin at 6V. All the voltages of the pins were correct. Created an additional opening for the mobo cable.
Now to try to put that in the case, well it was a really tight fit. The power button is not in the best location IMO, would have preferred to have it behind at the top. Had to smash stuff a little bit to be able to close the case. The mobo cable is doing a clean run but everything is camped right where the cables come out.
But now my PC is working!!! (I was doubting myself a little bit) Ran 3D mark for a quick test and no stability problem whatsoever. Now I have to figure out at last how to make that logo shiny and to measure the consumption.
Tried today to get a shiny logo. 3 layers of black plastidip and 6 layers of mirror finish paint, and… well it didn’t turn that well. Don’t know what to do now.
Is that piece metal? Could grab some brasso and give it a hand polish a couple of times.
If its plastic, make sure you are sanding in between the coats (400 to 600) so the next coat can fill in the small micro imperfections.
Basically sanding in between every coat.
On the later coats, I would recommend wet sanding with 1000 to 1600 grit in between the last couple of coats.
That would be a good idea. I would not sand the case because I want to keep it intact for future resell. However, my main grip is less about the texture and more about the finish. Could not remove the vinyl decal without ripping all the paint off, which required me to cut with an exacto which produced a rough edge. And the plastidip is thick and just make the painting job look like a sticker.
Ahh I see now, could head down to your local hardware store and look for some sheet metal.
Hopefully you can get a small square for the size you need (and maybe a few more for practice or perfection). Cut that to design you want and polish that little piece with brasso and secure it with some adhesive.
