With 2x48GB DDR5 DIMMs on the market, I can now get enough RAM to run most of my simulations with just two DIMMs. That means, it’s time to go SFF, with the Gigabyte B650I Aorus Ultra!
Okay, so far I haven’t actually done anything more than mapping out the layout in CAD. All the components but the PSU (Silverstone’s 1000W SFX unit), the CPU (7950X), and the GPU (6900XT, which is only in there because I like to run Civilization V and EVE Online at 4k120Hz) are still on the way. I’m going to be using a PCIe4 → SlimSAS → PCIe4 breakout card to split my x16 into an x8 (coloured red), an x4 (coloured blue), and an M.2. CPU will be cooled by the EKWB Velocity² DDC pump block reservoir combo, the GPU is already watercooled, and the radiator is a 60mm thick 280 (cooled by a pair of Noctua’s excellent 3000rpm fans). Bottom to top airflow with a magnetic dust filter on the bottom of the radiator, for easy cleaning. Quick disconnect fittings at the back for an external radiator (I already have this, it’s a Mo-Ra 420, but I hardly ever bother using it because it’s ludicrously heavy and the 280 already keeps everything cool with very little noise) and quick disconnect fittings on the GPU to make things less inconvenient if I upgrade or feel like swapping it out for whatever reason. The x4 or the M.2 will get a 10GbE NIC, I’m still undecided on which one. I do like the idea of having four NVME drives, it would let me do RAID10, so I’ll probably use a PCIe NIC. Also problematic is going to be fitting my four 2.5" SSDs in here. The 280 radiator makes for a roomy interior, but SATA SSDs are bulky. I have some vertical space to spare below the PSU, so I’ll probably put a 5.25" hotswap enclosure there. That would block half the radiator though. Problems!
For construction, I’ll probably 3D-print an internal frame, and bolt powdercoated aluminium panels to the sides. This is the same method I used to build my current (ATX) case, and imo that one turned out pretty good despite my inexperience. The SFF version being so much smaller will hopefully make it a bit sturdier, though, the big one does get scary wobbly when you carry it around.
Also, damn it, I just noticed that I put the radiator in backwards. Just about every other component is mated to that! I’ll have to redo almost everything tomorrow.
It was a nice board with dual 10GBe and plenty of PCIe connectivity BUT there were all sorts of things I took for granted. Like having space for more than two U.2 drives, internal 3.5 inch drives, space for legacy connectivity for FireWire, audio, and VGA, 5.25 bays for a BluRay drive, etc.
I ended up replacing it with a dual socket Skylake mid-tower from Hewlett-Packard, which turned out to be significantly faster in my workload anyway. And look at all those slots!
I couldn’t agree more. My original idea was based around my old 240 radiator, but that would have been too narrow to fit both the GPU and another card behind it. Yeah, I could make the case wider than the radiator, but that would feel wrong somehow.
What I really liked was ASRock Rack’s deep ITX idea. Basically ITX in height, but ATX in width. It would let you fit all the memory channels a server CPU provides, absolutely ideal for CFDs. Unfortunately I think they only ever used it to make Intel Core workstation boards with four DIMMs aligned for front-to-back airflow. That always seemed like such a waste of potential to me. And not just for workstations, SFF gaming computers would also have benefited. Just look at how silly ITX motherboards are getting with trying to stuff features on the tiny footprint. In many ITX cases there is actually plenty of room beside the motherboard, because they depth of the case is decided by the graphics card, which have become utterly absurd. A deep ITX motherboard could fit a lot more stuff without needing to bother with expensive complexities like putting the SATA ports on a vertical daughterboard.
After I get some sleep and do some gardening I’ll sit back down with this. Maybe if I add a single 140 radiator at the top I can fit the 5.25” hotswap enclosure on the rear without blocking any airflow… It’s easier to justify adding height to your SFF design when you’re at least doing something useful with it.
I tend to overestimate the amount of cooling a system requires. But then I remember that this was cooled with a single 120 rad, which provides some perspective. With a 7950x or even an EPYC system up to ~240 watts I wouldn’t be surprised if a single 140 could handle the heat load.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Maybe I should go down to just one 140mm radiator. Inlet at the bottom, positive pressure, exhaust at the rear or top. I could always just plug in my external radiator, it’s just a matter of getting that beast up the stairs.
I’d need to figure out which thick 140mm radiator has the highest fin density though. If it’s going to keep a 7950X, a 1kW PSU, and a 6900XT at least nominally cool I’m going to need to make use of the static pressure my Noctuas can put out.
Hmm.
Okay it’s late and I can’t sleep so I just ordered one. I swear by retail therapy.
Might want to have a look at what I did in the Sliger SM580 a couple years ago. Seems similar to your goals. If I didn’t already have a working system, I’d probably switch to that EK pump/block/res combo.
Highly suggest going 2x 280mm rads. My system is dead silent with it’s rad setup with a 6900XT and a 3900x.
Of course, that’s a significantly lower power CPU, but the silence just means there’s cooling headroom.
Cool build! That’s a gorgeous case, and you managed to fit some powerful components in there.
So my current system is actually already the 280mm radiator, the 7950X, and the 6900XT. CPU peaks at about 80° during load, GPU goes up to about 75°, and the water is at 35°. Ambient temperature is 20°. That’s with the more aggressive fan curve I run when I don’t have the external radiator plugged in. It’s basically “some noise, but tolerable”. Maybe 1200rpm on the fans, which are inside the case in a pull config to dampen the noise ever so slightly more. With the external radiator plugged in, I can basically turn off all the fans and just let the external radiator cool the water passively. It’s a truly splendid cooling solution, just very impractical to carry around.
My 280mm radiator probably performs on par with two radiators like the one you used, because it is thicc. 60mm. But since I did order the 1x140mm radiator, I’m going to try to make that work for me instead. I picked a model famous for being very effective, but which also requires a lot of static pressure since it has a very dense stack of fins. The manufacturer claims 600W dissipation, which is theoretically enough for what I have in the computer, but we’ll see. When it does prove insufficient, I’ll just get my husband to bring the external radiator upstairs and hook that up instead. I may installl a D5 pump directly on it, and buy 10m of soft tubes, that way I could put it in the server closet where it won’t bother me. At any rate 1x140mm will work just fine if I put the CPU in eco mode, since my EK (famously low performance) 280 is already able to keep up when everything is overclocked…
My external radiator curves are basically “external radiator goes from 0% to 100% fan speed while water temperature goes from 20° to 30°” and “internal fans go from 10% to 100% while water temperature goes from 30° to 40°”. It lets the noisy 3000rpm fans stay at a dead quiet 300rpm (so the non-watercooled parts get some fresh air too) while the radiator is plugged in, and if I’ve unplugged the radiator for whatever reason they’ll kick in when they’re needed. Higher water temperature also means they can use a lower RPM, which helps with noise. I’ll probably just do the same with the SFF version.
Made a CAD of the new radiator based on the sketch on the manufacturer’s site. Really not a fan of the gamer aesthetics of this thing. The EK rad is much prettier. Oh well, it’ll be inside the case anyway.
Mockup with the new radiator.
I’m dropping the hotswap bay, it makes everything ridiculously long. I’ve tried putting the radiator in sideways, but that would make the tube routing awkward instead.
Do like how much more room I get to work with now though. I may actually drop the EK combo block and just install a D5 instead. I’ll still have plenty of room for the 2.5" drives, I’ll just have to swap them manually, like a filthy savage.
That seems decent already. I’m not super familiar with the new hardware, does the CPU throttle at 80? Regardless, the additional rad will help a lot
Those dissipation numbers are really really subjective. It heavily depends on ambient, water and airflow. If only there was a standardized setup.
That’s a pretty solid fan curve design. I keep my fans off until it hits 32, then ramps quick to 600rpm at 35, then at 38 it starts ramping to 1200 at 42c. I have an external rad which I really don’t use anymore. If I do use it, it’s got the fans spinning ~650rpm and that thing keeps water under 30c almost constantly, unless I’m doing something particularly intensive. TBH, lately this has been a CAD/youtube machine… not much gaming happening these days.
It’ll start throttling at 90, and basically cripple itself at 95. I’m going to be printing the case and testing it wrapped in plastic before I start fabricating aluminium panels to cover it, so if my single 140mm rad turns out to be entirely insufficient I can just redesign the case and add the 280mm back in.
I’m kind of expecting this to be enough cooling through, LTT did a 1x140mm rad build a while back, same thickness as this one but optimised for significantly lower static pressure, and that actually stayed reasonably cool through cinebench and furmark. 5800X3D and a 3090 iirc, so not a much lower thermal load than I’ve got, considering I rarely stress the CPU and the GPU simultaneously. I basically live in my summer home permanently now, so I’ll just keep the external radiator plugged in while I’m here. If I move back to the city for a week or two, I can just pack the computer and suffer through worse noise and thermals for a little while.
I know what you mean. This month I’ve literally only been playing CivBE. I know, not the strongest Civ game, but I love aquatic cities and having aircraft available from the start. I can actually play as a nomadic horde, it’s great fun to just move all your cities next to your enemy and bomb him to bits.
I couldn’t come up with a good solution for the external radiator quick connects that didn’t either involve a separate reservoir (in which case I might as well just use a separate pump-reservoir instead of the EK combo block) or an awful lot of fittings, so I dumped the combo block in favour of a boring old pump-reservoir. Still ended up with an arsenine amount of fittings, but that’s the price you pay to have your water thermometer at the CPU inlet. I’m thinking the pump will connect to the fitting abomination on the CPU in, where it also splits out into the external radiator. The external radiator will then return straight into the reservoir. The CPU out will connect to the graphics card, which connects to the radiator, which connects back to the reservoir. I̶’l̶l̶ p̶r̶o̶b̶a̶b̶l̶y̶ a̶l̶s̶o̶ m̶o̶v̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶ r̶a̶d̶i̶a̶t̶o̶r̶ t̶o̶ t̶h̶e̶ b̶a̶c̶k̶ a̶n̶d̶ t̶h̶e̶ p̶u̶m̶p̶-̶r̶e̶s̶e̶r̶v̶o̶i̶r̶+̶d̶i̶s̶k̶s̶ t̶o̶ t̶h̶e̶ f̶r̶o̶n̶t̶. I̶t̶’l̶l̶ m̶a̶k̶e̶ t̶h̶e̶m̶ m̶o̶r̶e̶ a̶c̶c̶e̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶, a̶n̶d̶ a̶s̶ a̶ b̶o̶n̶u̶s̶ a̶i̶r̶f̶l̶o̶w̶ w̶i̶l̶l̶ g̶o̶ r̶i̶g̶h̶t̶ o̶v̶e̶r̶ t̶h̶e̶ m̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶b̶o̶a̶r̶d̶ a̶n̶d̶ t̶h̶e̶ b̶a̶c̶k̶ o̶f̶ t̶h̶e̶ G̶P̶U̶’s̶ h̶o̶t̶s̶p̶o̶t̶. Nevermind, I won’t do that, because the breakout card I’m plugging the GPU into is huge and would block half the fan.
Having dumped the pump-block combo, I noticed the same thing you all are no doubt screaming about right now: Having the motherboard right side up no longer matters, so I should invert it and swap places with the graphics card, to give myself lots more room on that side. I’m doing that first thing tomorrow.
In my grand genius after having redone everything with the radiator no longer the root part, I used the motherboard as root part this time.
So I’ll once more need to redo almost every mate.
Sigh.
But it’ll be worth it. There will be enough room left over that I’d even be able to install an aircooled 4090 (though for that I’d have to remove the front panel). Note to self: Make sure the printed frame has a hole at the front for extra-long graphics cards to slide through.
It’s absolutely hideous and 412mm long, but look! I managed to fit five 3.5" drives and seven 2.5" drives, and the tubing isn’t even horrible! Or instead of the 2.5" drives, I could stuff three more 3.5" drives in there.
Yeah, okay, it’s an abomination. I should probably go back to the original idea with the EK pump block, I’d still have plenty of room for the SSDs.
I think I’ve found the layout I’ll be using. No combination pump block, just parts I already have, and no unreasonable tubing routes. With HDDs the tube from the GPU to the radiator is going to be very tight to the daughterboard my motherboard’s SATA ports are on, so I’ll need to remember to add some structure I can zip-tie the tube to, so it stays out of the way. Shouldn’t be a problem to put that on the motherboard tray. There’s plenty of room with SSDs, though, and that’s what I’ll be putting in anyway. Having the option to put in HDDs is just a nice bonus. Also an option (though possibly with the panels off) will be humongous modern air-cooled GPUs, because there’s plenty of room for the GPU to be both longer and thicker.
Push-pull is probably unnecessary, my 3k RPM fans have lots of suction on their own, but it’s a good excuse to add some height, which let me put the PSU in sideways, which gave me the room to fit a DDC pump underneath the motherboard (which is inverted and now looks more like a modern mITX board).
Volume will be about seventeen litres, it fits four 3.5" HDDs or eight 2.5" SSDs, which will stay nice and overheating thanks to the hot air blasting out of the radiator, and it has quick disconnects on the back to hook up the external radiator if I feel like bothering.
Next step is going to be to design the 3D-printed frame, then I’ll print that, mount the components to make sure they all fit, and CAD up the exterior so I can have some panels cut.
Ok, i didnt get to read EVERYTHING posted above but I skimmed… just a note… on cooling solution.
I built something similar with a 3900x and 2080ti being cooled by a single HWLabs thick single fan radiator like you are planning. I just want to let you know you may have to dial back clocks and voltages. Also, air flow will be a major consideration. I ended up having to have the radiator as an exhaust or the itx build it was in would “heat soak” so much heat into the case I started to have even more thermal issues.
Just my input. I did manage to tame the heat in that same build… I ended up using a 120mm XSPC (? Maybe wrong spelling) ultra thin rad and a second 240mm xspc ultra thin rad. This worked in 2 different cases I built in. A Silverstone Raven, and also a modified (I had to cut and adapt the front pannel to accommodate the 240mm rad but it worked) Phanteks shift (before they offered the side mesh pannels).
The raven was probably the most tight build and took some trial and error with the fittings for the 120mm rad situated over the cpu, then also pump size and location.
I know the thick “should be enough” but I wasnt very happy with thermals. I had down clocking and performance issues. Also, when I had the heat soak problem RAM temps and stability were a issue as well.
I actually have assembled this build on a table, and the radiator is keeping up with my quick PBO+GPU overclock (basically just maxing power to both to see how hot it gets). Obviously this isn’t quite the same as stuffing it into a case, the airflow will be more restricted and the VRMs+storage will be dumping heat into the already hot intake air, so in reality it is going to run hotter. But I’ll also be able to run the fans louder once the panels and sound-dampening foam go on, so that’ll help keep the temperatures down. I’m leaving room at the front where I could print a holder for another 140mm intake fan, and at the back for an 80mm intake. The entire top is going to be perforated and function as an exhaust, so despite appearances it should have reasonable airflow.
I’ll be making the metal frame and plastic parts first, then adding simple plastic panels before I place an order for the exterior panels, so if need be I can make the whole thing taller and add my 280x60mm radiator on the exhaust as well.
But I’m guessing the single 140mm intake will actually be enough. Most of my load is memory bandwidth constrained so the CPU doesn’t actually have to work all that hard, and the GPU does nothing whenever I’m not playing a game. Limiting the CPU to 105W eco mode has a negligible impact on performance in my work. In the worst case I have an exterior radiator that can keep anything cool. I am definitely getting a 40mm fan to strap onto the RAM though, with how cramped the motherboard is they do get really warm.
Ok, just thought id mention it. Just my experiance.
Here was the modified Phanteks Shift I fit a 120mm and 240mm radiator. This was before I moved to the Shift X (larger version) that fit the thick HWlabs 280mm rad as exhaust which worked well. I used the other two 140mm fans as intake. One directly over the motherboard and ram, and the other at the other end of the case… couldnt find any pictures of that but have them in my HAA Hardware Addicts Anonymous post lol
Cool build. If I hadn’t needed a special bifurcation card to fit my GPU, a 10GbE NIC, and a fourth M.2, I’d probably have built in the similar Louqe Ghost (I prefer horizontal cases over vertical ones).
But one thing that stands out to me is that you are using rather thin radiators. Mine is 60mm thick, which does make a big difference in capacity. 14060 is after all the same as 28030. Yours is effectively 140*90, which is only a third more than mine. In reality I do get slightly worse cooling since the air heats up while passing through my radiator, but it’s still deceptively powerful for something so short. The fins are basically half height, but there are twice as many of them, so as long as my fans can provide static pressure this radiator is going to be very effective. Also I’m using 3000rpm fans (Noctua of course). While the computer is idle they sit at a low speed and are basically noiseless, but when the water heats up and they start spinning fast they do move an awful lot of air. It remains to be seen how noisy I’ll let them get, I’m very particular about noise and there’s only so much noise dampening panels can do, but at least I’ll probably raise the idle fan speed over what I’m letting them do out in the open on a table.
So, as a bit of a final update to this, I’m going to cancel it for now. My motherboard has been a problem child since day one and after spending another weekend trying to make it boot after it randomly decides not to, I’m throwing in the towel and returning it for a refund. I don’t know if the instability is from a bad chipset or from the thirsty 7950X being dissatisfied with the 8+2 VRMs, but I’m beyond caring at this point. It did seem to work better with a 7600X for the brief period I tested that, so possibly it’s just the big processor feeling cramped. Either way I’ll be stuffing the 7950X back into my ProArt and making a small ATX tower instead. The server will go back to the 5600G. I’ll have a leftover 7600X without a motherboard which I might do something else with, or just return for a refund, I’ve yet to make up my mind.
