OK, OK, I'll go and see what coffe'n'cream magic can be applied to it. Can't remember if it's a 10mm or 20mm deep 40mm fan...
Been having some tiny fun. Thank god they did not put the same length hoses that come on the 360. It might actually be doable. The neon strip I bought only fits here. Looks like it is part of the case though.
That Flex PSU has a 15mm thick 40mm fan and the wiring at the board end is buried in white insulating goo If I go flex again I'll just buy something with a decent (quiet) track record. No wonder they put high rpm fans in, that thing was madly dense inside with no apparent room for airflow
I'm seriously, this is hands down the best ITX case ever. Don't get me wrong it has been a pain in the ass, but most of that was my fault for not spending £140 on a SFX PSU I just did not need. I took my old rig apart last night, and was amazed to see that the PSU did not have one spec of dust in it. I just didn't get it, until today. The "Eco" button runs it totally fanless. Meaning it did not pick up one grain of dust. So I have left it that way. I mean, it has done a year with a overclocked 2080Ti and 3950x on, so what is the point in just making more noise and circulating more dust? So by the time I hit the sack last night my back was done. I had spent 8 hours on the floor ffs. I hate this room for that. Just no space. Any way, when I got up today these were waiting for me. I got the cables, IMO, dirt cheap. £58. I had a look last night and Cablemod wanted £140. Now sure, the colour is not the best. But beggars can't be choosers. And besides, it gave me a really funny idea. It was at this point I remembered my PSU was actually green any way. God knows why, but it's kinda nice. The reason I needed custom cables was not because of the length or braiding. The cables that came with the PSU are braided once, and are thick AF. Meaning I already knew all of the cable places yesterday, and I had an inkling this was going to be the case, hence the custom cables. Otherwise I would have had to cut the stock ones free, and be confronted with lots of ketchup and mustard for my troubles. I will cut out the hours and hours this took me. What I will say is it is not only the best ITX case ever because of the looks. It's stunning. It is for two reasons. Firstly the flip down RGB and fan hub. This allows you to work outside of the rig. Which in a tiny case is a god send. The second reason? is the offset fan "pan". Again, this comes out completely and allows you full access to the bottom of the PSU where all of the cables connect. Again, this allows you to put them in when you want, instead of having them all getting in the way whilst you are trying to work out the best places for them to go. Not an option on the Jonsbo I did, so it looked gash at the end because you can't do it any other way. Any way, pics. I did have to make one minor mod. It seems that the EK AIO's hoses hit the mid plate. I had this issue with my 012. The fix? insert some rubber grommets to give you another 3mm space. This allows the AIO to go in in a wedgie, but without squashing the hose in the GPU side as it passes into the CPU chamber. Sadly because of the large sound card and NVME stack one hose was not long enough to wrap like I wanted it to. Oh well, couldn't give a F. The "Strix Game on" thing is a magnet that came with my Strix PSU. It hides the junction where the cables were the most messy. It also allows the intake fan to push air into the CPU area too, instead of it all pissing out the side. So that was good. There you can see the "fan pan". Bear in mind you do need a slim fan, and even then you will be stuffing it all in at the end. Hence why I used a grille on the fan. Dust filters in situ. These were taken earlier during testing. You can see I had an issue there. See, I managed to keep the 2.5" hot swap bay intact. The only downsides? I had to cut off the USBC cable at the IO because my case didn't use it, and tucking it was not an option. This is also why I hacked off the FP audio cable. Because I am not using them, and stuffing them in was not an option. They pushed the PSU into the mobo part and the board would not fit. More testing. BTW going back to the GPU side? I had to depin the SATA run and chop off all but one. It was just too cramped in there, and that connector kept popping out under the GPU which would have stopped me from getting the panels back on. Eventually... Seriously it is so gorgeous I could actually cry right now. Now I have done a lot of testing. Mostly because the GPU was new to me and ex mining. So I have had it benching for hours. Even overclocked using AMD Adrenaline it did not pass 62c. The cooler is the same one they used on the 3080 FFS. It's absolutely wonderful. Now onto the elephant in the room. How does the 3950x cope on the 120mm AIO? That was after a 10 minute Cinebench run. You know? the one that runs over and over and over. It was stuck solid at 3.9ghz. That said, I do not have PBO on, but I am amazed at how bloody good the AIO is. More than good enough ! Of all of the upgrades I have ever made I think I am most pleased with this one. Mostly because it was not a nightmare, I had to mod very little, and it all worked first push of the button.
Finished. First thing to do was to fit this. Important info. If you have one of these cases don't push the drive in. It is incredibly difficult to get it out, as it is held captive by a sprung body. The trick is to put some tape on it, like this. Which gives you a pull tab to get it out. You can then fold it over and tuck it in. IO shield V1. Obviously I didnt fit it inside. So I had to make it smaller to slot in. It might have got a bit warm (belt sander) and turned into a bit of a banana lol. Ah well, V2 may come one day but the antenna hold it down and with everything plugged in now it's doing its job. The badge came today. What I did not realise was it's tiny ! in the photo it looked the same as the one I had. But oh god, it's just PERFECT. VS the rig I have at home.... I'm actually scared to leave it on, might try and take over the world or something I really don't think I have ever been so happy with a build before. It just totally fills me with joy.
Okay, the S4 Mini is up and running and now houses my main rig (sort of). The thing is, HDPlex has some issues. The PCIE cable that came with the S4 mini/HDPlex had a few wires that had broken free of the crimped ends and, rather than piss around and play pin the tail on the donkey with the cable and pigtail, I decided to wire up a straight end-to-end cable from the bunch of old PSU cables I have lying around. However, the pinout diagram for the PCIE power on the 400W-DCATX is reversed... ...so, if you follow it, you end up piping the 12v rail to ground on your GPU. Thankfully, I checked the pins with my multimeter before plugging it into the card, and rewired it correctly. Totally fine. Not fcuking scary at all. The new cable works a treat - just had a couple of hours testing and undervolting the 3060Ti - it peaked at 61 degrees after an hour of Heaven. Pretty happy with that, but I'd like to find a better fit for the Blackridge cooler - the backplate on the NH-L9a ensures a better/even contact and it has actually out-performed the Blackridge, despite re-seating it twice. Oh, and the Omoton macbook stand is absolutely perfect for the S4 Mini:
That 3060ti is a cracking card for the size/power draw. I’ve managed to get my Meshlicious back and gone to replace the stock SF750 cables with some PSlate Custom ones this morning and there are a couple pins in those that haven’t been crimped properly and popped out when I tried to plug them in. And one that is clearly over-crimped and won’t seat at all. So that will be fun later to try and fix. The tubing has gone a horrible colour though. It’s not the coolant as you can see in the res that it’s still clear. So I guess I’ll need to drain and re-do the loop at some point. Maybe I’ll go for opaque tubing this time though.
Refitted the BlackRidge cooler in the S4 Mini with the AM4 backplate from the NH-L9A, and I did the Noctua fan mod on the EVGA 3060 Ti: ...and how it sits in the Omoton macbook stand: Pretty pleased with that.
Some pics of the loop upgrade in my Meshlicious. Having got it back from my nephew, the tubing had gone a horrible colour and I figured it was time for a bit of a cooling boost. There is 63mm clearance at the front of the case so with the new-ish Arctic P14 slims only being 16mm thick I reckoned that was enough to fit in a heftier rad. And the TT Pacific W8 that @The_Crapman was selling looked lovely, so... This was the starting point. Not sure what had made the tubing react that way, but was perfectly clear under the compression mounts so had obviously reacted to something. Start by BeauchN posted 28 Jan 2023 at 11:13 So, I gathered my parts... Parts by BeauchN posted 28 Jan 2023 at 11:13 Pulled it all apart... Deconstruction by BeauchN posted 28 Jan 2023 at 11:13 Then realised I had to remove the spine as well to fit the rad and fans in... But with this rad at the front it interferes with the mounting clips for the front panel, so eventually swapped that round (as you'll see later) after picking up some M4x20 screws. A Lot Of Rad by BeauchN posted 28 Jan 2023 at 11:13 Got the new water block mounted on the mobo... Looks so shiny! TT Pacific W8 by BeauchN posted 28 Jan 2023 at 11:13 Got the loop completed and filled and voila... I previously had the fans. pulling air through the front mesh and rad and pushing it over the components, but I've swapped that around this time so it's pulling cool air through the sides, over the components, through the rad, and exhausting it out the front, which seems more effective. Though to be honest, there were no problems with the temps previously but every little helps as they say. End State by BeauchN posted 28 Jan 2023 at 11:13 Got to say I'm impressed with the P14 slim fans. they're running at 1200 rpm and almost silent.
Actually, iirc, I bought a couple of bottles in a massive splurge during Maplin's closing down sale. That was a while ago.
I don't know If I've said this already but Fan Control is a fooking brilliant piece of software. I've been using if for about a year now, but it's constantly improving. Just having the ability to set different curves for individual fans on your GPU is a godsend for Founders Edition cards, esp on the 3090 - that front fan is a screamer if locked to the same profile as the rear fan. Just donated $20 to the dev. It's worth every penny.
