DAN A4-SFX: The smallest gaming case in the world

Hi everyone, I'm here to present you the all new


:punch:
>>> A4-SFX-TURBO <<< :punch:



Or how i've managed to drop the temps on my 22 cores cpu by -18ºC for 15,9$ + shipping costs
(don't expect any shiny polished solution :LOL:)





After eight months with my 22 cores XEON E5-2696, I have realized that I had to do something with the high temps.

This CPU behaves like two. When you are gaming or working with any app, it hardly gets 70ºC, but when I use it for 3d rendering, It rises up to 99-100ºC after just some minutes.

I think that the max temp that it can handle without throttling is 105ºC, so it is going hot as hell.

After trying MANY fans and heatsinks, I've realized that the best combo was the Dynatron T-318 with Thermalright ty-100 fan. It is the only combination that dind't lead to +100ºC while rendering (yes I have tryed noctua fans, falcon and thermalright heatsinks, gamersotrm fan, etc etc, and none of them can handle this cpu).

In august, reaching 100ºC was very very easy so I used to have a hair dryer in cold mode to cool down the cpu very quick if required (it is able to drop temps drastically if you put it directly on the fins in the dynatron side, even from 100º to 75ºC in a minute) so I thought on trying to make some kind of wind tunnel like the ones on FE GPUs, with small fans like the ones on the pictures below that acted like an integrated "hairdryer".



So, the first idea was to put four 40x40 fans in each side of the dynatron heatsink in pull configuration, leaving the main fan in the middle in push configuration, but ty-100 is too wide, so 40+100+40mm didn't fit.


That's why I tryed with the noctua NF-A9x14 + 4x 40x40x10mm fans in the following scheme that fits perfectly:



TrP5rIS.jpg


1.jpg


After that I tryed with this configuration:

TY-100 + 2 x 40x40x20mm fans.



YmOi7x2.jpg


1.jpg


After tryng both configurations, ty-100 fan + 2x 40x40x20mm fans was definetly the one that presented better temps as the ty-100 has been better than the noctua in all of my tests.





So the next step was to select a fan height.


There are a lot of small and inexpensive fans out there but most of them have a fixed voltage, so they always run at maximum speed. After some researching I discovered a very versatile format that has PWM capablitities.

I have tested these three fans with three different heights:

· 40X40X10mm Everflow PWM

It was the first that I purchased, I thought on putting towers of two of them to achieve double of air flow, but it didn't make any difference and they sound like bees at full speed.

· 40X40X15mm Evercool PWM

This ones are by far the most powerful of the three, and they fit perfectly on top of the dynatron leaving 5mm of room between the case and the fan, but they are extremely loud. If you want the highest performance these ones are the best by my testing.

· 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM <<< the one that I've chosen

It is by far the most silent of the three, although It can achieve the same performance as the others without speeding up so much. It is taller so the propeller is bigger and it needs less speed to move the same amount of air. Even at full speed it is definetly quieter.



So the last step was to create an air duct, to ensure that the air pressure isn't lost through any hole, so I made one as you see in the next picure with some plastic cardboard, a pair of scissors and double sided tape.



U2MYb9r.jpg



1.jpg


I used the same fan curve for the main ty-100 fan as I had before, but for the other two I configured them to be at 30% all the time, till the system reaches 70ºC, when the fans speed up at 100%.
That ensures that most of the time, even while gaming the computer should be quiet, but while rendering the turbo would turn on keeping it cold.


And here the results while rendering (ambient temp 30ºC):

Open case:

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 ----------------------------------------------------- 100ºC

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 + 2 x 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM ----- 82ºC - 18%

Closed case:

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 ----------------------------------------------------- 100ºC (the same as opened in testings, but I used to open it for precaution)

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 + 2 x 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM ----- 87ºC - 13%


It is a 13-18ºC gain!





Using this kind of fans in this case is a joy, so try them and let me know your results!!
 
Last edited:
Hi everyone, I'm here to present you the all new


:punch:
>>> A4-SFX-TURBO <<< :punch:



Or how i've managed to drop the temps on my 22 cores cpu by -18ºC for 15,9$ + shipping costs
(don't expect any shiny polished solution :LOL:)





After eight months with my 22 cores XEON E5-2696, I have realized that I had to do something with the high temps.

This CPU behaves like two. When you are gaming or working with any app, it hardly gets 70ºC, but when I use it for 3d rendering, It rises up to 99-100ºC after just some minutes.

I think that the max temp that it can handle without throttling is 105ºC, so it is going hot as hell.

After trying MANY fans and heatsinks, I've realized that the best combo was the Dynatron T-318 with Thermalright ty-100 fan. It is the only combination that dind't lead to +100ºC while rendering (yes I have tryed noctua fans, falcon and thermalright heatsinks, gamersotrm fan, etc etc, and none of them can handle this cpu).

In august, reaching 100ºC was very very easy so I used to have a hair dryer in cold mode to cool down the cpu very quick if required (it is able to drop temps drastically if you put it directly on the fins in the dynatron side, even from 100º to 75ºC in a minute) so I thought on trying to make some kind of wind tunnel like the ones on FE GPUs, with small fans like the ones on the pictures below that acted like an integrated "hairdryer".


So, the first idea was to put four 40x40 fans in each side of the dynatron heatsink in pull configuration, leaving the main fan in the middle in push configuration, but ty-100 is too wide, so 40+100+40mm didn't fit.


That's why I tryed with the noctua NF-A9x14 + 4x 40x40x10mm fans in the following scheme that fits perfectly:



1.jpg


After that I tryed with this configuration:

TY-100 + 2 x 40x40x20mm fans.


1.jpg


After tryng both configurations, ty-100 fan + 2x 40x40x20mm fans was definetly the one that presented better temps as the ty-100 has been better than the noctua in all of my tests.


So the next step was to select a fan height.


There are a lot of small and inexpensive fans out there but most of them have a fixed voltage, so they always run at maximum speed. After some researching I discovered a very versatile format that has PWM capablitities.

I have tested these three fans with three different heights:

· 40X40X10mm Everflow PWM

It was the first that I purchased, I thought on putting towers of two of them to achieve double of air flow, but it didn't make any difference and they sound like bees at full speed.

· 40X40X15mm Evercool PWM

This ones are by far the most powerful of the three, and they fit perfectly on top of the dynatron leaving 5mm of room between the case and the fan, but they are extremely loud. If you want the highest performance these ones are the best by my testing.

· 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM <<< the one that I've chosen

It is by far the most silent of the three, although It can achieve the same performance as the others without speeding up so much. It is taller so the propeller is bigger and it needs less speed to move the same amount of air. Even at full speed it is definetly quieter.

So the last step was to create an air duct, to ensure that the air pressure isn't lost through any hole, so I made one as you see in the next picure with some plastic cardboard, a pair of scissors and double sided tape.


1.jpg


I used the same fan curve for the main ty-100 fan as I had before, but for the other two I configured them to be at 30% all the time, till the system reaches 70ºC, when the fans speed up at 100%.
That ensures that most of the time, even while gaming the computer should be quiet, but while rendering the turbo would turn on keeping it cold.


And here the results while rendering (ambient temp 30ºC):

Open case:

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 ----------------------------------------------------- 100ºC

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 + 2 x 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM ----- 82ºC - 18%

Closed case:

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 ----------------------------------------------------- 100ºC (the same as opened in testings, but I used to open it for precaution)

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 + 2 x 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM ----- 87ºC - 13%


It is a 13-18ºC gain!



Using this kind of fans in this case is a joy, so try them and let me know your results!!

Thank you so much for sharing, that's very useful for people who want to build an X99/X299 system in the A4-SFX. Did you consider trying the Noctua NF-A4x20? Perhaps with 2 of those and an even better duct you could drop temperatures even more.
 
Hi everyone, I'm here to present you the all new


:punch:
>>> A4-SFX-TURBO <<< :punch:



Or how i've managed to drop the temps on my 22 cores cpu by -18ºC for 15,9$ + shipping costs
(don't expect any shiny polished solution :LOL:)





After eight months with my 22 cores XEON E5-2696, I have realized that I had to do something with the high temps.

This CPU behaves like two. When you are gaming or working with any app, it hardly gets 70ºC, but when I use it for 3d rendering, It rises up to 99-100ºC after just some minutes.

I think that the max temp that it can handle without throttling is 105ºC, so it is going hot as hell.

After trying MANY fans and heatsinks, I've realized that the best combo was the Dynatron T-318 with Thermalright ty-100 fan. It is the only combination that dind't lead to +100ºC while rendering (yes I have tryed noctua fans, falcon and thermalright heatsinks, gamersotrm fan, etc etc, and none of them can handle this cpu).

In august, reaching 100ºC was very very easy so I used to have a hair dryer in cold mode to cool down the cpu very quick if required (it is able to drop temps drastically if you put it directly on the fins in the dynatron side, even from 100º to 75ºC in a minute) so I thought on trying to make some kind of wind tunnel like the ones on FE GPUs, with small fans like the ones on the pictures below that acted like an integrated "hairdryer".



So, the first idea was to put four 40x40 fans in each side of the dynatron heatsink in pull configuration, leaving the main fan in the middle in push configuration, but ty-100 is too wide, so 40+100+40mm didn't fit.


That's why I tryed with the noctua NF-A9x14 + 4x 40x40x10mm fans in the following scheme that fits perfectly:



TrP5rIS.jpg


1.jpg


After that I tryed with this configuration:

TY-100 + 2 x 40x40x20mm fans.



YmOi7x2.jpg


1.jpg


After tryng both configurations, ty-100 fan + 2x 40x40x20mm fans was definetly the one that presented better temps as the ty-100 has been better than the noctua in all of my tests.





So the next step was to select a fan height.


There are a lot of small and inexpensive fans out there but most of them have a fixed voltage, so they always run at maximum speed. After some researching I discovered a very versatile format that has PWM capablitities.

I have tested these three fans with three different heights:

· 40X40X10mm Everflow PWM

It was the first that I purchased, I thought on putting towers of two of them to achieve double of air flow, but it didn't make any difference and they sound like bees at full speed.

· 40X40X15mm Evercool PWM

This ones are by far the most powerful of the three, and they fit perfectly on top of the dynatron leaving 5mm of room between the case and the fan, but they are extremely loud. If you want the highest performance these ones are the best by my testing.

· 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM <<< the one that I've chosen

It is by far the most silent of the three, although It can achieve the same performance as the others without speeding up so much. It is taller so the propeller is bigger and it needs less speed to move the same amount of air. Even at full speed it is definetly quieter.



So the last step was to create an air duct, to ensure that the air pressure isn't lost through any hole, so I made one as you see in the next picure with some plastic cardboard, a pair of scissors and double sided tape.



U2MYb9r.jpg



1.jpg


I used the same fan curve for the main ty-100 fan as I had before, but for the other two I configured them to be at 30% all the time, till the system reaches 70ºC, when the fans speed up at 100%.
That ensures that most of the time, even while gaming the computer should be quiet, but while rendering the turbo would turn on keeping it cold.


And here the results while rendering (ambient temp 30ºC):

Open case:

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 ----------------------------------------------------- 100ºC

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 + 2 x 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM ----- 82ºC - 18%

Closed case:

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 ----------------------------------------------------- 100ºC (the same as opened in testings, but I used to open it for precaution)

TY-100 + dynatron T-318 + 2 x 40X40X20mm Evercool PWM ----- 87ºC - 13%


It is a 13-18ºC gain!





Using this kind of fans in this case is a joy, so try them and let me know your results!!

Great proof of concept. You've added an output directly next to an input, and it worked. This is why I think reversing the PSU fan is a good idea to test! (Hint, hint, somebody try it!!!)

Your cooler concept is basically dan's cooler concept, but he uses heatpipes because they are more space efficient. The heatpipes are little pumps :) A big water pump couldn't fit in this space. Dan's heatsink will change the game when it arrives!
 
Great proof of concept. You've added an output directly next to an input, and it worked. This is why I think reversing the PSU fan is a good idea to test! (Hint, hint, somebody try it!!!)

Your cooler concept is basically dan's cooler concept, but he uses heatpipes because they are more space efficient. The heatpipes are little pumps :) A big water pump couldn't fit in this space. Dan's heatsink will change the game when it arrives!
wouldn't reversing the psu fan take air from the top of the case and push it out the side ?
 
Hi all. I received my case today which i thought was a SFX -v2 but it turned out to be a SFX-v1. Purchased from overclockers as they had some in stock and was told by them it was a v2 i would receive. narnar. Ive had to RMA it back as it ended up being a v1 inside. Was so gutted.
 
Last month I send 50 cases to Caseking and it looks like they send some cases to OverclockersUK (Caseking and OCUK are one Company). These 50 cases are A4-SFX v1 cases that I had in stock for reclamation. But the reclamation rate was so low that I sell it to them. The original plan from Caseking was it to make a prebuilt system under the label of the overclocker 8pack. It looks like the ship some of the cases to customers that preordered the A4-SFX.

It is impossible that this is a V2case because they are still in production and will arrive in January 2017. As I know from a private message that I got from a OCUK customer they add a small white sticker on the case to easy scan this cases for the shipping process. On this label they write A4-SFX V2, but this is wrong on the carton is printed that this is a V1 case.

Sorry for that trouble but it is not my mistake.

Regards
Daniel
 
I had an order for what I believed to be a v2 with OCUK, in fact under instruction I pre-ordered as I missed the v2 kickstarter. I managed to find a v1 a couple of months back, but left my OCUK pre-order in-place so I could later upgrade to the v2. Well, I just got my shipping confirmation for v1... not really pleased about that. I think this could have been handled better in that it should have been clearly confirmed what was being shipped. Now I am stuck with a second v1 shortly. If anyone in near Sunnyvale California area wants a v1, let me know. Also gutted that a v2 will never be in my future now.
 
I had an order for what I believed to be a v2 with OCUK, in fact under instruction I pre-ordered as I missed the v2 kickstarter. I managed to find a v1 a couple of months back, but left my OCUK pre-order in-place so I could later upgrade to the v2. Well, I just got my shipping confirmation for v1... not really pleased about that. I think this could have been handled better in that it should have been clearly confirmed what was being shipped. Now I am stuck with a second v1 shortly. If anyone in near Sunnyvale California area wants a v1, let me know. Also gutted that a v2 will never be in my future now.

Have a talk with customer service on their forum? They will either refund you shipping or provide a pre-paid shipping label.
 
Last month I send 50 cases to Caseking and it looks like they send some cases to OverclockersUK (Caseking and OCUK are one Company). These 50 cases are A4-SFX v1 cases that I had in stock for reclamation. But the reclamation rate was so low that I sell it to them. The original plan from Caseking was it to make a prebuilt system under the label of the overclocker 8pack. It looks like the ship some of the cases to customers that preordered the A4-SFX.

It is impossible that this is a V2case because they are still in production and will arrive in January 2017. As I know from a private message that I got from a OCUK customer they add a small white sticker on the case to easy scan this cases for the shipping process. On this label they write A4-SFX V2, but this is wrong on the carton is printed that this is a V1 case.

Sorry for that trouble but it is not my mistake.

Regards
Daniel

That was me who sent you that email :) They are currently investigating the white label saying that they didn't put it on OCUK at their base of HQ. Its a bloody nice case the v1 its a shame to send it back. I just hope i can grab a V2 as i really wanna get my new rig built asap.
 
Has somebody successfully mounted a case fan above the mainboard? I bought a Akasa 80x10mm fan and I could need help to stop it from colliding with the PCIe-Rizer.
 
Uhm guys aesthetically speaking which 1060/1070 gpu would look awesome with the window panel? Don't mind the performance a 1060 is enough for me already actually and a 1070 is an overkill. Thanks guys!
 
That was me who sent you that email :) They are currently investigating the white label saying that they didn't put it on OCUK at their base of HQ. Its a bloody nice case the v1 its a shame to send it back. I just hope i can grab a V2 as i really wanna get my new rig built asap.
But it's practically the same? Why return the v1?
 
Has somebody successfully mounted a case fan above the mainboard? I bought a Akasa 80x10mm fan and I could need help to stop it from colliding with the PCIe-Rizer.
look at page 312 , not sure what was used to hold it in place tho
 
  • Like
Reactions: Shaav
like this
I am currently testing if an additional 80mm case fan in the top of the DAN A4-SFX could help to reduce the temperatures of the hardware. For this purpose I am running Unigine Heaven Benchmark where I moved the camera to a fixed position to generate a contstand workload and therefore a constand high constant power consumption. My 1080Ti is overclocked to 1,025V and 2012 Mhz, while the i5-3570k is running at 4400 Mhz at 1,200V.
The total power consumption is 410W.
I will let you know about the results very soon. ;)
 
Last edited:
I just think the v2 changes are worth waiting for over the v1
I've got the V1 case and waiting for the V2 for another project. They are almost identical. The feet on the V1 are useless, and It's nice that the V2 can accomodate the Asetek AIO without drilling holes yourself, but other than these 2 things it's not worth waiting for if the alternative is getting the V1 NOW. Life's too short to just wait half a year for an almost identical *PC Cabinet*.
 
tks for sharing, it's exactly what I would like to do and I was wowntering if a second one can fit in the psu side, i know there is the power cable but there is enough place at the bottom of the case to get the psu down.
I know the version 2 is already in progress but it's the most logical way to cool down the case: 2 fan on top and temperatures will never be an issue :p

I have a standard configuration with a LP53 and noctua, when I put the noctua in extraction the temperature of the case is fine but not enought efficient to cool the cpu correctly for overclocking (i5 6600k).
When the noctua is in other side the temperature of the CPU is much better but all temperature inside increase but in that configuration all the case become hot due to the lake of extraction air flow.
 
Hi all,

I have finally built a new PC in my DAN case and managed to get it running smoothly :)
Hardware is the following:
  • i7 8700 (non-k) Coffee Lake 6-core CPU
  • Noctua NH-L9i cooler
  • ASUS ROG STRIX 370i motherboard
  • 2x16GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200MHz CL14 DDR4 RAM
  • Samsung 960 evo M2 500GB SSD
  • Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD
  • Corsair SF450 PSU
I will chose a graphics card later on (still waiting how the 1070 TI will turn out). Anyway, as it seems I'm the first to report a Coffee Lake CPU in the DAN case, I thought people might be interested in how it's working. Some comments:
  • I opted for the non-k version because I had read the 6-cores are running hot, so I figured overclocking wouldn't be an option anyway
  • There is only one review of the 8700 non-k CPU on the web (by Tom's Hardware), and they were baffled that it reaches mostly the same performance as the 8700k (and sometimes better!), and they had no explanation for that and were a bit skeptical about their results
  • I can confirm that the 8700 is running very hot, a HandBrake encoding task would get it to 100C (and throttling) in less than 3mins - and yes, I checked that my cooler is mounted correctly and I am using a duct as proposed here in the thread
  • I can also confirm the benchmarking results from Tom's Hardware: I am getting the same numbers for the SPECwpc tests
  • The reason why it's running hot (and why it's as fast as the 8700k) is that by default, the power management is set to a kind of "no limits" mode: in HandBrake encoding tasks and under Prime95 (the older version), the 8700 (TDP 65W) is fed with >1.4V and consumes more than 120W of package power!
  • I tried undervolting by -150mV, but power consumption was still >110W, and of course the L9i is not designed to cope with that kind of heat, so no real improvement
  • I have found out that a setting in the BIOS allows to manually specify the power limit: I set the long term limit to 95W now and - heureka! - the worst temperatures I get now in stress tests are in the lower 90, in encoding tasks in the higher 80 - perfect!
  • Setting the power limit to 95W does have pretty much no impact on performance, as just a small number of super-high parallelized stress tests and tasks cause the limit to kick in and throttle, while in all normal tasks it has virtually the same performance as a 8700k
  • I don't want to delid my CPU, but even if you do, I am not sure you could have any notable overclocking success (with the 8700k of course), because the power consumption is really extreme if you just use a mini ITX sized cooler
So overall, I'm very happy now with my set-up, and of course the DAN case is gorgeous :) Cheers!
 
For europe users, im selling my dan a4 sfx silver with 92mm aio mod. PM if you interested. Very cheap
 
Hi all,

I have finally built a new PC in my DAN case and managed to get it running smoothly :)
Hardware is the following:
  • i7 8700 (non-k) Coffee Lake 6-core CPU
  • Noctua NH-L9i cooler
  • ASUS ROG STRIX 370i motherboard
  • 2x16GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200MHz CL14 DDR4 RAM
  • Samsung 960 evo M2 500GB SSD
  • Seagate Barracuda 2TB HDD
  • Corsair SF450 PSU
I will chose a graphics card later on (still waiting how the 1070 TI will turn out). Anyway, as it seems I'm the first to report a Coffee Lake CPU in the DAN case, I thought people might be interested in how it's working. Some comments:
  • I opted for the non-k version because I had read the 6-cores are running hot, so I figured overclocking wouldn't be an option anyway
  • There is only one review of the 8700 non-k CPU on the web (by Tom's Hardware), and they were baffled that it reaches mostly the same performance as the 8700k (and sometimes better!), and they had no explanation for that and were a bit skeptical about their results
  • I can confirm that the 8700 is running very hot, a HandBrake encoding task would get it to 100C (and throttling) in less than 3mins - and yes, I checked that my cooler is mounted correctly and I am using a duct as proposed here in the thread
  • I can also confirm the benchmarking results from Tom's Hardware: I am getting the same numbers for the SPECwpc tests
  • The reason why it's running hot (and why it's as fast as the 8700k) is that by default, the power management is set to a kind of "no limits" mode: in HandBrake encoding tasks and under Prime95 (the older version), the 8700 (TDP 65W) is fed with >1.4V and consumes more than 120W of package power!
  • I tried undervolting by -150mV, but power consumption was still >110W, and of course the L9i is not designed to cope with that kind of heat, so no real improvement
  • I have found out that a setting in the BIOS allows to manually specify the power limit: I set the long term limit to 95W now and - heureka! - the worst temperatures I get now in stress tests are in the lower 90, in encoding tasks in the higher 80 - perfect!
  • Setting the power limit to 95W does have pretty much no impact on performance, as just a small number of super-high parallelized stress tests and tasks cause the limit to kick in and throttle, while in all normal tasks it has virtually the same performance as a 8700k
  • I don't want to delid my CPU, but even if you do, I am not sure you could have any notable overclocking success (with the 8700k of course), because the power consumption is really extreme if you just use a mini ITX sized cooler
So overall, I'm very happy now with my set-up, and of course the DAN case is gorgeous :) Cheers!

Good call for using a non-K CPU. Actually the performance gap between K and non-K was never huge even in previous generations. You can only expect to see ~2fps increase in games (perhaps a bit more on other tasks), but your system will be much louder, hotter and will require plenty of extra tweaking. Overclocking is mainly just for fun if you enjoy pushing your system to the limits. Although it is really weird that 8700 is running so hot in your case, are you sure you didn't accidentally get the K? :)
 
I think I will wait for zen+ at least. Hopefully I can run at possibly 3.9 GHz with the 12nm node improvements. If not, I will further postpone my Dan A4 build until the Nvidia Volta comes out.
 
Killaruna That configurable tdp option sounds pretty cool. Most motherboards overclock all cores to the max single core boost speed by default, did you try just switching off that before altering the tdp setting?


When coffee lake came out I reassessed my Ryzen 1700 purchase. I am still very happy with my purchase, it doesn't limit my gtx 1080 at 1440p resolution, posts the same cinebench results as a 8700k while only hitting 68 degrees in prime95 at 2250rpm fan speed with my L9a. And it's cheaper, both the chip and the motherboard s.

If I was a 144hz+ 1080p first person shooter gamer I still think a 7700k is probably the best processor to get in a small case like the DAN. With intel using TIM instead of solder, more cores is just more trouble unfortunately.
 
dondan, have you thought about incorporating the front I/O as shown below? The side panel would have the appropriate cutouts. Then you would have a clean front panel and you wouldn't have a hole if you wanted to install a 92mm AIO.

If there isn't enough room, what about extending the front panel a bit? Then you could fit a vertical push-pin to fix the sag of the side panels and get rid of the bottom flaps, and possibly fit dual SSDs in the front, then people could do dual SSD + AIO. Just a few thoughts for a future revision.

vOaYOu8.png
 
Hi everyone!

Like everyone else, I am super excited to get the v2 case early next year and I’m looking at what I want to stuff into such a small machine. I want to do something extreme and stash an i9 7900x into the new Asrock x299-e ITX motherboard, then cool it with the Asetek 545LC (as others have done with with other, older CPU's that dont use Intel's mayonaise thermal paste).

I’m slightly terrified at the thought of it, will a 92mm radiator be enough to tame that beast? Am I going to burn my house down with this? I’d be keeping it at stock speeds or with a very minor overclock if attainable.

What do you think, have I lost the plot fellow SFF enthusiasts or can this build become reality next year?
 
After hearing about how some guys received the V1 from Overclockers recently, I put an order in for one last night and sent them a message saying I'd be more than happy to receive the V1 if they still have stock instead of waiting until Jan for the V2.

They sent me the following reply just earlier,

"Thankyou for your webnote, we have swapped you to the v1 in black then as requested Matthew, you can expect this to arrive mid week." (I live in London)

So for anyone else who's in the same boat, hit them up and you might be rocking the case later this week!
 
Hi everyone!

Like everyone else, I am super excited to get the v2 case early next year and I’m looking at what I want to stuff into such a small machine. I want to do something extreme and stash an i9 7900x into the new Asrock x299-e ITX motherboard, then cool it with the Asetek 545LC (as others have done with with other, older CPU's that dont use Intel's mayonaise thermal paste).

I’m slightly terrified at the thought of it, will a 92mm radiator be enough to tame that beast? Am I going to burn my house down with this? I’d be keeping it at stock speeds or with a very minor overclock if attainable.

What do you think, have I lost the plot fellow SFF enthusiasts or can this build become reality next year?

At stock you should be fine, though it may get noisy at load. If you get a good chip, with proper undervolting you may get away with 4.2GHz on all cores. (you should undervolt either way).
 
uhm soo 8700 runs hotter compared to 7700 and r 1700?
Seems like there is a big silicon lottery in terms of temps for the new Coffeelake CPUs. Some reviewers had lower temps than Kabylake, others had higher. You can safely assume that on average, it will run a little hotter since it is 6c/12t after all and the cpu cooler is 100w or so TDP limited. I would personally see how much you can undervolt. I would also really consider delidding as well as many DAN A4 owners delidded their 7700K.
 
Killaruna Most motherboards overclock all cores to the max single core boost speed by default, did you try just switching off that before altering the tdp setting?
I think this is just the case for k-type CPUs, as it's essentially overclocking. My 8700 boosted up to 4300MHz when all cores were used, which is according to specs.

uhm soo 8700 runs hotter compared to 7700 and r 1700?
It definitely runs hotter than a R1700, and probably a bit hotter than an i7 7700. Apparently, Intel improved the TIM for Coffe Lake, but not that much that it could cope with 50% extra cores for free. They might as well have soldered it, but oh well...

I would personally see how much you can undervolt.
For me with a 8700, -170mV was the maximum possible without frequent crashes, but only at -150mV the system is 100% stable.
 
My 8700K was delivered today, and I'm thinking of sending it to Silicon Lottery for a delid. What's the consensus on the 8700K and A4 combo? Is it worth it?

Update: I guess this answers my question. Wow!

 
Last edited:
Back
Top