SENTRY: Console-sized gaming PC case project

It's been pretested, and it runs fine now without the discrete GPU. The GPU runs fine in another machine.

Everything's been re-seated, electrical tape over rivets.. the bend has been adjusted, etc. Yes the GPU is "on" when the screen is blank but the PC doesn't detect the GPU.

I sent an email to the Zaber folks too, but honestly I don't want to wait for stuff from across the pond. Honestly the riser that was included seems pretty dodgy to begin with.

Thanks for the detailed response.
 
Ugh, finished my build today and the GPU riser doesn't work.

Is there a US based source for the appropriate 3M risers, or any other high-quality part that will work? I've spent way too much time on this to have not yet used it.

Attaching a pic of the one that was included with my case.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dipuezkn8priycr/riser.jpg?dl=0

I've been lingering in the forums since last year and that was one of my fears.

Before I started my build, I took a multimeter and did a continuity test on the riser cable pins to make sure that it was functional before I installed it because I didn't (and still don't) have a graphics card. Testing beforehand in this manner could've saved you time and the disappointment.

I hope that this gets rectified in one way or another. Wishing you all the best.
 
It's been pretested, and it runs fine now without the discrete GPU. The GPU runs fine in another machine.

Everything's been re-seated, electrical tape over rivets.. the bend has been adjusted, etc. Yes the GPU is "on" when the screen is blank but the PC doesn't detect the GPU.

I sent an email to the Zaber folks too, but honestly I don't want to wait for stuff from across the pond. Honestly the riser that was included seems pretty dodgy to begin with.

Thanks for the detailed response.

Can you give us a photo of other side of the riser? Can you give us your specs and some photos of how it is installed in the case? We might spot what could go wrong.

Can you test the riser being connected without using our mounting mechanism, for example just have the card laying on top of the case.

Do you have any beeper laying around, does your mobo have a beeper to test out what's the signal code for the error?

Are you entirely sure you have pre-tested the whole setup with the same config? Have you used the same PSU and specifically the same power cables to power the GPU? Can you test the riser with another GPU/system?.

Without those, we can try guessing, but the issue might not necessarily be in the riser being faulty or damaged. For example a power hungry card like R9 Fury or Vega 64 might want to pull more power from the slot than you can do with this type of riser and will shut down if it can't get that - in such case you might need some riser that has additional power delivered to the slot.

Before I started my build, I took a multimeter and did a continuity test on the riser cable pins to make sure that it was functional before I installed it because I didn't (and still don't) have a graphics card.

This would also be a good idea to check out now and make sure the riser isn't faulty.
 
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Can you give us a photo of other side of the riser? Can you give us your specs and some photos of how it is installed in the case? We might spot what could go wrong.

Can you test the riser being connected without using our mounting mechanism, for example just have the card laying on top of the case.

Do you have any beeper laying around, does your mobo have a beeper to test out what's the signal code for the error?

Are you entirely sure you have pre-tested the whole setup with the same config? Have you used the same PSU and specifically the same power cables to power the GPU? Can you test the riser with another GPU/system?.

Without those, we can try guessing, but the issue might not necessarily be in the riser being faulty or damaged. For example a power hungry card like R9 Fury or Vega 64 might want to pull more power from the slot than you can do with this type of riser and will shut down if it can't get that - in such case you might need some riser that has additional power delivered to the slot.



This would also be a good idea to check out now and make sure the riser isn't faulty.

I can take a photo later. It's just as gentle bend as possible from the PCIE slot to the GPU. The riser PCB has considerable bend to it, even when not installed, so I saw someone mention that rivet and I insulated it.

I'll look for my multimeter later.

Everything was pre-tested except these particular power cables, since they were ordered later (Corsair SFF cable pack). I would have to think about how to test the GPU with the riser not in the system. Honestly at this point if I could find a better riser I'd rather just source it and try, rather than re-run all my cables. My GPU has 2 power leads, so thinking it gets plenty of power from the PS directly (reference 1080 Ti). I'll try another GPU later too, just to see if it's power related.
 
I can take a photo later. It's just as gentle bend as possible from the PCIE slot to the GPU. The riser PCB has considerable bend to it, even when not installed, so I saw someone mention that rivet and I insulated it.

I'll look for my multimeter later.

Everything was pre-tested except these particular power cables, since they were ordered later (Corsair SFF cable pack). I would have to think about how to test the GPU with the riser not in the system. Honestly at this point if I could find a better riser I'd rather just source it and try, rather than re-run all my cables. My GPU has 2 power leads, so thinking it gets plenty of power from the PS directly (reference 1080 Ti). I'll try another GPU later too, just to see if it's power related.

In the whole time I've been following Sentry I think there's been maybe one bad riser reported. There's a chance you got a bad riser. Overall though it's a good riser. Much better than the junk risers that are so pervasive now thanks to the crypto market demand.

You can figure it out quickly. Just lift your motherboard out of the case and test it on a cardboard or nonconducting surface with the same psu and everything. Try with your 1080ti slotted directly in the pcie slot and try with it plugged into the riser in the pcie slot. You'll probably have to hold the gpu steady with one hand but it'll definitely answer the question of whether or not it's the riser. Maybe ask someone to help as it'll probably require an extra set of hands.

If it works out of the case with the riser then maybe it's not seated correctly or installed correctly when in the case. If it's not installed in the case properly the gpu may not seat fully.

It'll take a little extra time to take everything out of the case and you've clearly already spent a bit of time on this, but if you just test everything with and without the riser outside of the case you'll have your answer. Or am I mistaken and you've already done this?
 
I haven't tested outside the case with the riser in place, and I haven't tested anything with this set of power cables. Once I started realizing how horrible the stock Corsair cables were, I had to order the replacements min-stream. I have also noticed my BIOS has a riser option, but it seems to just drop down to x8.

I also found some info about 3M risers, but everything I found was very long.

Attaching some pics that are Dropbox hosted. Just realized the phone pics didn't come out too clear so I'll replace them later when I have time.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wy2emk9k4tnewg/riser1.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yx6uv2zst99snyr/riser2.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qddtzbgfu5eb62/installed riser.JPG?dl=0
 
I haven't tested outside the case with the riser in place, and I haven't tested anything with this set of power cables. Once I started realizing how horrible the stock Corsair cables were, I had to order the replacements min-stream. I have also noticed my BIOS has a riser option, but it seems to just drop down to x8.

I also found some info about 3M risers, but everything I found was very long.

Attaching some pics that are Dropbox hosted. Just realized the phone pics didn't come out too clear so I'll replace them later when I have time.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5wy2emk9k4tnewg/riser1.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yx6uv2zst99snyr/riser2.JPG?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6qddtzbgfu5eb62/installed riser.JPG?dl=0

Is that a gigabyte board with metal-reinforced pci-e slot? I remember someone had issue with the riser being slightly shifted by it in the slot which caused the neighbouring pins overlapping in the slot - he had to slightly shave off a bit of plastic on the riser's pci-e connector to fix this problem. You should check if the riser aligns correctly with the slot for that. We will probably have to talk about this with the riser vendor since this design is looks to be going mainstream for next generation of pci-e.

Also I assume that you have installed the riser properly and did not put the screws through the holes in the riser's PCB but behind/next to it.

As for the other side of the riser - it clearly shows that the all pcb-mounted components are intact so it shouldn't be an issue unless the riser wasn't soldered correctly.

I wouldn't straight away go with throwing more money at risers since the riser quality shouldn't straight away block the boot. Cheap generic risers will be unstable or make artefacts as well as will easily brake welds while bending but when testing those early on in this project we didn't have as big problems as no gpu detection on them. And the one supplied with the case isn't a cheap generic one either.
 
Is that a gigabyte board with metal-reinforced pci-e slot? I remember someone had issue with the riser being slightly shifted by it in the slot which caused the neighbouring pins overlapping in the slot - he had to slightly shave off a bit of plastic on the riser's pci-e connector to fix this problem. You should check if the riser aligns correctly with the slot for that. We will probably have to talk about this with the riser vendor since this design is looks to be going mainstream for next generation of pci-e.

Also I assume that you have installed the riser properly and did not put the screws through the holes in the riser's PCB but behind/next to it.

As for the other side of the riser - it clearly shows that the all pcb-mounted components are intact so it shouldn't be an issue unless the riser wasn't soldered correctly.

I wouldn't straight away go with throwing more money at risers since the riser quality shouldn't straight away block the boot. Cheap generic risers will be unstable or make artefacts as well as will easily brake welds while bending but when testing those early on in this project we didn't have as big problems as no gpu detection on them. And the one supplied with the case isn't a cheap generic one either.
It was myself who had the issue with the riser and Gigabyte reinforced slot. My post is here with description and photos: https://hardforum.com/threads/sentr...-case-project.1832126/page-95#post-1043037703

It sounds like a slightly different issue to what I had. I couldn't get the riser installed and as mentioned had to shave a little bit off a few times and kept retrying until I got a good fit. But my riser works perfectly.

Not sure if brentsg could try the riser with the gpu but support or use cardboard to insulate it from the casing?
 
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It's an Asrock Z370 motherboard.

So I ran it outside the case and initially I couldn't get any GPU to work, even when directly in the slot. I think tried the age old CMOS reset and it started working.

I put everything back together and while it's giving video out, the GPU clock is stuck at 139MHz. It's so slow that UI functions are lagging. I've reproduced this with a Geforce 980 as well, but it can do 135Mhz.

So I'm sorta back where I started.

Edit: It's definitely not seated crooked like that. It seems to be seated fine.
 
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Verdict: I think but can't prove that my initial issues were the result of a rivet on the riser making contact with the case.

The later issues after I made corrections turn out to the result of having the Thunderbolt controller on. I haven't had time to wrap my head around this, but I can't figure out why it would have any impact.

Now I have to decide whether I strip this down and swap the MB. Unfortunately it was a differentiating feature that led me to the board.

Edit: Never mind.. it's not figured out.

With my Geforce 750Ti, everything works normally if I turn the Thunderbolt controller off.

I swapped my 1080Ti back in and the Thunderbolt trick doesn't have any benefit. I'm stumped.
 
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750/TI can pull all its power from the slot unless you've got an OC version that has additional power connector and is exceeding 75W by OC. I don't know how does this connect to the Thunderbolt controller. Does your 750TI work through the riser? Is the link full 16x through the riser for 750TI?

In GPU-Z you should be able to check the PerfCap reason in sensors tab on 1080TI and/or 980. I'd put my bet on that the reason being 'pwr' which could mean there is a problem with PEG power delivery from the PSU since 750TI is working fine.
 
brentsg, go into your bios and change PCIE from auto to 2.0. Also updating your bios should help. I'd put my money on a faulty riser, if your in Europe highflow.com.nl sell really good quality risers though I think they also ship globally. Had a similar problem as you, changing to pcie 2.0 resolved this for the most part but new riser resolved the issue entirely. Good luck let us know the results
 
Right now everything seems ok.. and I'm not sure why. Perhaps the bend is just right with the riser? Perhaps it was some other issue.. not sure.

The motherboard's last store return day is today, and I am tempted to swap it. If it wasn't for the extra effort to swap parts, and the 2 hour round trip to MicroCenter, I'd do it. Naturally I'm sure it'll work fine until tomorrow.

I was not familiar with PerfCap so that's good info for future troubleshooting. I'm also tempted to buy some sort of basic open-air bench / case for parts testing. I tinker with this stuff enough that it'd be super helpful. Trying to test a 1080Ti in an ITX board on my desk yesterday... with the M.2 mounted under the board... not fun. I also need to keep an extra power supply on hand for days like that.

I appreciate everyone's advice. It certainly looked like a riser issue, and I'm pretty confident that it was initally until I insulated the rivet on the riser PCB. I think beyond the point that I did CMOS clear after that incident, I blended in some other gremlins and it was difficult to sort out where issues were coming from.
 
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Right now everything seems ok.. and I'm not sure why. Perhaps the bend is just right with the riser? Perhaps it was some other issue.. not sure.

The motherboard's last store return day is today, and I am tempted to swap it. If it wasn't for the extra effort to swap parts, and the 2 hour round trip to MicroCenter, I'd do it. Naturally I'm sure it'll work fine until tomorrow.

I was not familiar with PerfCap so that's good info for future troubleshooting. I'm also tempted to buy some sort of basic open-air bench / case for parts testing. I tinker with this stuff enough that it'd be super helpful. Trying to test a 1080Ti in an ITX board on my desk yesterday... with the M.2 mounted under the board... not fun. I also need to keep an extra power supply on hand for days like that.

I appreciate everyone's advice. It certainly looked like a riser issue, and I'm pretty confident that it was initally until I insulated the rivet on the riser PCB. I think beyond the point that I did CMOS clear after that incident, I blended in some other gremlins and it was difficult to sort out where issues were coming from.
 
do a bench.ark with pcie set to 2.0 then run it again on 3.0 if you get a better score on 2.0 then your riser is faulty
 
do a bench.ark with pcie set to 2.0 then run it again on 3.0 if you get a better score on 2.0 then your riser is faulty

Can you propose which benchmarks to run to test out the performance of those risers?

Because simply running a random game may not show any significant framerate difference between for example a pci-e 3.0 x16 and pci-e 2.0 x8 depending on the resolution, settings etc.

perfrel_1920_1080.png
perfrel_3840_2160.png


https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1080_PCI_Express_Scaling/24.html


Also ApocPony note that:

brentsg specifically asked about where to buy the riser in US and not NL. And you have provided invalid link to the shop...

Why are you so stuck on riser being the cause for the problem? Throwing more money at the problem without understanding the source of it is not a good idea.


I don't think the riser that we are supplying is a low quality one. There may happen to be a faulty piece and if that's the case then that's supposed to be handled by warranty.

I'm running the same single riser since I broke the cheap one early on in the project (around the time of first benchmarks) and sourced samples from our current supplier. After that I've rebuilt the whole system multiple times, changed the GPU back and forth for testing etc. On top of that I'm travelling with it quite a lot. And I don't remember having issues with any of the tested GPUs.


The gpu's that we had tested (AFAIR):

GTX750 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)
HD7750 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)
FX540 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)
FX560 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)
FX570 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)
FX1700 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)
K620 (drawing power through the riser, no PEG connector)

FX4800 (running in two xeon based workstations through this riser for more than a year now)
GTX970 (running in a skylake based workstation through this riser for over two years now)
GTX1070 (running in a haswell based workstation through this riser for almost a year now)

R9-270X (swapped between multiple times in my PC)
R9-Nano (swapped between multiple times in my PC)
GTX1060 (swapped between multiple times in my PC)
GTX1080 (swapped between multiple times in my PC)

Finally we have sold more than a thousand cases. That's a thousand chances for people to call us out for supplying a cheap, underperforming and/or faulty risers.


And we had ton of different issues with the generic risers that we have tested early in the project and some issues when using low wattage PSUs to power 180W TDP cards, but the risers we provided were never the source of the issue on their own (maybe except that rivet issue depending how you treat it in this context...).
 
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To be clear, I did not intend to suggest that the riser was of poor quality. I do think the rivet was an issue for me, as mine had a PCB bend before it was even installed, so it doesn't matter how tight it is. Regardless, it was easy enough to fix. Also, I was looking for another riser that I could source in short order because I had already spent comsiderable time on this, and it was becoming an issue. Time is often more valuable than money, at least at this scale. I also had my return period for other components expiring, so a second riser to test with was my best move vs warranty support from across the globe.
 
To be clear, I did not intend to suggest that the riser was of poor quality. I do think the rivet was an issue for me, as mine had a PCB bend before it was even installed, so it doesn't matter how tight it is. Regardless, it was easy enough to fix. Also, I was looking for another riser that I could source in short order because I had already spent comsiderable time on this, and it was becoming an issue. Time is often more valuable than money, at least at this scale. I also had my return period for other components expiring, so a second riser to test with was my best move vs warrant support from across the globe.

I'm not calling out you brentsg on that, but rather ApocPony who created a new account simply to comment about the riser being most likely bad and to promote a specific online store, what in total looks a bit fishy...

I'd also like for people to know that 50 mm riser doesn't have to cost "$100" to be good quality, it's just that cases with back-to-back layout like A4-SFX require long riser and the longer it gets, the more pedantic over shielding and signal quality you have to be when designing and manufacturing such riser, as well as there is more material used so the price goes significantly up. And now people think everything cheaper than that is bad...
 
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Yeah honestly I would have grabbed a 3M unit to test but they don't even seem to make a short one.
 
hey meant no offence or to question the quality of the risers you supply. The issue sounded very similar to the problem I was having with my riser with the evolv shift. I was simply suggestion to run a bench on something like 3dmark on both pcie 3.0 then 2.0. A faulty riser may run a little better on 2.0. I was simply just trying to help someone, also I have been following this particular forum for some time no need to go accusing someone of "fishy" behaviour for just trying to help. And faulty risers do happy even with good quality products and quality checks.
 
hey meant no offence or to question the quality of the risers you supply.

None taken. It just that I see what happens when a topic comes up and people lurking here will spread the word about it without understanding the problem. I'd also like to prevent people from just throwing money at the problem before figuring out the real issue, though this time brentsg had his own valid reason to get a replacement riser ASAP.

The issue sounded very similar to the problem I was having with my riser with the evolv shift. I was simply suggestion to run a bench on something like 3dmark on both pcie 3.0 then 2.0. A faulty riser may run a little better on 2.0. I was simply just trying to help someone, also I have been following this particular forum for some time no need to go accusing someone of "fishy" behaviour for just trying to help. And faulty risers do happy even with good quality products and quality checks.

Sorry for assuming a fishy behaviour, it's just that specifically at the same time a riser vendor starter spamming us with his offer, so I guess I got annoyed and assumed wrong. Sorry

As for your issue with evolv shift riser - I think if that happened, then your link could have been cut to 8 or 4 lanes depending on faulty lane location when enforcing pci-e 3.0 mode - Did you check that when you had the issue?
 
No problem,

Strangely enough it was reading as PCI-e x16 3.0, though I had garbled audio over hdmi, and some loss of performance. I suspect as you said some lanes were damaged and or the ribbon wasn't shielded well enough. Otherwise new riser and happy days. Good luck and looking forward to grabbing a sentry in the next run.
 
So, uh, I'm getting worried that my CPU fan is a little loud. I've got my LP53 + NF-A9x14 and at idle I'm seeing ~1800RPM (CPU temp ~32*C). I thought folks said that the NF-A9x14 was super duper quiet. Am I just overly sensitive?
 
So, uh, I'm getting worried that my CPU fan is a little loud. I've got my LP53 + NF-A9x14 and at idle I'm seeing ~1800RPM (CPU temp ~32*C). I thought folks said that the NF-A9x14 was super duper quiet. Am I just overly sensitive?

I consider the NF-A9x14 silent below 1000rpm and quiet below 1300rpm.
 
So, uh, I'm getting worried that my CPU fan is a little loud. I've got my LP53 + NF-A9x14 and at idle I'm seeing ~1800RPM (CPU temp ~32*C). I thought folks said that the NF-A9x14 was super duper quiet. Am I just overly sensitive?

IIRC, my NF-a9x14 idles around 1300-1400rpm with a delidded i7-4790k. Definitely check your fan control settings in bios. Maybe you can make a custom fan curve? You could probably slow it down without much change in temps.
 
I consider the NF-A9x14 silent below 1000rpm and quiet below 1300rpm.

IIRC, my NF-a9x14 idles around 1300-1400rpm with a delidded i7-4790k. Definitely check your fan control settings in bios. Maybe you can make a custom fan curve? You could probably slow it down without much change in temps.

Thank you both for your input! I'm new to SFF, so was surprised that my CPU fan was this much louder than the old cooler in my way bigger mATX case. I wasn't sure if I was just hearing it more now that the fan is so close to the case wall, but I am definitely going to take a look in BIOS since it seems like my fans are going harder than they necessarily need to.

Ej24 I'm also on a delidded i7. Temps seem more than reasonable now (thankfully), so hopefully they'll stay as such if I end up tweaking fan profiles.

On a side note, does anyone else still stop what they're doing and lovingly pet your Sentry? The powder finish feels so nice! (Is this weird?)
 
Welp, that was it. BIOS fan settings to the "Silent" preset on my mobo and we're down to silent running on the CPU side. Temps are still great under my gaming load, so all is well.

Now to get some weatherstripping for the ol' Founders Edition fan intake!
 
On a side note, does anyone else still stop what they're doing and lovingly pet your Sentry? The powder finish feels so nice! (Is this weird?)

Oh thank god I'm not the only one!

Well, when I first touched a prototype with this powder coating I was like "that's awesome, we have to have this" :)
 
Well, when I first touched a prototype with this powder coating I was like "that's awesome, we have to have this" :)

I’m an engineer and when talking to other engineers that ask about my pc case, I always bring up that it’s powder coated steel. I get many a delighted look and appreciation for the build quality. One of the reasons I bought the sentry so fast (case serial #0019). This thing is solid. Fly with it every 3-4 weeks in my backpack full of pc gear and it still hasn’t scratched or anything. All the parts have been in there for about a year now I think? I forget when it got delivered, and I’ve never had an issue with anything getting getting loose or damaged due to all the travel.
 
I ran a few searches in thread and was curious if anyone has more recent experience with running a non-blower GPU in their Sentry. I'm strongly considering jumping on a decent deal to trade out my 1080 Founders Edition for a 1080Ti SC Black (I've got 1440P @ 144Hz in my sights short-term).
 
SoSquidTaste , I don't see anything recent either, however, I currently, primarily due to GPU mining craze shortage, have a 960 open air GPU in my sentry from EVGA. I only play Overwatch mainly right now and FFXIV on occasion, and obviously a 960 can't handle more than High on both of those games. I've been saving up for something better, but I can tell you it's going to depend on what you want to do with the open air. As stated before by others, it's likely to get higher temps than a blower card on the same settings, so if you are wanting to take that 1080 Ti to the limits, you are likely going to have to get creative with options to help get some cooler air in there. I would say proceed with caution if you aren't planning on maxing things out, and if you are, I'd probably suggest waiting for a blower-style. I'd really like to hear other's feedback on this though!
 
In other news, this would be legendary inside the Sentry! https://wccftech.com/amd-project-canis-flagship-intel-joint-venture/

The question is, will it FIT!? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say likely not: 3x 8pin. 350wTDP. It just sounds simply massive. Hard to tell without any comparison, or reference.

However, if you could stuff 32GB HBM4 and a 10nm 2.4GHz GPU in the Sentry, someone say LONGEVITY!

What does this thread think?
 
In other news, this would be legendary inside the Sentry! https://wccftech.com/amd-project-canis-flagship-intel-joint-venture/

The question is, will it FIT!? I'm going to go out on a limb here and say likely not: 3x 8pin. 350wTDP. It just sounds simply massive. Hard to tell without any comparison, or reference.

However, if you could stuff 32GB HBM4 and a 10nm 2.4GHz GPU in the Sentry, someone say LONGEVITY!

What does this thread think?
It's an april fools joke. HBM4 in 2018? Unfortunately, highly unlikely.
 
My ryzen 1700 IDLE temperature is 50~55C. is this normal temperature?

I don't have a Ryzen system, there are a few with ryzen in Sentry and from what I remember, no, that is not normal. Ryzen is both efficient and soldered so it should be cooler than that, especially the 65W R7 1700

What cpu cooler are you using? Is the fan set to "silent" or a low speed in the bios? Check that first. I assume you're using a quality thermal paste too? Good thermal paste application?

Are you overclocking? Or is the cpu voltage set to some auto OC mode? I know some motherboards have this "auto OC" function and from what I understand it just cranks voltage and heats things up. So check your voltage settings and make sure there's no performance enhancing settings checked by default (Im not familiar enough with ryzen to suggest proper voltage range). Maybe even try undervolting the vcore a few mV if nothing else works.
 
My ryzen 1700 IDLE temperature is 50~55C. is this normal temperature?

I've got 1700 as well. I'm using 120 mm AIO now, but while testing L9i and T318 idle was something like 38C and it went to 56C under gaming load, but went further away under synthetic load, something like low 70's

Your temp doesn't look normal for idle.
 
SoSquidTaste... so if you are wanting to take that 1080 Ti to the limits, you are likely going to have to get creative with options to help get some cooler air in there. I would say proceed with caution if you aren't planning on maxing things out, and if you are, I'd probably suggest waiting for a blower-style. I'd really like to hear other's feedback on this though!

Well put! I guess my main thought is that I'm hitting 100% utilization on my 1080 FE right now when I thought I'd have a little more headroom when running Overwatch Ultra capped at 150FPS. I think the next order of business is to finally sit down and figure out if undervolting will get me back to better boosts-- and therefore hopefully a little less utilization? (Also: finally seeing some price relief in the GPU market (third-party sales) has me thinking twice about switching out cards.)

In case anyone else out there is running a recent open-air card, my biggest question regards experience with the card saturating the CPU area with "collateral" hot air. I know some benchmark videos showed that back around release, but am wondering if folks are seeing to what degree that same situation plays out in their actual, factual builds.
 
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