Antec ISK 110 Little Monster Gaming Build

So this has been a build I have been meaning to make for a while. Kaveri's new low power A10-7800 seemed like a good mix of lower power but decent gaming prowess for a very tiny (~3.7 L) enclosure. Yes, we can all go spend $1000 on a Brix Gaming NUC but where is the fun in that?

The build:

PC Hound Part List

CPU: AMD A10-7800 ($140.49 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XN-WIFI ($94.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: AMD Radeon 8GB (2 x 4GB) R9 Gamer Series R938G2130U1K ($79.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Crucial 256GB MX100 CT256MX100SSD1 ($104.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Antec ISK 110 VESA ($60.99 @ Newegg)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9a ($41.82 @ Amazon)
Total: $523.27
Price may include shipping, rebates, promotions, and tax
Generated by PC Hound

PC Hound does not list Pico PSU's, but I also bought a 160-XT Pico and a 144w power brick as I was not confident the stock 80w PSU would boot. It's 12v rail is only 60w and this APU has been benchmarked at >90w during gaming.

Mandatory box porn:


Next to my "old" Q11 (still a beast, has a mini 760 and a i5-2400 that continues to chug along just fine for me.) Suppose this cabinet needs a dusting...


Here is the case "naked". Front USB are still 2.0, which is sad, but oh well. I had to have this case. The PSU is still there, that would come out...



Voila. Nifty little thing, too bad it wasn't going to cut it for this build. Trying to brainstorm if I can use it somewhere else. Any ideas?


Here is the case sans PSU. The additional space would come in handy for cable management.


This is the PSU hole we are dealing with. Not big enough for the 4pin mini-Din AC on the 192w power brick sold by Mini-box for the 160-xt without screwing holes in the sides. The hole does fit the older barrel connector however.


Not perfect, however. I will need to fix that later... maybe some sort of putty or something? Tape?


The Noctua NH-L9a comes with either a backplate or standoffs for the the cooler. I wish I had known this before I bought it as I purchased this mobo due to others saying there was nothing in the way of a backplate. Had I known, I would have looked to see if another mobo had more USB 2.0 frontport headers on the mobo, as the Gigabyte only has one, leaving two of the front ports dead.


The 144w power brick is crazy big. I wish I could use the much more rationally sized Antec brick pictured next to it.


And presto! The front USB cables were a real pain to work around; getting the mobo in with those in the way was an ordeal.


Obligatory coke can pic? Nah, obligatory beer pic.


Post build observations:
- In the BIOS (when the CPU is running full blast, for some reason) I get around 60-65c temps. Normal usage gets around 40c. Have not tested it for games yet. No killawat, so no idea there.
- This thing is utterly silent. I had a brief moment of terror when I turned it on and did not hear anything, but it was all systems go.
- If you buy this case, get a mobo with more than one USB 2.0 frontport header.
- Understandably a major manufacturer like Antec probably does not want to sell a case that can only function with a Pico PSU, as that probably significantly lowers the market share for the case. But, if they had cleaved the PSU they could have shrunk the case by about an inch and a half, on par with the M-350. (Although that is also a little slimmer.)
- I love that AMD finally released the a10-7800...but I wonder how they make money off it. I can't really imagine many scenarios under which it would truly shine other than niche scenarios like this.

Later posts will have some FPS results. Huzzah!

And presto! The front USB cables were a real pain to work around;

Click to expand...

Remember that I cut 2 of those thick at stiff usb cables. never needed any more than 2 int the front.

Love this case, been waiting to upgrade until I have some thing new to put in. using one of the first AMD apu's that came.

Need to post lots of benchmarks , temps and how it sounds during load. would love to see 3dmark 2006, since I've only benched mine with that

Even at full blast it is still very quiet. It is currently right next to the keyboard and it still sounds very faint when pushing it. If it was mounted on the monitor or if there was any other ambient noise at all I might not hear it. This is with the underpowering cable installed....more on that below.

I am noticing that all the CPU cores go down to about 2.5Ghz when gaming, and I cannot seem to lock it in the BIOS. At least getting the RAM up to 2133 was utterly painless. The APU clock speed is always at max and does not go down, which is good...so not entirely sure if this should concern me or not.

With CPU throttling, on Borderlands TPS I got Avg: 53.863 - Min: 38 - Max: 63 (FRAPS). That was at 720p with everything set to Medium, 2x AA. I am going to see if I can figure out this throttling issue before I bench this little sucker further.

Gaming temps:
CPU Max: 88.3c
Min: 56.8
Avg: 70.6
Mobo Max: 51c
Min: 48
Avg: 50

The Noctua came with an additional cable that I think underpowers the fan for quieter operation. I am wondering if that is making the CPU throttle. On the above temps, it never went above 1757 RPM and averaged 1426, which is low. Tomorrow when I am a little less bleary eyed I will fiddle with it and see if that is my problem.

cool, i love these little cases! had 3 of them at one point, all but 1 got snatched up by family and friends as great little i3 hackintosh minis.

only issues i've had are the mounting hardware for that noctua cooler and some mobo backplates block a thicker SSD... i just remove the outer casing on them and they fit fine.

Nice setup! I'd planned to do something similar over the summer, but the regular Kaveri APUs weren't available at the time. I think I was looking at the ASrock board at the time.

The first time I saw the ISK 110 I found myself wondering why the front panel cables were so long, given how small the case was.

I'm surprised they haven't updated the ports for USB 3.0 - I've got a system built in an ISK 300 and that got an update for it at some point. Although, given how thick they make those cables, a USB 3.0 front port header would probably have been a real pain to route.

Those load temps seem a bit high - if you're using the Noctua noise-reducing cable that could definitely be having an effect on your thermals. Did you leave the case's fan in place, too? Are they both blowing in the same direction? I've noticed on my ISK 300 system (using a Gigabyte board, too) that the CPU seems to run full bore in the BIOS, I'm guessing because it's not letting the processor use any power saving features while in the menus.

Great Built. I have the same case but with an i3 processor.

Great for a Media PC.

Nice little setup.

I really wish antec would update this case to usb 3.0.. but then again the usb 3.0 header is huge and sticks upwards on most mb.

liangr said:

I really wish antec would update this case to usb 3.0.. but then again the usb 3.0 header is huge and sticks upwards on most mb.

Click to expand...

Also the cable is really thick and difficult to route around in these tight spaces.

On this note though, I have seen a "low profile" USB 3.0 header/cable, although I forget where.

Nice, love the uSFF builds. Got 2 already and a third shortly.

You might be able to adapt one of these PCB style jacks to the hole and JB weld it in, these all seem to have a 9mmx11mm dimension which looks pretty close to the hole in your case,most likely what they used on the original PSU board

http://www.monstermarketplace.com/batteries/component-connector-dc-jack-pcb-mount-5-5-x-2-5-mm

I'm surprised the Antec 90 watt PSU wouldn't work for this. The A10-7800 is supposed to be only a 65W CPU.

I've seen higher power consumption in a review with a 750W power supply, but that would be completely the wrong power supply to test with. I'm curious what your system pulls from the wall with the PicoPSU.

josephclemente said:

I'm surprised the Antec 90 watt PSU wouldn't work for this. The A10-7800 is supposed to be only a 65W CPU.

I've seen higher power consumption in a review with a 750W power supply, but that would be completely the wrong power supply to test with. I'm curious what your system pulls from the wall with the PicoPSU.

Click to expand...

You've got to account for the other components, most notably the motherboard which will consume about 30W, iirc. The other things like memory and SSDs will also consume a bit, and so I don't think the Antec 90W would be up to it either.

AMD motherboards must consume a lot more power than I am used to. I've built Intel systems with 65W TDP in the Antec ISK 110 with 16GB RAM and SSD. With Prime95 and Furmark, I still had plenty of spare power.

josephclemente said:

I'm surprised the Antec 90 watt PSU wouldn't work for this. The A10-7800 is supposed to be only a 65W CPU.

I've seen higher power consumption in a review with a 750W power supply, but that would be completely the wrong power supply to test with. I'm curious what your system pulls from the wall with the PicoPSU.

Click to expand...

Yeah I went through a lot of hemming and hawing and googling about this, as I will now explain in boring detail. Tl;dr summary: It boiled down to me not wanting to worry about (a) not booting at all since AMD chips go full blast at boot for some reason; and (2) not worrying in the back of my mind about this thing powering down randomly at a bad time.

The long explanation: from what I can tell AMD TDP's are not an accurate way to gauge the true power consumption of AMD chips, whereas for Intel they usually are more less accurate. AMD chips will go above the rated TDP in testing, or get near it even at idle, while Intel will usually sip power and stay in within the range they advertise even under artificially high loads. The graphics prowess in a tiny case is the sole reason I went AMD here, I think under almost any other scenario I would go Intel.

The second problem I found was the ISK 110 PSU is actually only rated at 60w on the 12v rail, which supplies the CPU with power. (5 amps on a 12v rail which according to an online calculator is 60w, which someone on another forum also mentioned. If that's wrong, there is a reason I got a C in High school physics...) So discarding other components entirely I still had a problem there.

Would it really matter? I came to the conclusion it would. As to power consumption, there was a lot of different info out there about how much the APU would really need. Although I rarely really pay much attention to synthetic furmark/prime95 type stuff, reviews on this APU were showing anywhere between 70w and 110w in power draw during gaming. Tom's review for instance shows the CPU using 70w (and from the review it is unclear if they are isolating the CPU for that measurement or measuring the whole system, I think they might be isolating the CPU) and that was the lowest "load" measurement I saw. Most other sites had it >100w for load tests, and even factoring in the artificially high loads you see with stuff like furmark and prime95, or enormous PSU's and inefficiency, that seemed to be cutting it too close.

And, I have been meaning to try out a PicoPSU build as I love the idea of these little things. A silent, tiny PSU that takes up zero space? Yes please! It's a shame they are not more mainstream.

Awesome build!
This is pretty much what I'd planned for my current project before I snagged an MSI MicroATX board for cheap. Excellent choice on the memory too, that'll let the APU really blaze.
One of the things I loved about the picoPSU's is that they're generally a LOT more efficient than ATX. 90% if I remember right, might be higher.

Thanks guys. I have this little sucker mounted behind the monitor now...never had a VESA mounted PC before. Awesome.

More updates:

I removed the low noise fan adapter and the RPM now goes as high as 2100 when gaming. Fan remains almost inaudible when mounted behind the monitor on the VESA mount, and also remains totally silent at idle.

CPU still throttles, and at this point I am not sure if it matters or whether I can do anything about it (or even if it would be a good idea to lock it if I could, owing to heat) and the GPU clock remains steady.

On the subject of heat, I tried Borderlands 2 TPS again this time at 1600x900. HWiNFO temps are:

CPU max temp: 89c
Avg: 73
Min: 66

HDD temp max: 45
Avg: 42

Aida64 doesn't show the CPU temp going higher than around 40c, and the mobo hovering around 50. At idle the CPU is at 20-25c and the mobo is at 40-47c, again both significantly loer than HWiNFO's temps. According to HWiNFO, these temps are not too much lower than when I had the low power fan cable installed.

On an unscientific level... when I stick my hand over the vents of the case, the air is hot but not burning 194 degrees Fahrenheit hot. I think the HWiNFO temps might be a little off. CoreTemp reports wildly different (low) temps, which I am just completely ignoring. In the past I have always had different programs report different temps. Anyone know which one is best for AMD's?

HWiNFO64 claims the CPU is drawing 89w at max (APU + CPU), and 65w average. It also claims the APU is drawing 40w max during gaming. At idle the cpu appears to draw around 30w. Aida64 says the total CPU package is drawing 100w at peak.

All benches taking during gaming, at a particularly heavy spot in the game.

FRAPS:

2014-12-19 17:45:30 - BorderlandsPreSequel; 1600x900, High Textures, High Game detail, D.o.F. off, FXAA off, 2x Anisotropic filtering, View Distance Far:

Frames: 2424 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 40.400 - Min: 15 - Max: 48

Not too shabby for having textures and detail set at high. And I can't hear a thing....which is pretty cool.

2014-12-19 17:48:41 - BorderlandsPreSequel 1600x900, Normal Textures, Normal Game detail, D.o.F. off, FXAA off, No Anisotropic filtering, View Distance Near:
Frames: 2533 - Time: 60000ms - Avg: 42.217 - Min: 24 - Max: 50

Big difference in minimum rates, not a huge jump in max rates.

This is currently the only game installed...I want to install Bioshock Infinite next as a couple of the review sites use that game for their own tests, so I want to see how this stacks up and in doing so whether the throttling is really making any difference. Also this weekend I am picking up another monitor that is capable of 1080p to see how high this thing can go, current monitor (old one from the closet) can't do 1080p.

I'm surprised that you are experiencing throttling with your A10 7800.

I've a similar system that I've build some time ago with a A10 7850k in an ISK110 and i dont experience any throttling and its silent. for cooling I just have a xigmatec preaton with a noctua slim 92mm fan

illram said:

I removed the low noise fan adapter and the RPM now goes as high as 2100 when gaming. Fan remains almost inaudible when mounted behind the monitor on the VESA mount, and also remains totally silent at idle.

Click to expand...

Noise is attenuated when it has to go around a corner or be reflected off a surface. This is why cases marketed as quiet/silent don't have open fan grills in front.

See if in BIOS there is a setting for amount of power the board can send to the CPU. Not familiar with AM2 stuff (own two, but they're collecting dust) but with Intel boards, you can often set a wattage threshold because sometimes when it throttles, it isn't just temperature but power. Your CPU is a lower wattage unit, right? It may be artificially limiting clocks when both CPU and GPU are loaded just to keep within the 65W specs, not because it is overheating.

Of course 89°C is a bit on the high side, so could be that too.

akromatic said:

I'm surprised that you are experiencing throttling with your A10 7800.

I've a similar system that I've build some time ago with a A10 7850k in an ISK110 and i dont experience any throttling and its silent. for cooling I just have a xigmatec preaton with a noctua slim 92mm fan

Click to expand...

Hmm... what mobo do you have?

See if in BIOS there is a setting for amount of power the board can send to the CPU. Not familiar with AM2 stuff (own two, but they're collecting dust) but with Intel boards, you can often set a wattage threshold because sometimes when it throttles, it isn't just temperature but power. Your CPU is a lower wattage unit, right? It may be artificially limiting clocks when both CPU and GPU are loaded just to keep within the 65W specs, not because it is overheating.

Click to expand...

The BIOS is frustratingly limited and many of the CPU options seem locked. I have been poking around in there though. Changing the "cool n' quiet" and automated power management CPU functions to disabled does not seem to prevent all four cores from going down to 2.5Ghz during gaming. Frequency and voltage settings are locked out. Doesn't appear to be any other options.

Not sure if you've already done this with disabling the power settings, but you might try disabling the Turbo setting altogether, then bumping the clock speed up maybe a few nth's of a GHz. In my previous APU builds I found that the CPU sometimes throttles when it jumps to turbo freq, due to the spike in power draw. Without Turbo the APU will still scale (I believe), but will have a consistent ceiling for the power draw (also contributes to more consistent heat management).

As for the case, one of the things I'd wanted to do with my last build was to make a custom side panel grill using the Hex mesh from MNPCTECH. Much better airflow and still protects from ESD if you're concerned about that. The trick with the hex mesh would be to get the little mounting 'ears' done right.

redivulpis said:

Not sure if you've already done this with disabling the power settings, but you might try disabling the Turbo setting altogether, then bumping the clock speed up maybe a few nth's of a GHz. In my previous APU builds I found that the CPU sometimes throttles when it jumps to turbo freq, due to the spike in power draw. Without Turbo the APU will still scale (I believe), but will have a consistent ceiling for the power draw (also contributes to more consistent heat management).

Click to expand...

Sadly, I can't mess with the clock speeds at all in the BIOS. I did try turning off the turbo functions, no dice. I have basically tried to turn off every function I can in every combination that I can, and nothing seems to stop it.

I also have looked at AMD's Overdrive program, which seems to offer more options than Gigabyte's woefully thin BIOS (even the latest version) and tried cautiously tinkering around with it, but as I have never overclocked before this is one of those times I feel like in trying to fix the problem I might make it worse. I literally have no idea where to begin. (And can you overclock the 7800? I thought it was locked?)

As it stands I get great frame rates at lower resolutions (720p to 1600x900 depending on the game) but using Bioshock's benchmarking tool I do fall a few FPS short from anandtech's and Tom's Hardware benchmarks at the same settings. I know my RAM is operating at 2133 so the only culprit is the CPU multiplier throttling. From the hour or so of googling I sunk into this it appears this is a known issue with these APU's.

Stevo_ said:

Nice, love the uSFF builds. Got 2 already and a third shortly.

You might be able to adapt one of these PCB style jacks to the hole and JB weld it in, these all seem to have a 9mmx11mm dimension which looks pretty close to the hole in your case,most likely what they used on the original PSU board

http://www.monstermarketplace.com/batteries/component-connector-dc-jack-pcb-mount-5-5-x-2-5-mm

Click to expand...

That actually looks exactly like what they used on the included PSU... I might try just prying it off and jerry-rigging it in there. Didn't know about JB weld, looks like exactly what I was looking for.

Or maybe I'll finally bite the bullet and buy that 3D laser printer I have been looking for an excuse to buy....

So, according to at least two foreign language review sites, the CPU clock is designed to decrease to 2.5Ghz when the GPU is loaded even at the higher TDP setting. That's probably why I cannot get it to turn off.

http://www.jagatreview.com/2014/08/hands-on-review-amd-apu-a10-7800-kaveri-dengan-fitur-ctdp/2/

A little late to the party, but love the build nevertheless.

I just thought I'd chime in that if you want to have all of your front USB ports functional, you can use this adapter to convert the internal USB 3.0 header to a USB 2.0 header:

http://www.amazon.com/CablesOnline-20-Pin-Motherboard-Adapter-USB3-AD24/dp/B00E42A4L0

Overdrive is definitely a good option, but the temperature readings are a little wonky. They show the distance to the max temperature threshold or something, not the actual temperature. I don't remember off hand what the max operating temp of the 7850k, is but I think it's around 70-80*C.

As for the PicoPSU, those things are great! Very efficient and they're one (or two) fewer fans in the case to make noise. I'm not sure about the barrel jack though, you might check the power brick for it's rated output. The 192W brick I got with mine had a 4-pin DIN connector, not 2-pole barrel jack. YMMV

not a fan. No gpu

kierwest said:

not a fan. No gpu

Click to expand...

This guy.

kierwest said:

not a fan. No gpu

Click to expand...

so many internets for you, sir.

rwpritchett said:

A little late to the party, but love the build nevertheless.

I just thought I'd chime in that if you want to have all of your front USB ports functional, you can use this adapter to convert the internal USB 3.0 header to a USB 2.0 header:

http://www.amazon.com/CablesOnline-20-Pin-Motherboard-Adapter-USB3-AD24/dp/B00E42A4L0

Click to expand...

Thank you! I was looking all over for one of those.

those USB3 to USB2 adapters were so painful and expensive to get when i did my 7850k isk110 build

used the asrock board instead which has 2 USB2 headers and a USB3 header, no need for adapters