NCASE M1: a crowdfunded Mini-ITX case (updates in first post)

It's a little bit frustrating as I went with the Gigabyte over the ASRock board specifically because reviews found the Gigabyte board to have a quieter fan. Maybe I just got a bad one, but there do seem to be some other users out there suffering from the same problem.

Some good info here about the replacement process:

https://www.overclock.net/forum/246...yte-x570-i-aorus-pro-chipset-fan-upgrade.html

Noctua offers 40mm fans in both 10mm and 20mm thick models. I'm trying the 20mm model as it's quieter and there appears to be enough room to find a way to mount it.

 

Have you updated the mobo bios? Many of the manufacturers are adding new bios updates for the chipset fan issue.

 

Yeah I'm on the latest BIOS. Gigabyte doesn't yet have the option to set a custom fan curve for the PCH fan, which could help. My Noctua fan gets here today, so hopefully I can figure out a way to attach that and just be done with it.

 

My Accelero III is working pretty well, but has also posed a new challenge.

Now that I have two fans (I'm using Noctua NF-A12x25) as exhaust on the bottom of my case, I have a resonance problem. I'm thinking about installing the low noise adapter on one of the fans to see if that eliminates the resonance, but I'll lose a little bit of cooling as a result.

Anyone else had this problem?

 

Well I put the LNA on one of the fans and resonance is gone, so I'm happy.

Also replaced the chipset fan with the 40mm Noctua. It's noticeably quieter, however it turns out it the chipset fan wasn't the main source of the high pitched noise. I have some pretty bad coil whine now that seems to crop up when the GPU exceeds 70C and that's what I was hearing. It's the same graphics card I've had for a year and the coil whine has just cropped up in this build. Annoying but I don't think there's much I can do about it. I reset the core and mem speeds to stock on my card and that helps a little bit as it takes longer before the coil whine kicks in.

 

Did you have any difficulty replacing the original 30 mm chipset fan with the 40 mm Noctua? I wouldn't have thought the mounting holes would line up for the larger fan.

 

Removing the 30mm fan was easy. The mounting holes don't line up, so I just used some foam double sided tape to attach the 40mm Noctua on top of the heatsink. It feels pretty secure. It just barely fits under the bottom 140mm fan on my C14.

I'll post some pictures soon.

 

Longshot, but did anyone here buy a V6 ncase m1 and are not planning to use the blank/power button only front i/o thing?
If so I'll buy it!
I'm looking for one since I never use my front i/o and I managed to break some of the USB 3 pins on my Mobo because the USB 3 front header cable that came with my v1 was so thick and hard to plug in accurately in a crowded build...

 

So sorry to read about your broken pins. All USB 3 front header cables are, in my opinion, ridiculously stiff and difficult to manage. This is not unique to the M1.

For anyone else facing similar routing difficulty I recommend buying a Low Profile USB 3.0 Header Extender Cable. These have a ribbon-like cable between a low profile male connector (for the motherboard USB 3 socket) and a female connector for the front panel USB 3 cable. This is much more flexible and allows you to route the front panel cable along the back or bottom panels of the M1 or even behind the motherboard. In fact, I sometimes add extension cables to my fans so that I can route those wires along the edges of the M1 frame instead of across the middle of the case. Sometimes a longer route is a tidier route.

 

cool, I wish I knew about those beforehand.
Looks like the power button only front io faceplate is only compatible with the new front i/o setup of the v6.
I hope they end up selling those individually....

Luckily the rest of the build came together really nicely

 

Finally built a new high end system after almost 9 years away from the hobby. I used a NOS (new-old-stock) Silver NCASE M1 v1, First Edition I had in storage that I got after backing the original Indiegogo campaign in 2013.
Back then I bought one of each color offered thinking I was going to upgrade more frequently. The black NCASE M1 is still running an old Ivy Bridge Core i5 system I migrated into the case back in the day.

Even with all this high end stuff crammed in, the layout is surprisingly roomy and no bunched up cables between the radiator fans and the components. Lots of unblocked/line-of-sight airflow between the radiator and the cpu/mem/mobo/psu. I just used the cables that came with the Corsair PSU, the platinum series PSUs come with extremely high quality cables, I was very impressed. Just took some work routing everything.

The only snag I ran into was that I messed up plugging in the front USB 3 header and messed up a pin on the motherboard. The front USB 3 cable and plug are so thick and more difficult than I remember to plug into a densely packed motherboard.
I realized don't need or use front I/O anyways so I just removed the cables and ports from the front of the case, so now I have USB A and mini-jack shaped ventilation holes .

I seriously hope that the new front I/O setup for the V6 will be eventually be sold separately so I can get that clean, power-button-only look on the front. If I didn't have this first-edition M1 sitting around, I would have totally purchased the v6. Great case, thanks wahaha360 and Necere for all the work that went into it.



Specs:
NCASE M1 First Edition (Silver)
Core i9 9900K
G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 32GB CL 14-14-14-34
ASUS ROG STRIX Z390i
NZXT KRAKEN X52
CORSAIR SF750 750 Watt PSU
CORSAIR MP510 1920GB NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD
NVIDIA GeForce 2080 Ti FE
2 x Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM Fans

 

Looks like a very clean build, which is even more impressive given that you used the power supply's original cables. Well done!

For the stiff USB 3 front panel cable, see the solution I recommended in a post earlier today. I hope this is helpful.

 

Just an

Just an FYI optimum tech... YouTube had better results with the bottom fans doing intake

 

Just an

Just an FYI optimum tech... YouTube had better results with the bottom fans doing intake

 

I'll have to consult YouTube. Someone over at the smallformfactor.net forums told me Optimum Tech found exhaust to be the best configuration

 

With a window side panel, Optimum Tech found having the bottom fans as exhaust and the rear fan as intake (so rear to front airflow through his NH-U9S) was most effective.

Before the window side panel became available, others with hot running graphics cards found exhausting air out the bottom works best with the Accelero Xtreme III or IV heatsinks.

 

Interesting that the window affected the results so much. I have my rear fan as exhaust with my C14 as intake. CPU temps seem pretty good but now I'm curious to try the rear fan as intake.

 

With a window side panel it is not possible to intake air through that panel, of course. Intaking air through the bottom panel distributes heated air from the GPU throughout the rest of the case, increasing the CPU temperature. So, he tried using the rear fan as an intake and set the bottom fans as exhausts.

I am interested your results with the rear fan as an intake in the case of a non-window side panel and a top-down CPU cooler,

 

Been doing some temperature testing and with an ambient temperature of about 26 C, my system idles at an average of 37 C.
Under a Prime 95 CPU stress test load, temps seem to top out at an average of 59 C. When I use the Intel extreme tuner software to stress the CPU, it will hit a 64 C average.

The GPU will idle at 45 C and top out at about 74 C when running benchmarks like Superposition and Heaven.

These temps are way better than I ever expected from an ITX build, but the 240 AIO mounted in the NCase seems to be working perfectly, the left side of the case is actually cold while the right side gets very hot. Thinking of fitting some exhaust fans somewhere.

If I do a basic 50 multiplier overclock to the 9900K, temps will shoot up to about 85 C for the CPU under load, GPU temps go up about 2 C across the board, most likely due to the temperature in the case being warmer.

Never undervolted before but I think that will definitely be necessary to tweak things further. I see a lot of overclocking guides out there but I cant seem to find anything in depth on undervolting, so taking my time with this. At stock the system seems fast enough for work, and more than enough for games.

 

Is the case still available? The website doesn't work. https://www.sfflab.com/products/ncase_m1

 

SFFLAB is reorganizing and it is covered in this post on the site: https://www.sfflab.com/blogs/news/sfflab-2-0-is-arriving

I think Necere posted somewhere (I can't find it) that the Ncase store on SFFLAB should be available before the end of November.