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

kndonlee said:
For encoding, you will want to maximize cores & clock, which the 5820k will have better overall throughput, but the 6700K isn't that far behind. Maybe 10-15% or so.
* not that much slower for encoding tasks
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The 6700K enjoys 30% greater clocks at stock.

Once overclocked to their respective maximums the clock speed difference is 5-10% (in favor of the 6700K); in this circumstance the 5820K really pulls away in encoding tasks.

With an expected usage of 20% encoding time it would be silly to not get the 5820K.
 
I ordered my M1 v5 in November and got it a day or two ago, I did TW AIR1. I will note that the only thing that bothers me is the molding around the plugs on the panels that connect it to the case. They seem very poorly polished and in some cases rough. Besides that, absolutely stellar case and I'm putting together my build list with great anticipation.
 
For anyone using a mobo with the M.2 slot on the back, have you run into any thermal throttling on your SSD? The reason I ask here is that I just received my M1 v5 and will be using this case for the build.

I'm just about ready to put design my build, and I keep seeing concerns about thermal throttling. I haven't yet picked my mobo and its a bit of a tossup between the Asus M8I or the Asrock Fatal1ty. I know I want an NVMe drive, so my options are M.2, or U.2. My preference would be us have the M.2 on the back, but not if thermal issues will be limiting my speeds.
 
I have Samsung 950 Pro 512GB on the back of my Asus Z170i and I haven't had any issues what so ever. Temps are around 45-50'C in the normal use and 58'C when gaming.

I have 140mm intake fan at the bottom so there is some airflow behind the motherboard too.
 
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Delemon said:
For anyone using a mobo with the M.2 slot on the back, have you run into any thermal throttling on your SSD? The reason I ask here is that I just received my M1 v5 and will be using this case for the build.

I'm just about ready to put design my build, and I keep seeing concerns about thermal throttling. I haven't yet picked my mobo and its a bit of a tossup between the Asus M8I or the Asrock Fatal1ty. I know I want an NVMe drive, so my options are M.2, or U.2. My preference would be us have the M.2 on the back, but not if thermal issues will be limiting my speeds.
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I expect this is a concern going forward with these drives. http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-sm951-512gb-m-2-pcie-ssd-review_161689/3 had thermal throttling on a m.2 mount on the TOP of the board and added a fan directly on the unit to show the difference in performance. this review is for the NVME Samsung 950: http://www.legitreviews.com/samsung-ssd-950-pro-512gb-nvme-pcie-ssd-review_174096/3

"When we let everything cool back down and re-did the test without the 120mm fan we noticed that the drive started to throttle at the 62 second mark. Our performance went from being ~1560 MB/s all they way down to 753 MB/s and then rising up to 879 MB/s during the throttle period. We plugged the fan back in at the 310 second mark and performance went right back up to ~1560 MB/s like nothing ever happened."
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So at 1560 MB/s they throttled after like 90,000 MB transferred. That is a shitload of data and it is still ~25% faster (when throttled) than a high end 2.5" Samsung SSD.
If/when they ever make 1 TB m.2 drives that people use for everything you might see more complaints but for now the real question is: Do you have a high enough workload requirement to actually push this drive to the limit in this way? Probably not and even if it did throttle you honestly might not even notice.
 
darrpara said:
So at 1560 MB/s they throttled after like 90,000 MB transferred. That is a shitload of data and it is still ~25% faster (when throttled) than a high end 2.5" Samsung SSD.
If/when they ever make 1 TB m.2 drives that people use for everything you might see more complaints but for now the real question is: Do you have a high enough workload requirement to actually push this drive to the limit in this way? Probably not and even if it did throttle you honestly might not even notice.
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I expect it's more a question of "in case" heat than usage, they are running a totally open case and we're all in a small form factor (itx) case thread, so heat is a very real concern. I do wonder what the underside of a mainboard is going to see in terms of heat, as I was also planning on getting that exact M.2 drive.
 
ILikeVoltron said:
I expect it's more a question of "in case" heat than usage, they are running a totally open case and we're all in a small form factor (itx) case thread, so heat is a very real concern. I do wonder what the underside of a mainboard is going to see in terms of heat, as I was also planning on getting that exact M.2 drive.
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Yeah that is true. I suppose you could take the stickers off (RIP warranty) and put a thermal pad between the SSD and the rear case panel. Or just go to x-99 and have it on the top of the mobo :D

1435455215hyfu6yYw6S_1_13_l.jpg


/edit: I actually got a little more curious and ran into this article that I must have missed before: http://anandtech.com/show/9856/angelbird-wings-px1-m2-adapter-review-do-ssds-need-heatsinks
When introducing the 950 Pro, Samsung assurred us that it could manage its heat output. They were right: the 950 Pro achieves a delicate balance where it will almost never overheat from a typical consumer workload, but almost any stress test can trigger sometimes severe thermal throttling. That isn't to say that the heatsink will never help in the real world; those situations are just rare, and even with the thermal throttling it would only take a few minutes to read or write the entire drive.
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/edit2: last edit I hope. Here someone doing exactly what I said above: Thermal pads on the 950 that is mounted on the back of the motherboard.

http://linipc.com/blogs/news/65282629-samsung-950-pro-review-thermal-throttling-solved
DSC0563_grande.jpg
 
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Just received my V5, amazing case, now need to wait for corsair sf600. Silverstone sfx 600 is horrible (bird chirping noise), I can't believe it's the only high end sfx available.
 
Just updated my GPU from a MSI GTX580 to an ASUS GTX970 Mini. Really happy with it. Fired up a few graphically demanding games last night and I must say I am very happy with the acoustics. I tried Assasins Creed IV, Far Cry 3 and Mad Max. Though my monitor limits me to 1080p, cranking the other settings up did not produce any significant fan noise. I can hear it immediately after turning the games off, but during gaming it's not an issue at all. Even my SX600-G is quiet due to lower load and generally lower case temps. I have only one fan in the system which is a stock 140mm fan on my NH-C14. Waiting for a 140mm Fractal Design Venturi PWM fan to replace it, for looks and the PWM control. The only issue I've been having with the Noctua fan is that it won't start up at boot with the ULNA installed, and with the LNA I can hear air moving at idle when the side panel is on, which is quite annoying. Basically I can't get it to run slow enough on voltage control. I used to have a Corsair SP120 fan on the side bracket, wich worked great, but the side bracket really limited the access to components in the case without breaking out tools, so i dropped it. Haven't seen many of these fans around and I'm curious to see how it performs.

I'm going to do some proper stress testing this weekend to test out a few different airflow designs, but with this short card it seems air is finding its way out by itself anyway so I am not expecting any significant or necessary improvements by adding fans or ducts.
 
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Spark9990 said:
Just received my V5, amazing case, now need to wait for corsair sf600. Silverstone sfx 600 is horrible (bird chirping noise), I can't believe it's the only high end sfx available.
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mine is silent. Running a 970 and a OC'd 8280k

Nox
 
Spark9990 said:
Just received my V5, amazing case, now need to wait for corsair sf600. Silverstone sfx 600 is horrible (bird chirping noise), I can't believe it's the only high end sfx available.
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Either I am one of the lucky ones, or the grief the Silverstone PSUs have received are greatly exaggerated. I have no issues with my SX600-G right now. It is a bit noisy at full load, but we don't know that the Corsair one isn't. It has a bigger fan, but a 92mm fan can still be crap. I did also really love my Corsair AX850 from before i went SFF so I have no reason to expect that Corsair made a bad product, but still.

- When Silverstone announced the variable fan speed SX600-G as an improvement from the SX450 people was expecting that to be the solution to all of these problems. Some people still complained.
- When the SFX-L was announced with a bigger fan, again people were expecting THAT to be the solution. Some people still complained.
- Now Corsair is up. Let's see what happens;)
 
Urelure said:
Either I am one of the lucky ones, or the grief the Silverstone PSUs have received are greatly exaggerated. I have no issues with my SX600-G right now. It is a bit noisy at full load, but we don't know that the Corsair one isn't. It has a bigger fan, but a 92mm fan can still be crap. I did also really love my Corsair AX850 from before i went SFF so I have no reason to expect that Corsair made a bad product, but still.
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Is it a V1.1?

I have whine at standby, chirping when the fan starts and it's my loudest fan at idle, not to mention load. If it weren't for the whine, I'd have been okay with it.
 
XelNika said:
Is it a V1.1?

I have whine at standby, chirping when the fan starts and it's my loudest fan at idle, not to mention load. If it weren't for the whine, I'd have been okay with it.
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No. It's a V1.0. I bought on as soon as they were available in Europe.
It does have coil whine at idle, but i literally have to put my ear against it to hear it so I don't regard it as a problem.
The chirping is there, but it only chirps 3-4 times once right after boot, time depending on load on the system, so I don't bother being annoyed by it.
I don't hear the fan at idle over the moving air noise from my 140mm noctua fan on my CPU cooler, not when going back to idle from load either, but at load it can be loud. However I made some changes recently that has put way less stress on the PSU, both in regard to wattage and temperature. Going from 580 overclocked to 970 stock has lowered power consumption. Choosing a short 970 improved airflow a lot so hot air escapes instead of heating up the case. I also flipped the PSU so the fan pulls from the outside rather than inside the case like before. It doesn't ramp up to the same levels anymore.
Of course in an ideal world we would never hear it, like it is with ATX PSUs these days, but sadly I don't think that's realistic. I remember back in the days when ATX PSUs had 92mm fans. They were horribly loud. Way worse than any Silverston 80mm fan these days. And with the corsair going for 92mm instead of 80, the biggest drawback is still not adressed. The fans are slim, so static pressure is bad. That's why they need the rpm to sufficiently cool the PSU.
 
I'm not talking about whine at idle, I mean when the system is off. That's when the whine is noticeable. Sometimes I unplug it at night.

The most annoying PSU I've had besides this one was actually an ATX PSU. The Corsair TX750M V2 had a bad fan controller that would send power to the fan, but not enough to start it, so the fan would hum.
 
XelNika said:
I'm not talking about whine at idle, I mean when the system is off. That's when the whine is noticeable. Sometimes I unplug it at night.

The most annoying PSU I've had besides this one was actually an ATX PSU. The Corsair TX750M V2 had a bad fan controller that would send power to the fan, but not enough to start it, so the fan would hum.
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Sounds like bad capacitors and worth contacting Silverstone support?
 
XelNika said:
I'm not talking about whine at idle, I mean when the system is off. That's when the whine is noticeable.
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That's what i meant too. Clumsy wording. I only ever notice it when i need to do something on the PC that does not require me to unplug it. I do, however, not sleep in the room my computer is in. I know many annoying sounds become more prominent when the entire house is quiet:)

XelNika said:
The most annoying PSU I've had besides this one was actually an ATX PSU. The Corsair TX750M V2 had a bad fan controller that would send power to the fan, but not enough to start it, so the fan would hum.
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That sound really really annoying. My old AX850 was completely inaudible.
 
XelNika said:
I'm only renting one room so I have no choice.

Yeah, I returned it and got a CM V700, best PSU I've owned.



AFAIK it's common.
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I looked at doing an ATX PSU to avoid this sort of crap but giving up all that space and then having to get a non-reference GPU (and then a separate water block for it) made me throw my hands up in the air and give up. I don't see a way around using the Silverstone SFX PSU.
 
I'm waiting until the Corsair SF-600 is available before I work my build. I've always had pretty good experiences with them. Otherwise, I'd buy everything and build it this weekend, lol.
 
According to tracking, I've got a case sitting at my door right now.

Looks like it's time for a Micro Center trip after work.
 
Delemon said:
I'm waiting until the Corsair SF-600 is available before I work my build. I've always had pretty good experiences with them. Otherwise, I'd buy everything and build it this weekend, lol.
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Yeah same.. I have everything bought but the GPU/RAM/PSU.

Debating on just getting a gtx 970 atm... (was planning on using my gtx 670 until pascal comes out) but man.. who knows when the 1070 pascal will come out anymore.
 
Spark9990 said:
Just received my V5, amazing case, now need to wait for corsair sf600. Silverstone sfx 600 is horrible (bird chirping noise), I can't believe it's the only high end sfx available.
Click to expand...

Delemon said:
I'm waiting until the Corsair SF-600 is available before I work my build. I've always had pretty good experiences with them. Otherwise, I'd buy everything and build it this weekend, lol.
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Lol I'm in the same boat as you guys. Received my NCASE v5 today. What I'm doing is buying a SX600-G on Amazon today, and using that for my build so I can finally finish my build. Then in 30 days when the SF600 comes out, I'm going to return the SX600-G and buy the SF600.
 
ILikeVoltron said:
I looked at doing an ATX PSU to avoid this sort of crap but giving up all that space and then having to get a non-reference GPU (and then a separate water block for it) made me throw my hands up in the air and give up. I don't see a way around using the Silverstone SFX PSU.
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If harddrives are M.2 or mounted on the exterior of the case and went all air cooling, I think and ATX PSU may be able to work. I think this is from page 63 of this thread:

http://i.imgur.com/zDHo7ER.png
 
exzacklyright said:
Debating on just getting a gtx 970 atm... (was planning on using my gtx 670 until pascal comes out) but man.. who knows when the 1070 pascal will come out anymore.
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Yeah, I decided to just buy a 970. I suspect it's going to be a while before reasonably priced Pascal cards are available, and when that happens I can just sell the one I have if it's worth it to upgrade.
 
So I'm dry-fitting my build, and I noticed a real annoyance with the USB 3.0 connector on my GA-Z170N-Gaming 5... it's near the CPU. USB 3.0 plugs are tall. It fouled the heatpipes with a Kabuto II in the optimal (pipe ends pointing up) orientation.

Guess I'm running pipe ends pointing towards the PSU (there's plenty of room for it) on this build. I'd get a low-profile adapter, but there's already too much USB 3.0 cable in this thing.

Suggestion for v6: low-profile USB 3.0 motherboard connector?
 
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bhtooefr said:
Suggestion for v6: low-profile USB 3.0 motherboard connector?
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Do they exist though? Or rather, do they exist in a way that would make sense? There are these, but having the wires separated out like that seems less than ideal, and may not work well with the USB port end. The large plastic connector isn't there for no reason, remember - it consolidates the individual wires into the dual round cables, while providing the necessary signal integrity to maintain USB 3.0 speeds.
 
ILikeVoltron said:
That looks like the same silverstone SFX PSU nobody wants.
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What i mean is that one can choose to fit a full ATX power supply + air cooled CPU heatsink/fan assembly instead of the usual:

* 240mm cpu radiator + fans
* 120mm cpu/fan radiator + 120mm gpu radiator/fan
* cpu fan + 120mm gpu radiator/fan
 
Ah, looking over docs on USB 3.0, I see the point there - shielded(!) twisted pair being required makes things really tough, and apparently the EMI considerations are significant, so I guess motherboard manufacturers are just going to have to learn to put the USB 3.0 header well outside of the heatsink keepout. (They could've put the USB 2.0 and audio ones there instead, and I'd have been fine...)
 
Good People,
Just want to chime in, got my NCASE M1 yesterday here in Chicago. It is gorgeous almost like a
piece of modern art. Excellent fit of panels to chassis, no burrs anywhere, holes are perfectly formed.
Just put it on my desk to admire it, since I'm waiting for the Corsair SFX PSU to be released.
I hope the power connector on the PSU sits in the correct position for the NCASE M1 power plug!
 
rakall said:
Good People,
Just want to chime in, got my NCASE M1 yesterday here in Chicago. It is gorgeous almost like a
piece of modern art. Excellent fit of panels to chassis, no burrs anywhere, holes are perfectly formed.
Just put it on my desk to admire it, since I'm waiting for the Corsair SFX PSU to be released.
I hope the power connector on the PSU sits in the correct position for the NCASE M1 power plug!
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I'm quite jealous. I've been waiting in anticipation to receive the case since the 21st when it hit California, but alas, USPS seems to be working on getting it to the east coast as slowly as possible.
 
Sorry to ask question but the tread got too long...I see this is V5 already. Is it still made by lian-li? What material is the frame since the dust filter is magnetic? I know the panels are aluminum. Thanks
 
My V5 arrived today in NYC and oh boy is it a beauty!

Look forward to transferring my X99 build over one of these next few weekends.

Some things that I'll be interested to see play out:
- performance + noise of Noctua's U9DX on a 5820 (most likely rear exhaust)
- performance + noise of non-blower Gigabyte 980 Ti (stock-ish PCB, so considering arctic Accelero air cooling if not sufficient)
- need for any additional fans
- mounting space + cable runs for multiple SSDs

I've got my current build in a Fractal Node 304 and it's *whisper* quiet. Really happy with the acoustics and performance, but not so much on the size of the case sitting on my desk.

Regarding the Silverstone SFX 600w PSU, either I got a really good unit or everyone else is whiny. I'm super sensitive to ambient noise and have never heard anything behind the sustained low woosh present at boot (2-3db over ambient, maybe). I haven't overclocked yet, but I have certainly pushed my hardware running Fallout 4 @ 3440 cranked all the way up with mods. So that's one data point for anyone considering that PSU.

All in all, props to Necere for making this thing real. My wife's friend (fashion designer) was over tonight when it arrived. She said it looked amazing, and she only begrudgingly allows an iMac and G-Drive to be visible in their apartment.
 
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