Log Custom wood and resin HTPC case + 3080 TI

[DillThePill]

I waited 3 months for this case to be built. Then the day after it finally arrived I totally lucked into a 3080 TI. (I walked into Microcenter to buy a fan and they were unboxing a 3080 TI shipment that hadn’t arrived in time for the morning line up. It was like a dream.)

I love that the build doesn’t look like tech. The inspiration I had in mind was a vacuum tube amplifier or 70’s HiFi. I didn’t want something that looked like a computer. I’ll post more as I get custom cables and clean up the build.

Artesian Builds has a few more available that you won’t have to wait forever to get. They cut the glass covers to the wrong size but are fixing that.

 

[DillThePill]

It’s hard to tell from my pics but I removed the fans and shroud from the Asus 3080 TI. The case fits a triple slot card and that is the perfect height for card’s heat sink plus regular height fans. I have two Noctua AFx25 fans below the GPU.

The GPU compartment on this case has lots of ventilation on the side and bottom, but no active exhaust. With the Asus stock fans the card run run in the 80’s and was loud.

I‘m amazed at how much improvement there is with the better fans. I suppose I shouldn’t be. It would be a joke if a CPU cooler used slim 80 mm fans to dissipate 350 watts.

Even more interesting is that it worked better to have the fans exhaust from the case instead of blowing directly on the GPU’s heat sink. I didn’t expect that to work. I presume that’s because the GPU compartment is sealed from the rest of the case and this card is so large that it fills most of the space. So the airflow from the negative pressure only has one path it can take fresh air over the heat sink and out the fans.

At full GPU load I went from 83 degrees/2200 RPM to 75 degrees/1600 RPM. It’s not quite silent but pretty damn good for a card this powerful.

There is one noise I haven’t been able to figure out yet. It’s a kind of oscillating low pitch sound. It rises and falls maybe once a second. I don’t think it’s a direct noise from the fan/pump but maybe some other vibration.

 

[scatterforce]

Looks great!

The odd noise you hear may be the fan on the VRM. I believe you can control that in the BIOS.

 

[DillThePill]

Thanks for the tip. It wasn’t the problem but it was a good idea to check.

The problem turned out to not be in the case at all. It's the wood case sitting on the wood entertainment center that resonates. I mostly fixed it by sticking on some rubber thingys that Noctua includes in their chromax fans.