2 x 120mm on GPU

[Cel]

Hello!
I've just gotten a Dan A4-sfx v2 for about $100 which was way to good of an offer to refuse!

I've filled it with:
Msi Z370i Gaming Pro Carbon
i5 8400
2 x Corsair LPX 3000Mhz @ 3200Mhz
Gigabyte 1080ti OC
Corsair SF600
512gb m.2 Nvme on the back of the Mobo
1920gb ssd from Kingston.

To cool all of this I'm using:
Noctua NH-L9i - reason for this was when I was about to pick up a C7 I read that it can create turbulence and too much noise
2 x NF-A9x14, one under mobo (tight fit, really tight, didn't even have to use screws. Did have to convince the riser to move a tad more north though ) and one under the Power supply.
Replaced the fan on the GPU with 2 x Noctua NF-A12x15.

Temps are about 65-70 C on both CPU and GPU, before the addition of the fans (and replacement of gpu-fans) the CPU was at 75-80 and GPU about 75 when playing Cod:MW (2019)., 5-10 degrees difference, not to shabby!

Now, I've searched and searched about if anyone else did the same with 2 x 120mm-fans, but didn't find anything.. Anyone done it?
Would it be better to use those fans as exhaust?

See these two images:

 

[SilverJS]

This is hilarious! I was just logging in and was going to start searching as to whether anyone had tried putting 2 x NF-A12x15's on the GPU in a Dan... And then I see your post at the very top.... Guess I was meant to see it!

As it happens, I've got two of those slim 120mm Noctua's lying around....whodda thunk.

 

[Tashi]

That is quite interesting. But I see you have your bottom fans mounted as intake, it would be better to have them exhaust so they wont fight with the GPU/CPU fans.

 

[Cel]

This is hilarious! I was just logging in and was going to start searching as to whether anyone had tried putting 2 x NF-A12x15's on the GPU in a Dan... And then I see your post at the very top.... Guess I was meant to see it!

As it happens, I've got two of those slim 120mm Noctua's lying around....whodda thunk.

Hehe, I haven't seen one do it. Although, I stumbled upon a thread recently when someone namedropped someone who did it but couldn't find any more info.
I'm going to try to reverse the fans today and see if it's better.

That is quite interesting. But I see you have your bottom fans mounted as intake, it would be better to have them exhaust so they wont fight with the GPU/CPU fans.

How are they fighting? They are giving the cpu and gpu fresh air from outside and helping the airflow move towards the holes in the top?

 

[SilverJS]

The fins on both coolers are oriented vertically, therefore they dissipate the air towards the top and bottom. So your bottom fans, pushing air towards the top, are fighting against the air coming down from the coolers.

How's noise? And what power limit do you have set on the GPU?

EDIT : *very* much doubt reversing the GPU fans will have a positive effect, but only one way to find out!

 

[rfarmer]

How are they fighting? They are giving the cpu and gpu fresh air from outside and helping the airflow move towards the holes in the top?

Testing has shown that having the fans as exhaust expels hot air from both CPU and GPU out the bottom of the case and also draws fresh air through the side panels to the CPU and GPU.

 

[Cel]

The fins on both coolers are oriented vertically, therefore they dissipate the air towards the top and bottom. So your bottom fans, pushing air towards the top, are fighting against the air coming down from the coolers.

How's noise? And what power limit do you have set on the GPU?

EDIT : *very* much doubt reversing the GPU fans will have a positive effect, but only one way to find out!

Hmm.. So you say exhaust on the bottom-fans too?
That's a pain to change, the one under the mobo is jammed in there, tight as hell. Not sure I want to fiddle with that, just glad the riser survived the first injection ;P

Well, I didn't work with the reversing of the gpu-fans.
If I turned them around to exhaust through the side-panel they would rub against the fins of the cooler of the gpu, not very optimal.
Had to put them back the way they were, as intake.

Testing has shown that having the fans as exhaust expels hot air from both CPU and GPU out the bottom of the case and also draws fresh air through the side panels to the CPU and GPU.

Interesting, got any links or sources?
If it's just a few degrees I'll just let them be, but if it's a enough difference, I might consider doing it.

 

[Cel]

The fins on both coolers are oriented vertically, therefore they dissipate the air towards the top and bottom. So your bottom fans, pushing air towards the top, are fighting against the air coming down from the coolers.

How's noise? And what power limit do you have set on the GPU?

EDIT : *very* much doubt reversing the GPU fans will have a positive effect, but only one way to find out!

Forgot about the noise and power limit.
The gpu-fans do make some noise, but a humble 120mm-noise, nothing too disturbing.
Alot less vacuum-cleany compared to the original 3 x 92 (or whatever size they are) that came with the gpu.

I've got power limit set to 120 in Msi afterburner.
Here is a screenshot of the temps when running time spy:

 

[SilverJS]

That's actually pretty good for 120 power limit on a 1080 Ti. I suspect you'd get a lot less noise for very little performance loss if you reduced that, but to each their own.

Mind linking the original card? Just curious if it was a 2- or 2.5-slot model. If the latter, that could open up some interesting GPU possibilities for the A4 by using 12x15's.

 

[Tashi]

Your temps are pretty good as they are, if flipping bottom fans is a hassle then maybe it's not worth doing it.

 

[Cel]

That's actually pretty good for 120 power limit on a 1080 Ti. I suspect you'd get a lot less noise for very little performance loss if you reduced that, but to each their own.

Mind linking the original card? Just curious if it was a 2- or 2.5-slot model. If the latter, that could open up some interesting GPU possibilities for the A4 by using 12x15's.

GeForce® GTX 1080 Ti Gaming OC 11G Key Features | Graphics Card - GIGABYTE Global

Discover AORUS premium graphics cards, ft. WINDFORCE cooling, RGB lighting, PCB protection, and VR friendly features for the best gaming and VR experience!

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Got it used for about $400 (4000 SEK (in Sweden) inkluding Accelero Extreme IV but that cooler is just collecting dust atm)

Your temps are pretty good as they are, if flipping bottom fans is a hassle then maybe it's not worth doing it.

I can flip one of them easily, but not the other.
The bigger problem is that if I flip them, the blades will have trouble spinning due to all cables and risers etc. Much like on the gpu.

 

[rfarmer]

Interesting, got any links or sources?
If it's just a few degrees I'll just let them be, but if it's a enough difference, I might consider doing it.

Video is from Optimum Tech and he did his test in a Ghost S1 but users of several other sandwich style cases have reported similar results.

 

[Tashi]

Oh, the gigabyte is one of the better cooled cards, it's quite interesting that a couple of thin noctuas manage to outperform that. Notes taken.

 

[Cel]

Video is from Optimum Tech and he did his test in a Ghost S1 but users of several other sandwich style cases have reported similar results.

I've actually seen that on a few occasions, I like his videos

I decided to do an effort and test a few things.
First I did a run of time spy when the bottom fans was disconnected. It looked like it was good for the gpu, not the cpu though.

I then tried to reverse the fan below the motherboard, which worked, until I had to plugin the cpu-cable, the lock mechanism of that inteferes with the blades, not keen on cutting that off atm.

The other fan below the psu I didn't even bother with since there are way too many cables to have an effective airflow there anyway.

There is a ... thing-i-cant-remember-word-for-but-metallic-that-is-designed-to-dicipate-heat-from-motherboard... that is below the cpu-cooler and more or less blocks 80% of the airflow going downwards from the cpu.

I decided to remove both fans and might return them to the shop.
I did a new test and I can see that the cpu does got a tad warmer, 70-75 degrees but the gpu stays 60-65.

The limitations seems to be in the l9i.

I have been thinking about the black ridge cooler with an 120mm fan (or maybe just a 92mm fan) in it but there wasn't any in stock that I could pick up right away last weekend when I wanted to assemble it all.

Not sure it's worth the fuss to get that right now, not that big of a difference if I'm not mistaken, 5 degrees maybe?

 

[Cel]

Now I am confused, played some Cod:mw again, the cpu went up to 78 degrees and gpu 73-75, which was definitely higher than before... the intake-fans in the bottom must have done good overall?

 

[Tashi]

The case fans definetly help. For the CPU you can 3D print a fan duct to add on top of the CPU fan. The file for it can be found on dan cases website.
As for the blackridge don't bother with the 92mm fan config. not big improvement. but 120mm fan means you need very low profile ram.

 

[Cel]

So, these past 18 hours have been pretty interesting.
Last night I Decided to actually try and get the fans installed with the flow direction set to exhaust.
Motivation was that the temps was higher without any fans in the bottom.

After some fiddling (man it is tight!), I plugged the computer back in, finally managed to get the fan blades clear..
Aaaaand the computer was dead.
Nothing, not even a led lighting up.
Started troubleshooting, checked power-button, cable from it, psu extension.. found nothing.
removed the motherboard and used another psu just to check if it was something to do with the mobo or case.
Still dead.
Whatever I did it was dead.

I gave up at 2:30 pm..
When I woke up I went to the store here in Sweden and bought a Asus Strix B360i (yeah, I know, b360 is worse than z370, but there aren't any 370's left in the stores, only 390s and they are way too expensive).
Also registered the msi-board to rma it to MSI since they have very generous warranties.

Anyway, got home, assembled it all, it was even tighter due to the bigass preinstalled io-shield.
Got it together finally, fired up Time spy, when I came back and looked at the logs the temps of the gpu and cpu went above 90 degrees..
Wth?

I removed the motherboard again.
It turned out to be the heatsink for the m.2-drive that was in the way for the cpu-cooler, god damnit!
Anyway, did another attempt, same thing.. (only cpu though), removed the screws for the heatsink and re-applied the cooler, now it looked more right!
Assembled the computer for 5th time today... fire it up and now it looks ok.

Although, the sensors on this mobo doesn't work well with timespy, it said the gpu went above 90, which it didn't confirmed it live with msi afterburner and hwinfo afterwards... really weird.



Anyway, its now running and working, can't say I noticed much of temp-improvements tbh but I will try some gaming now.

First impressions was lower temps but not sure that was correct.

I should have just left it as it was before all this.. haha

The case fans definetly help. For the CPU you can 3D print a fan duct to add on top of the CPU fan. The file for it can be found on dan cases website.
As for the blackridge don't bother with the 92mm fan config. not big improvement. but 120mm fan means you need very low profile ram.

Yeah, a friend of mine is going to print a air-duct in a few weeks.

 

[Tashi]

Oh, that's very sad. I once experienced a similar problem on a friends computer. But it worked fine after I completely disassembled it and reassembled it again. Not sure what caused the problem and what solved it though.

 

[Cel]

I can't seem to get this working as I want.
The cpu idles at 47-48, but when it's stress-tested it reaches 92-ish.
Alot more than before.
Doesn't seem like I can get the cooler to get a proper contact.

 

[SilverJS]

This is not uncommon with the L9i on Asus boards. Josh from NFC Systems (S4M) has some videos on this, it's a well documented (potential) issue. There's only ONE way the L9i can go on those boards, as one side of the fins have a small offset to allow for M.2 heatsinks. (And I think that's the word you were looking for, right? 'Heatsink'?)

I don't think I ever saw my 8400 go above 80 in my S4M with an L9i. It's likely still not sitting properly.

BTW - I also have a B360-I and I just removed the I/O shield altogether. Two small screws on the underside of the motherboard. I couldn't fit my NH-L12S otherwise. BTW, the 360-I does have some advantages over the Z370-I : BT 5.0, faster Wi-Fi, and native USB 3.1 Gen 2.