3950x Dan a4

DrLeroy

Noob Saibot
Original poster
May 15, 2020
186
117
Hi Guys,
The second one from me, Recently upgraded my main system from a ryzen 7 1700 to a 3950x in my Dan A4 and have been browsing this forum for a long time, figure about time i started posting.
this one is my daily system, I use it for a mix of work and play, though work recently gave me a new workstation laptop so less work now (which is a shame as that was why i updated CPU!)
I have had my Dan Case for a while now, its the v4, I have always been into SFF systems, back before ITX was a thing i ran with the old shuttle X systems, and before that my old At and XT systems were also as small as possible, using custom power supplies and custom cut down cases. the Dan A4 appealed to me as it was the smallest case i could get that would fit full size gpu's and at the time of purchase, i had a rather large Galax 1080, which i was amazed could fit.

around a year later now after moving from an Evolv shift (not the smallest around, but still a small desk footprint)into the A4 and I've now upgraded to a 1080ti blower card as my 1080 was running hot in the A4, and have gone from the 1700 on a B350 board to x570 and the 3950x (was for many VM's use, though with new work laptop may not be needed)

Hopefully, I can get a FormD T1 in the near future though, as the 3950x is running pretty warm even in ECO mode with my c7g with noctua fan.
I had to mod the C7G to fit with the Strix X570-i but trimming around 4mm off the bottom of the fins up against the VRM side, I did this using a hand file and vice, and it took forever!

The Specs:
CPU: 3950x - Eco Mode
MB: Asus X570-I Strix
RAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 2600mhz CL16 running @ 3200MHZ CL16 2x16gb (I had two kits, a CL16 and a CL14 kit, this CL16 one has always just been more reliable for me)
GPU: Asus 1080ti Turbo
SSD: Boot - Samsung 960-Evo 500GB NVME (front m.2), Storage - Adata XPG S8200 2TB NVME (rear M.2)
PSU: Corsair SF600 Gold
Cooling: CPU - Cryorig C7g + Noctua NF-a9 Chromax, intake - Noctual NF-A9 Chromax, Rear NVME - Noctual A4x10 PWM (not too effective but drops rear NVME temps 5 or so deg)

a few pics of my build as it is now, it needs some cleaning, i should have done a better job on this when i swapped out some parts. and sorry i dont have any decent 'complete' photos at the moment.




I was really pleased when the C7G came with clips to hold a standard 92mm fan, the original C7 coolers didn't come with this, and i was ready and prepped to 3d print an adaptor but didn't need to, nice surprise!



This shot is from my B350 board, i forgot to take one of the rear on the x570, but it shows that I've used the backplate from an EK NVME heatsink as the 'front' heatsink for my rear NVME, it helped drop temps dramatically, especially in combination with the 40mm fan, overall 10+ deg cooler with this alloy plate + fan, alloy plate no fan was around 5 deg drop still.


So the little 40mm noctua just friction fits up in the top rear corner of the case blowing air down the back of the motherboard, surprisingly its very quiet even at 4000rpm, unfortunately its control is limited with the AIO output being used on the X570, i had assumed all 3 headers were full PWM fan control, but i was wrong, so it runs at a constant RPM most of the time, i haven't not been able to tweak the curve well for it in the AI Suite.
 
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Reactions: collegebum89

collegebum89

Chassis Packer
May 5, 2020
16
1
Thanks for sharing! I recently got a A4 and excited to build in it (case comes in on Monday). I got the V3 though since it's impossible to find a reasonably priced V4 or V4.1.

How are your temps for air-cooling a 3950x in Dan A4? Props to you for even managing to air cool such a hot CPU in such a small case.

I'll have a 3800x and 2080 Super the A4 once the case arrives. I have a L9a cooler, but also have a 645LT on the way (no idea when that'll be delivered). Question for you (and maybe everyone else) is whether I can properly cool the 3800x using just the L9a or whether I'd need to use the 645LT. Builds like yours are encouraging to see as it demonstrates that water cooling might not be an absolute necessity for SFF builds with a high-end CPU.
 

DrLeroy

Noob Saibot
Original poster
May 15, 2020
186
117
Thanks for sharing! I recently got a A4 and excited to build in it (case comes in on Monday). I got the V3 though since it's impossible to find a reasonably priced V4 or V4.1.

How are your temps for air-cooling a 3950x in Dan A4? Props to you for even managing to air cool such a hot CPU in such a small case.

I'll have a 3800x and 2080 Super the A4 once the case arrives. I have a L9a cooler, but also have a 645LT on the way (no idea when that'll be delivered). Question for you (and maybe everyone else) is whether I can properly cool the 3800x using just the L9a or whether I'd need to use the 645LT. Builds like yours are encouraging to see as it demonstrates that water cooling might not be an absolute necessity for SFF builds with a high-end CPU.

with the CPU in eco mode, which limits it to 65W, it idles (like now while i am just watching youtube and typing on a forum) at 18w and 47deg ambient of 20deg (Celcius) which in my opinion if still too high, but its a temporary solution till i can get a T1. in games It runs around 65-75deg again in eco mode still though.
I would not recommend 3950x with my cooler solution as a final setup though as under a cpu-z cpu load test for 30mins it will get into the high 80's, for a 3800x a c7g would probably be fine though.
 

DrLeroy

Noob Saibot
Original poster
May 15, 2020
186
117
with the CPU in eco mode, which limits it to 65W, it idles (like now while i am just watching youtube and typing on a forum) at 18w and 47deg ambient of 20deg (Celcius) which in my opinion if still too high, but its a temporary solution till i can get a T1. in games It runs around 65-75deg again in eco mode still though.
I would not recommend 3950x with my cooler solution as a final setup though as under a cpu-z cpu load test for 30mins it will get into the high 80's, for a 3800x a c7g would probably be fine though.
forgot to mention, I ran the L9a on my 1700 for around 18months with zero issues, in the Dan a4, gaming and VM loads still never saw it above 75deg for me, a 3800x may still run a tad hotter though, but unless you stress all 8 cores to 100% for extended periods of time it should be fine.
Chel Ali's (optimum tech) vid on the 3950x low profile cooler sanity check, should give you a better idea
 

collegebum89

Chassis Packer
May 5, 2020
16
1
forgot to mention, I ran the L9a on my 1700 for around 18months with zero issues, in the Dan a4, gaming and VM loads still never saw it above 75deg for me, a 3800x may still run a tad hotter though, but unless you stress all 8 cores to 100% for extended periods of time it should be fine.
Chel Ali's (optimum tech) vid on the 3950x low profile cooler sanity check, should give you a better idea

Thanks! Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic about the 3800x and air-cooling with the L9a, but have the Asetek 645LT AIO on order just in case.
Your temps aren't as bad as I was expecting for a 3950x and a small air cooler. Have you considered getting an 645LT AIO for the DAN case? There's a bunch of videos online of people cooling the 3900x in the DAN case, but I'd admit that they all mentioned that the cooling (even with an AIO) wasn't optimal.
 

DrLeroy

Noob Saibot
Original poster
May 15, 2020
186
117
Thanks! Yeah, I'm pretty optimistic about the 3800x and air-cooling with the L9a, but have the Asetek 645LT AIO on order just in case.
Your temps aren't as bad as I was expecting for a 3950x and a small air cooler. Have you considered getting an 645LT AIO for the DAN case? There's a bunch of videos online of people cooling the 3900x in the DAN case, but I'd admit that they all mentioned that the cooling (even with an AIO) wasn't optimal.

I am planning to move to the FormD T1 if i can get one, but given the first batch is going to long time SFFNetwork members i think i may have to wait a while for general availability, till then i am happy to stick with my C7G setup and Eco mode. no plans to change the setup within the A4 till then, ill move my R7 home server into the a4 once i do that.