Log A hopefully quick passive Itx build (I5 10500/GTX 1660)

[dealda]

After having a bunch of different small builds (including with the Cooltek U2, M99, P-Atx V1, Sharkoon QB).
My current setup is a half broken xps15 with the compact Arous Gaming Box egpu. I decided to drop this setup since it has a bunch of issues.

So I decided to go fanless (mostly) for my next build.
The Hardware:

• CPU: Intel i5 10500 6/12 with 3,1ghz Baseclock I got it for a solid price (125€ shipped) It should be more than enough for me and a Intel platform has more options for passive coolers.
• Motherboard: AsRock H470M Itx/Ac It has good number of ports, BT, two m.2 slots and I got it for 105€ shipped.
• Ram: Some 16gb 2133 Kingston Kit for 50€
• GPU: MSI GTX 1660 Ventus Oc I have this card for over a year (160€ back then) it works and should have enough power for now. I am going to run it with a reduced powertarget (probably 75% maybe more) and some undervolting which hopefully combined with the new cooler should keep the 1660 cool enough.
• GPU Cooler: Raiintek Morpheus I have seen builds with it cooling 75W GPUs passively, which of course way less than the 1660s 130 Watt. Hopefully some undervolting/reduced Powertarget it will stay under 80°C. Otherwise I am going to use Liquid Metal. Got an EKL Peter for 25€ shipped
• CPU Cooler: Silentmaxx Big Block A big 1180g Passive cooler all the way from 2010. More than enough to cool a 65w Cpu. Got an Scythe Orochi for 35€
• Storage: Intel Optane H10 1tb/32gb Got it cheap (85€ Shipped) and I was curious if Optane is any good. And a second samsung m2 ssd 512gb I got for like 40€
• "Case": Streacom BC1 mini great design, has anything I need except unimportant things like front IO or a Power/Reset Buttton. Also its pretty well Ventilated. (85€ shipped)
• PSU: Fractal Design Ion 650w Sfx-L while it is not fanless its way cheaper (85€ shipped) than the only sfx passive psu or similar solutions. The specifications say that the fans won't turn on under a 300W load, which should mean they should never turn on in this system.

Gpu,Psu and Ram is already here and most of the other stuff should arrive in the next few days.

Edit 03/04/2021
ToDo list:

• order the Vga Cooler
• recieve all the parts
• assemble the build
• undervolt the gpu
• swap the stock vga cooler
• hope that the gpu does not overheat
• find a good solution for the power button
• secondary: get an infrared thermometer for some temperature readings
• secondary: either make shorter psu cables or get some shorter made to make it look a bit nicer

Greetings

 

[dealda]

The "case" arrived today.

I really like the concept and the build quality did not disappoint. The motherboard pins are nice, since you just push your board on it and they give you enough space to route my cables underneath.
Speaking of cables, I might actually get some shorter cables made or maybe just do it myself. But that is something I am going to figure out at the end of the build.

Something more important are the missing power/reset buttons. In found some which are nice an short but also kinda ugly. Additionally the front panel header is close to the gpu. So if anybody has some other idea it is much appreciated.

For now I mounted an old athlon 64 mobo with an old ati gpu on the "chassis" since I wanted to test the funtion of this hardware anyways.

The Cpu and the ssd should arrive tuesday/wendsday. Sadly I don't have a shipping confimation for the Cpu cooler and the Motherboard yet, which is annoying. And I have to order the Vga cooler.

Greetings

 

[Elaman]

The "case" arrived today.

I really like the concept and the build quality did not disappoint. The motherboard pins are nice, since you just push your board on it and they give you enough space to route my cables underneath.

Woah... is that like, how few liters?

And... do you play mono-black in Magic? ;P

 

[dealda]

Woah... is that like, how few liters?

Just the bench with an itx board is 230*190*105mm (w*d*h) so roughly 4,5l without considering heatsinks, gpu and ram.
Then again the silentmax ist rather big 210* 135*160mm (w*d*h) soooo roughly 4,5l. Sadly the seller of the cpu cooler has yet to send out the cooler...
I guess the total volume would be around 10L.

And... do you play mono-black in Magic? ;P

I play a lot of different stuff. During covid my number of edh/commander exploded quite a bit...

On a Sidenote, i scored some cool looking ram coolers from thermalright although I dont know if they fit under the cooler, nor are thy neccessary for this build.
I just think they look neat.
Also got a secondhand Morpheus in black for 50€ shipped
Hopefully I get to assemble most of the system tomorrow or thursday.

Greetings

 

[dealda]

Yesterday the Board arrived, so I could assemble my new pc.
Everything worked as expected and the PC booted without a hiccup. The h470 actually ran the ram at 2666 out of the box even though its just 2133 ram.
With the stock cooler the 10500 hit 78C under cinebench R20 without undervolting.
Sidenote: The Vrm heatsink of the asrock h470m itx has some sharp edges.

Oh, the blast from the past Thermalright ram cooler also arrived yesterday aaaaannnnnd they are too wide, You can't fit them in neighbouring ramslots. They are still cool though.

For the Gpu I did some testing with undervolting and my current results are: Gpu Clock: 1950mhz@900mv Memclock 4350mhz Power consumption between 80-85w (with occasional spieks to 90w) during Firestrike. This should allow to cool the Gpu with the Morpheus

Some Benchmarks:

Spoiler: Bench

With everything stock:

With Undervolting somehow firestrike has issues reading the Hardware here:

With Undervolting and Memory +350

Superposition results with uv and +350 mem

Next week the coolers should arrive and I need to find a solution for the power button.

greetings

 

[Raiju]

won't they fit if you rotate one?

 

[dealda]

Sadly no, they are simply too wide.

Spoiler

I also played some Control 1080p@high in which the gpu hits 92-94W

The coolers have not arrived yet.

Greetings

 

[Valantar]

The good thing is, those RAM coolers are utterly useless anyway - DDR4 just doesn't put out that much heat. RAM barely needs heatspreaders at all, and even if you're running something like B-die at 1.6V or more you're not likely to need more than some airflow across the standard metal heatspreaders.

 

[dealda]

The good thing is, those RAM coolers are utterly useless anyway - DDR4 just doesn't put out that much heat. RAM barely needs heatspreaders at all, and even if you're running something like B-die at 1.6V or more you're not likely to need more than some airflow across the standard metal heatspreaders.

Yeah, I pretty much just wanted them for looks, since I don't even bother overclocking the ram.

Spoiler: I mean..

 

[Valantar]

Yeah, I pretty much just wanted them for looks, since I don't even bother overclocking the ram.

Spoiler: I mean..

That is pretty gnarly-looking, yeah. Are those side-mounted heatpipes too thick to allow for any mounting in adjacent slots? Because if not, heatpipes bend easily, so you'd more than likely be able to just bend each fin stack to the side to make them not interfere with each other. Soldered-on heatpipes and shrouds surrounding them is another matter though - that'd probably require power tools to mod

 

[dealda]

Sadly the heatpipes are on both sides and take up 4mm which makes them roughly 13mm wide.

Spoiler: see here

So for now at least I'll just stick with the stock heatspreaders and maybe get something like this later on.
There are also slimmer versins of the Thermalright coolers which might fit.

 

[dealda]

Soo
there were some delays and stuff. Long story short instead of the silentmaxx Big block I got a Scythe Orochi, which is a bit smaller 120*139*194mm (W*H*D), but still is pretty damn big.
The Vga Cooler is now an Ekl peter whichshould arrive later this day.

So look at the size of this lad compared to the testbench:

A few fins are bent and it was a bit dusty but aside from that it looks fine.

The mounting itself was pretty straightforward. Did I mention the cooler is big?

It also clears the vrm cooler.

Here are the cpu temps with a powertarget of 75W in the bios applied after an hour of p95 smallest FFTs

Sadly I can't get an cpu undervolt to apply on the Bios, no matter which value I choose (neither plus or minus) it does not show an effect in hwinfo or the temps.

Hopefully later I get the Gpu ready.

greetings

 

[dealda]

Soo, the new vga cooler arrived yesterday and its (unsuprisingly Big. Overall a great deal for 25 bucks.

Its has more surface area with actual fins and 6 heatpipes instead of one. And yes I uesd some wire to hold the vrm cooler in place.

Sadly, the heatpipes in the normal orientation were colliding with the capacitors, so instead I mounted it in reverse (which was only possible because I run this system on a bench)

This was mainly to take a look at the temperatures.

So the next part is pretty graphic.

Spoiler: triggerwarning: irresponsible handling of heatpipes

Basically I more or less carefully bent the whole finstack to get is a bit higher in order to clear the caps.
This was the "Rig".

not idea could be worse

Now it clears

After some quick thermal tests I realized that the previous uv profile 1950@950mv was running too hot, so I am currently testing 1770@850mv which equals roughly 75 watts. Currentlythe card reaches equilibrium at around 80-83°C (tested with looping uniengine heaven. However thisis without having added the vram coolers, adding thermalpads at the backside.
I also decided to get some liquid metal on the Gpu to get some thermal headroom for the summer.

Spoiler: Bechmarks

I also oredered this "frontpanel" since using a scredriver/knife/key/ or coin to start the pc gets annoying.

I really dig this build.

Its kinda stupid, but its my kinda stupid.

Greetings

 

[Elaman]

It's abstract art, not everybody understands it.

When reading "passive" it didn't really struck me that the cooling would break up with the original size and weight so radically.
I wonder what about next steps?
How does one go about cleaning up /dusting off something like this? (asking for a friend)