Absolute best possible thermals for the cpu

[Kineticman]

Hello everyone.

With so many expert builders here I was hoping for some suggestions with how to move forward.

I currently have this configuration:
I7 7700k
Asus Z270i
32 GB Corsair LPX
Silverstone 700 watt SFX-L psu
GTX 1080 ti founders edition.

Current cpu cooler is NH-L12.

There are three Gamerstorm 120 fans in the case. Two on the side mount and one under the gpu intake. All fans are blowing air into the case.

I have mildly undervolted the Cpu to 1.15 volts with a small overclock of 4.6 Ghz (300 mhz AVX offset). The cpu is NOT delidded

Thermals right now are like this:
Idle temperature: 41-46 (it keeps jumping because it's not delidded)
Temperature under gaming load: 79° max.

With an aggressive fan curve I was able to get 71° on the cpu last night But I have to put headphones on to achieve this. Those Gamerstorm 120 fans are loud (not annoying like a whoosh sound, but three of them can be loud.

My question is can I get a better temp or higher overclock on the CPU by moving to a new cpu cooler?
Currently I own LP53, Cryorig C9 (both underpowered compared to the Noctua) and a Cryorig C1 (I'm not sure if it fits in the case).

I am willing to get a new cooler In fact I am going to get one. But I thought it would be a good idea to ask the community instead of going for a trial and error method (and burning money in the process).

Many thanks to everyone for their support

 

[Necere]

My question is can I get a better temp or higher overclock on the CPU by moving to a new cpu cooler?
Currently I own LP53, Cryorig C9 (both underpowered compared to the Noctua) and a Cryorig C1 (I'm not sure if it fits in the case).

Sure. Generally speaking bigger is better when it comes to coolers, and none of those really take advantage of the space available in the M1. Look at the Noctua NH-U9S, Scythe Kabuto 3, Dark Rock TF (though beware motherboard incompatibility), or a 240mm AIO.

 

[teamet]

Or get the delid done.

What about close loop water loop water cooling, is there a reason no-one is doing this for the M1?

 

[Kineticman]

M

Sure. Generally speaking bigger is better when it comes to coolers, and none of those really take advantage of the space available in the M1. Look at the Noctua NH-U9S, Scythe Kabuto 3, Dark Rock TF (though beware motherboard incompatibility), or a 240mm AIO.

Man! It's an honor to hear from you. I own The M1, the A4 and the Sentry. And I can tell you from first hand building experience with all three cases, you have absolutely nailed the concept of SFF enclosure in terms of space efficiency and overclocking performance. It was an absolute pleasure building in the M1. AND it was the first PC I ever built.
Thanks for your reply regarding the cpu coolers. I'll look into it.

Since you obviously have tested many cpu cooler, do you know if the Cryorig C1 will fit in the case? I mean I have the cooler at hand, but I'd rather not go through the entire process if it won't fit

Once again, congratulations on your amazing accomplishment with this case. I will you the absolute best and hope to see more contribution to the SFF community.

 

[Kineticman]

Or get the delid done.

What about close loop water loop water cooling, is there a reason no-one is doing this for the M1?

Yeah got the delid kit and some liquid ultra Just didn't get a chance to go through with it.
Also, I'm not delidding right now because I'm trying to figure out normalized performance of the cpu cooler Once I find the absolute best cooler then I delid and see how much I can get out of that CPU.
I don't like CLC's just a personal preference.

 

[rfarmer]

M

Man! It's an honor to hear from you. I own The M1, the A4 and the Sentry. And I can tell you from first hand building experience with all three cases, you have absolutely nailed the concept of SFF enclosure in terms of space efficiency and overclocking performance. It was an absolute pleasure building in the M1. AND it was the first PC I ever built.
Thanks for your reply regarding the cpu coolers. I'll look into it.

Since you obviously have tested many cpu cooler, do you know if the Cryorig C1 will fit in the case? I mean I have the cooler at hand, but I'd rather not go through the entire process if it won't fit

Once again, congratulations on your amazing accomplishment with this case. I will you the absolute best and hope to see more contribution to the SFF community.

The C1 fits with room to spare, you could even mount a 120mm fan on the bracket in front of it.

 

[Kineticman]

Okay I got the C1 to fit, but I had to just through hoops to do it. I had to remove the plastic frame from the cooler to make it fit (the heat pipes are aligned horizontally starting from right terminating to the left.

Then mounting included fan was another issue.
The slim 140 mm fan is just weird. It is actually larger than the heatsink and I couldn't align the mounting screws so I tied the fan down with two cable ties on two of the corners till I find a better solution ...
My temps improved by around 10°. So I increased the clock speed. Right now I have a 4.7 Ghz overclock with 1.240 V.
My room temperature is 27° C.
Idle temperature is hovering around 40-42 degrees and peak temperature while gaming is maxing out at 70°.
I also ran prime95 sff test and max temperature reached was 88°

 

[Kineticman]

T

The C1 fits with room to spare, you could even mount a 120mm fan on the bracket in front of it.

That's not the fan I got with my C1. I think he replaced the cooler with a 120 mm fan to make it fit.

 

[tinyitx]

Okay I got the C1 to fit, but I had to just through hoops to do it. I had to remove the plastic frame from the cooler to make it fit (the heat pipes are aligned horizontally starting from right terminating to the left.

Yes, this is the better orientation of the C1. If the C1 is installed as in the pic shown above (ie with the end of the heatpipes pointing down), then gravity will come into effect and will likely reduce the cooling capacity by about 30%.

 

[Necere]

M

Man! It's an honor to hear from you. I own The M1, the A4 and the Sentry. And I can tell you from first hand building experience with all three cases, you have absolutely nailed the concept of SFF enclosure in terms of space efficiency and overclocking performance. It was an absolute pleasure building in the M1. AND it was the first PC I ever built.
Thanks for your reply regarding the cpu coolers. I'll look into it.

Since you obviously have tested many cpu cooler, do you know if the Cryorig C1 will fit in the case? I mean I have the cooler at hand, but I'd rather not go through the entire process if it won't fit

Once again, congratulations on your amazing accomplishment with this case. I will you the absolute best and hope to see more contribution to the SFF community.

Hey, glad you like it, and thanks for the kind words.

I actually haven't tested many CPU coolers at all - I'm more into designing, and I'm happy to leave the testing to the professionals.

Looks like you got the C1 to fit, more or less, so if that works for you then great. It can be tricky with some of the larger coolers, since the CPU socket positioned on the motherboard a few mm one way or another can make or break compatibility, particularly in the M1 where there's not a lot of wiggle room.

 

[tinyitx]

I actually haven't tested many CPU coolers at all - I'm more into designing, and I'm happy to leave the testing to the professionals.

When you did the M1 designing, did you design the case ventilation for a down blowing CPU HSF + reference blower GPU? Of course, I do not mean the M1 is not good for a tower type CPU cooler + non reference cooling GPU. I am just curious what your design concept was.

 

[Necere]

When you did the M1 designing, did you design the case ventilation for a down blowing CPU HSF + reference blower GPU? Of course, I do not mean the M1 is not good for a tower type CPU cooler + non reference cooling GPU. I am just curious what your design concept was.

The development process for the M1 is all detailed on the hardforum thread, if you're curious. But basically, we were just tossing around various ideas for different layouts, and in the course of brainstorming, I came up with the idea to put the 240 rad on the side. The rest of the design kind of flowed from that, and it became about how to make best use of the available space to support a variety of different configurations. If you go back to that thread, you'll see I tested three main configurations: a 120mm AIO and reference GPU as a kind of basic build; a "big air" build with an NH-C14 and Accelero on the GPU (which has proven quite popular); and a full custom water loop build. Flexibility was the main thing I tried to focus on, though it's true that the case ironically doesn't lend itself that well to open cooler-type GPUs.

 

[Kineticman]

When you did the M1 designing, did you design the case ventilation for a down blowing CPU HSF + reference blower GPU? Of course, I do not mean the M1 is not good for a tower type CPU cooler + non reference cooling GPU. I am just curious what your design concept was.

NO SFF case I have worked on works well with non reference coolers. Not just the M1. It's the same with the A4 and the Sentry. If you don't use a blower style cooler, cpu temperature will take a hit cooling which is more challenging than the gpu. When I was getting the 1080ti founders edition it's reviews weren't very good in terms of noise. But still went for it because of the SFF build I was going for. I think this is an important decision particularly if anyone plans to use a high TDP GPU like a VEGA 64 or GTX 1080 TI.

 

[tinyitx]

When I was getting the 1080ti founders edition it's reviews weren't very good in terms of noise. But still went for it because of the SFF build I was going for.

Do you have a build log of your system that I can read?

 

[Kineticman]

He

Do you have a build log of your system that I can read?

Hey,

No I don't really have any build log. I mentioned the parts list on my first post. I didn't have any major problems with the build. The M1 is surprisingly easy to build in.

Like I said, the only challenge is to cool that cpu while having a decent overclock.

When I first built it I used a sff peltier cooler from Phononic called HEX 2.0. But that didn't cut it.

I have been testing several coolers since. As I mentioned, I have the LP53 (don't know why people are having problems with availability I just ordered mine from Amazon) and the Cryorig C7. Both these coolers failed with all cores overclocked to 4.6 Ghz.

The Noctua NH-L12 was stable at 4.6 Ghz and with the Cryorig C1 I am able to get 4.7 Ghz at 1.225V

I have a few other coolers on the way The Noctua NH-C14S and the bequiet dark rock TF. I'll post those numbers and any installation challenges once I get my hands on them.

Also, only challenge I faced with the build was tucking and bending the psu cables as they come out of the PSU. I used a SFX-L unit and it was difficult to route them because they were getting crushed by the backplate of the GPU.
If you don't need high watts a better alternative would be a 650 watt SFX psu for the build.

Apart from that it's smooth sailing.

 

[Kineticman]

Do you have a build log of your system that I can read?

If you have any specific questions regarding building in the M1 please don't hesitate to ask I'll do my best to answer

 

[tinyitx]

If you have any specific questions regarding building in the M1 please don't hesitate to ask I'll do my best to answer

Actually, my main interest at the moment is how a non reference blowing GPU affect the temp of a CPU which is cooled by a Noctua NH-D9L (or NH-U9S). But as you are using a reference design GPU, I cannot ask you about this.

But, I am also curious about your experience with cooling the CPU with a Noctua NH-C14S. Will wait for your report.

 

[MultiDoc]

Actually, my main interest at the moment is how a non reference blowing GPU affect the temp of a CPU which is cooled by a Noctua NH-D9L (or NH-U9S). But as you are using a reference design GPU, I cannot ask you about this.

I can tell you that since I am using exactly the configuration you're interested in (Noctua-D9L & Asus 1080Ti), when I had the stock cooler on the GPU, my CPU temps were reaching throttling numbers, but ever since I removed it and installed 2x120mm exhaust fans for the GPU all is well, lower temps even in benching

 

[Damascus]

When I first built it I used a sff peltier cooler from Phononic called HEX 2.0. But that didn't cut it.

So the Hex isn't great? That's a bummer, I was hoping to throw one on my 6950x

 

[Kineticman]

So the Hex isn't great? That's a bummer, I was hoping to throw one on my 6950x

Idle temperature was better than the NH-L12 But under load it performed worse. The HEX works a bit differently compared to the other coolers as in four of it's heatpipes removes the heat from the heat pump and not from the cold plate. I think it gets overwhelmed by the amount of heat dumped under load and those four heatpipes aren't enough. I was able to overclock the 7700k to 4.5 Ghz though so it's not that bad.