is there any specific way to limit wattage to a specific number? like "this cpu is limited to only 200 watts". "I've only seen videos that show "-0.070 V", and I've never undervolted a cpu before so this is something very unfamiliar to me.
Thats an entirely (huge) topic for itself. I'd suggest searching for "power limiting intel" or "power limit 13700k" on youtube for more insights, because this also varies somewhat depending on your mainboard, UEFI bios version etc. By default, a lot of mainboards have no limits set, which is actually against the Intel standards, but a lot of manufactures dont seem to care (apparently its some marketing BS trick, which would explain the braindeadness of this approach).
^
If I get the lian li a4-h20, I would likely water cool the 13700k with an ek nucleus 240mm, as I've seen a video where it does exceptionally well in terms of cooling and noise, while being a great lesser priced option. do you have any thoughts on this?
on the other hand, if I get the meshroom S, which can fit a 280mm aio, I feel like the arctic liquid freezer 2 should be the best option, unless you have any others in mind?
The LF II 280 does fit in the Meshlicious / Meshroom S, but you need to be seriously "bendy" (there are a few posts on r/sffpc that show it installed); its mostly because the tubes can be pretty tough to bend and route. Also might not be able to use the 4-slot GPU mode, because the CPU block + tubes are so tall.
What I can recommend, because I've been running this setup for about 4 months, is using the Be Quiet Silent Loop 2 280.
That system was so rock-solid, the SL 2 didnt even bat an eye even at all-core full load (ie. 230ish W).
The only thing I'd do different would be the tube routing, I'd route one of them underneath the mainboard tray (which can be completely removed if required). One would need to take apart half of the case for this, which I didnt do, because I didnt know about it. But it certainly would have made things soooo much easier if I had known that is what everybody meant with "routing the tubes underneath the mainboard tray".
another question, do you think it would be worth switching out the AIO stock fans for something more high-end, such as noctua fans or bequiet fans?
Sure, they can make quite the difference. a lot of sff folks eg. building with the A4-H2O replace their various AIO stock fans with
Phanteks T30, which not only are sitting at 30 mm thickness, and ramp up to 3000 rpm, but also are - at least from what I read and heard - much better to fine-tune, esp. in low RPMs.
Reviews include
TechPowerUp and
STS (a youtube channel notorious for their fan reviews).
The budget-friendly option would be the
Arctic P12 Max, which I've used before in my SAMA IM01 (clone) vertical tower build.
It ramps up to 3300 rpm, but is regularly sized, ie. 25 mm thick. And it costs just about 8 Euro per unit.
At 60% that thing can haul some serious amount of air (I've installed it outside the case, and noise levels can get pretty high in open space, so I limited it to 60%). I'm planning to use 2 of them with my future system, on the Silverstone Vida 240
Of corpse, Noctua and Be Quiet are playing in the same league, too. Mostly depends on your goals, preferences and also budget.
last question: in pcpartpicker, with the 13700k, an rtx 3070, 32gb ram, 2tb ssd, it shows that my estimated wattage would be 557W. Would it be too close of a margin if I used an SFX PSU of 600W that is gold rated? or should I go with something higher like a 750W?
thank you for reading!
PCPartPicker only shows you the (minimum and) maximum load, they dont - and also cannot - calculate the mixed load. But in gaming, it'd be normally something like 60 - 70 W for the CPU, and up 80 - 90% for the GPU, plus whatever the rest of the systems adds, but I guess it should stay below 400 W. So you should be all good with a 600W PSU.
Full CPU and GPU load is next to never happening expect in synthetic benchmarks. But also, the gold rating only says something about the efficiency, but not how much the PSU is actually able to handle with sudden spikes. Common values I know of for better PSUs are approx 115 - 120%, so in the case of a good (!) 600 W PSU, this would be 690 - 720 W. But you'd have to look it up specifically for your PSU (tests and reviews should show the real numbers, data sheets only can tell you so much).
cu, w0lf.
