Dan A4 - Expected Air Cooling Temperatures with i7, GTX 1070 and Alpenfohn Black Ridge Low Profile CPU Cooler with NF-A12x15 PWM Chromax Black Fan

[Ruxbin]

Hey all,

New Small Form Factor builder here. I posted this in reddit earlier but didn't really get much help at all. My issue is I think my DAN A4 is way too loud.

My specifications are as below,

- ASRock Z370M-ITX

- I7-8700 (65W TDP) (De-lided and replaced with Arctic Silver) (3-4C Difference)

- 2x16GB Ultra Low Profile Memory DDR4

- EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC GAMING ACX 3.0 (150W TDP)

- Alpenfohn Black Ridge Low Profile CPU Cooler with a 120mm NF-A12x15 mounted underneath the heatsink on intake pulling air into the case.

- Noctua NF-A9x14 PWM on the bottom of the case on intake pulling air into the case

- Former Alpenfohn on the bottom of the case on intake pulling air into the case

- Corsair SF Series Power Supply SF450 Platinum

My problem is that I'm nearly maxing out the cooling capacity of my entire setup and all of my fans are running at 100%. At the moment I have my desktop setup in my room but in the future I'd really like to have this in the family room without distracting my significant other, friends, family, etc. while playing games. What has surprised me during all of this is that the loudest component is the CPU. If I could snap my fingers and change anything this would never go above 1,200 RPMs. To be specific, right now I'm playing Escape from Tarkov

Is this not achievable with the Dan A4? If it is, what's wrong? Is it possible I have a defective temperature sensor, motherboard or heatsink? I've heard there are issues with Coffee Lake running hot but only thought is a newer CPU and Motherboard.

 

[Tashi]

There's a CPU power setting in the motherboard you can tune down. I forget what it's called exactly and idk if it applies to non k intel parts. But I saw @dondan recommending tuning it down in other threads.

 

[dondan]

https://dan-cases.com/dana4_faq.html --> How-to improve cooling performance

Setup a custom fan curve for all fans.
- Case fans could be very loud if they are setup as pull air in. This could be only solve by limit them to 30% fan speed in UEFI. I would remove them you do not really need them for your setup.
- Setup the CPU fan like this: -60°C = 30%, 60-85°C = 60% and 85°C+ = 100%

Please play some games and monitore the CPU temperature with CoreTemp and share the results.

If the CPU temp is above 85°C you could consider to limit the CPU to 65W - I know you have a 65W CPU but it will pull up to 120W because of the turbo mode.
Setup Long Duration Power Limit = 65W this should give a big temp drop. The performance lost is 2-5%. If you like to reduce the temps even more setup a offset voltage (undervolting) of -0,075V.

All of this should result in game temps for under 80°C on the CPU, while the cpu fan will be not above 1200rpm.

 

[Ruxbin]

Hey Dondan,

Thanks for the reply, does my motherboard not support this option? I don't see anything that stands out an option to reduce temperatures.

If I play a game like Escape from Tarkov, Squad or Battlefield 5 - I'm hitting just under 80C. I can't believe it's this difficult and I'm about to re-do my entire system and just get a new motherboard.

 

[dondan]

Page 46 in the manual: https://download.asrock.com/Manual/Z370M-ITXac.pdf Here you can limit "Long Duration Power Limit"