I have finally ditched the Cougar QBX due to dust, sound and thermal issue. I will miss the case as for me it's very smartly packaged, only wishing all of my issue can be addressed someday.
Anyway, I bought Fractal Design Define Nano S, a case which a year ago was missing from the market due to government clamp down on unregistered import agents.
Basically the Nano S addressed all of my issue with the QBX with the cons of growing in size exponentially.
Here's my component list:
So my requirement is a case that provides dust filtering, sound dampening and good thermal performance and this case except for thermal is amazing.
Great dust filtering and sound dampening
Just geat. The main dust filter has this low angle inlet. Is it functional? It's not going to have any directional for the fans since the exhaust dictates more than the intake. My only thought about this angled inlet is to deflect bigger size particulates. The front cover has great distance so the fan breathes freely, with that moduvent cover, the fans doesn't choke and the fan noise is dampened effectively.
For sound dampening, I recorded 31 dB of noise with a simple dB meter app on my phone. With the same measurement on my Cougar QBX, it's a drop from 35 dB. I noticed more of the vibration (HDD?) rather than fan noise. To manage sound level furthermore, I basically turn down the fan curve of the bottom intake and rear intake to 10% (the fans spins at 600 ish RPM) which is dead silent.
Great thermal but not optimized for rear mounted M.2 SSD
I'm slightly letdown by the overall thermal performance of the case. The case has the usual main chamber and cable/storage chamber at the back. The main chamber is standard tower chamber, means abundant of space for airflow and support for whatever heatsink fan and water cooling both AIO and custom solution. The rear is a bit disappointing but I don't see anyway out of this. Most cases has large rear cutout for custom cooling plate mount or now, M.2 SSD mounting point. This case covers the AB350 Gaming M.2 mount, trapping heat from the hot NVME M.2 SSD. I use 2 layers of thermal pad to transfer heat to the case directly, which works okay on idle but on load, the M.2 reached 80 degrees C easily.
Cable management is quite easy and love the case support for full size PSU. I have to crisscross the 24 pin cable since the cable neck on my RM650x is very thick. Custom sleeved cable will help on that, but what can't custom sleeved cable help? I bet it can help relationship with my ex works.
For airflow, I use Noctua NF-A14 on the bottom intake and Coolermaster 120 Lite on the top intake. I have this assumption that a 240/280 mm radiator will blow warm air into the GPU directly. So I use a single rad on top so the GPU can get as cool air as possible from the intake. The temps on main components are lovely. The processor temp max out at around 70 degrees C on my QBX with Noctua NH-D9L, now I maxed out around 50 degrees C. The Coolermaster was supposed to be a stopgap since it's the only AIO flexible enough to fit inside the QBX. Turns out it works great on the Nano S as well.
Love the case. Wished it's slightly narrower, but with that 120 mm exhaust, I don't think it's possible unless they went with 80 mm exhaust... But then, some uses that exhaust for rad mount as well.
Anyway, I bought Fractal Design Define Nano S, a case which a year ago was missing from the market due to government clamp down on unregistered import agents.
Basically the Nano S addressed all of my issue with the QBX with the cons of growing in size exponentially.
Here's my component list:
- Ryzen 7 1700X
- Asrock AB350 ITX Gaming
- GeForce 1080Ti FE
- Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2132 LPX RGB
- Corsair RM650x
- Coolermaster 120 Lite
- Corsair LL120 + Link
- Noctua NF-A14
- 1x Corsair Force MP500 256GB
- 1x Toshiba HDD 7200 RPM 2TB
- 2x Samsung SSD 480GB
So my requirement is a case that provides dust filtering, sound dampening and good thermal performance and this case except for thermal is amazing.
Great dust filtering and sound dampening
Just geat. The main dust filter has this low angle inlet. Is it functional? It's not going to have any directional for the fans since the exhaust dictates more than the intake. My only thought about this angled inlet is to deflect bigger size particulates. The front cover has great distance so the fan breathes freely, with that moduvent cover, the fans doesn't choke and the fan noise is dampened effectively.
For sound dampening, I recorded 31 dB of noise with a simple dB meter app on my phone. With the same measurement on my Cougar QBX, it's a drop from 35 dB. I noticed more of the vibration (HDD?) rather than fan noise. To manage sound level furthermore, I basically turn down the fan curve of the bottom intake and rear intake to 10% (the fans spins at 600 ish RPM) which is dead silent.
Great thermal but not optimized for rear mounted M.2 SSD
I'm slightly letdown by the overall thermal performance of the case. The case has the usual main chamber and cable/storage chamber at the back. The main chamber is standard tower chamber, means abundant of space for airflow and support for whatever heatsink fan and water cooling both AIO and custom solution. The rear is a bit disappointing but I don't see anyway out of this. Most cases has large rear cutout for custom cooling plate mount or now, M.2 SSD mounting point. This case covers the AB350 Gaming M.2 mount, trapping heat from the hot NVME M.2 SSD. I use 2 layers of thermal pad to transfer heat to the case directly, which works okay on idle but on load, the M.2 reached 80 degrees C easily.
Cable management is quite easy and love the case support for full size PSU. I have to crisscross the 24 pin cable since the cable neck on my RM650x is very thick. Custom sleeved cable will help on that, but what can't custom sleeved cable help? I bet it can help relationship with my ex works.
For airflow, I use Noctua NF-A14 on the bottom intake and Coolermaster 120 Lite on the top intake. I have this assumption that a 240/280 mm radiator will blow warm air into the GPU directly. So I use a single rad on top so the GPU can get as cool air as possible from the intake. The temps on main components are lovely. The processor temp max out at around 70 degrees C on my QBX with Noctua NH-D9L, now I maxed out around 50 degrees C. The Coolermaster was supposed to be a stopgap since it's the only AIO flexible enough to fit inside the QBX. Turns out it works great on the Nano S as well.
Love the case. Wished it's slightly narrower, but with that 120 mm exhaust, I don't think it's possible unless they went with 80 mm exhaust... But then, some uses that exhaust for rad mount as well.
