It's no secret from my previous posts that I am a big fan of low-noise air cooled system.
So for the past couple of days I put together a system using C-style large CPU coolers as the center pieces of this project.
This is meant to be tucked away under my diy-floating corner desk, but it doesn't mean it can't look nice! I'm wood a working hobbyist so I try to add a bit of wood element to my design.
The goal is to make it small enough to fit a full length RTX 2080 Ti. The overall volume is largely dependent on the fact that I want to use a 12"x24" aluminum vented sheet I can source from the local hardware store without having to cut anything. So that would default result in an 5.75"x12.5"X12" => 14L volume case. There's some way to reduce the volume a bit but I didn't think it was worth it if I need to cut the aluminum sheet and ruin the symmetrical borders in its stock form.
1. Using a Noctua C-14s on the RTX 2080 ti (I'm using liquid metal on this as well). I have both the c14s and the dark rock TF but I find the c-14s to work better on the RTX 2080 ti as the mounting holes line up well and the base is bigger to cover the entire rtx 2080 ti die. I played around with the TF a bit but couldn't get it to fit the way I wanted. The Noctua c-14s just works a lot better with original mounting hardware. C-style coolers works really well for GPU because it allows direct air to be blown into the PCB to cool VRMs and VRAMs! This was one of the few major issues with my previous experiment using tower-style coolers on GPU.
2. The i7-8086k is cooled by the Dark Rock Pro TF using just 1 fan to reduce the overall height. I find this enough to cool the CPU. My i7-8086K is delided with liquid metal replacement.
Update: Added some detailed GPU & C14s mounting pics. A lot of people seem to be interested in this:
And finally resting at it's final place, mounted hidden away beneath my desk operating silently : )
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Again, low noise is at most important to me so all the fans are running at max ~30% fan speed so roughly ~300-4000 RPM. The fans used are Noctua NF-14 (c-14s), Dark Rock 135mm (TF), and Dark Rock 120mm (extra fan on GPU VRMs). and the Noctua NF-A9 (PSU fan replacement). That is a total of just 4 high performance but quiet fans running at low speed.
I'm using 2x NVME m2 drives so you don't see any SSD or HDD here. Helps a lot with cable management.
Here are my temps after 30 mins of OverWatch:
Fan Speed: 30% Max on both CPU & GPU (~400 RPM)
GPU (Gigabyte RTX 2080 Ti OC) - Stock settings (~1.06v) - 63C full load.
- Under-volt (~.875v @ ~1905Mhz) - 52C full load.
CPU (I7-8086K - delided) - ~55C gaming load. Have no done any CPU stressed test.
I might do some overclocking on the CPU as well to see how well the TF handles the extra OC voltage with just 1 fan. I'll update the thread if I ever get around to that.
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