Elite 110 Thermal Images: i5 7600k, GTX 1060, HDPLEX power

[Tr15]

Hi SFF Forum!

I've been following this forum for a few months, as I've been looking for a new case, but that's for much later in this story!

My build has been a work in progress for a long time, and has changed a lot since it was first powered on, but right now I'm sporting:

i5 7600k cooled by a Corsair H75 AIO
ASUS GTX 1060 6Gb
8Gb RAM
Asus H170i Motherboard
HDPlex 160W DC-DC Power (with Dell 330W brick)
all in a Cooler Master Elite 110 case


There is a lot that I would do differently now, but this PC started out as a super budget build...

I got into SFF a few years ago with the purchase of an Intel NUC. It was quiet, tiny and a perfect linux home theatre PC for me, but when I tried to install Windows I realised just how under-powered that little Celeron was! So I started planning a budget Windows home theater PC with some upgrade-ability.

This resulted in the purchase of the CM Elite 110 case, the H170 motherboard, a 4Gb stick of RAM, a Pentium G4560 and a cheap ATX psu for under $300. Honestly, it was great! It did everything I needed at the time... but then I got the upgrade bug... hence the new CPU, cooler, GPU, PSU, and more RAM.

The HDPLEX is an interesting addition to this case. Normally the majority of the freespace in the case would be taken by an ATX power supply making cable management horrible and airflow poor. The HDPLEX is the exact opposite story - so much space and such good thermals.

Now I think its time for a prettier case, I love the Skyreach 4 mini, but I'm not sure I can give up the 45 degree CPU temps at load from the AIO, so I'm leaning more towards a Dan Case? Open to suggestions!

 

[rpesit7]

Is the HDPlex 160W really enough for your system config?

 

[Tr15]

@rpesit7 good question as this worried me to start with too - since the HDPLEX 160W gets pretty hot at load!

I've measured the system's power from the wall with a Kill-A-Watt meter - at idle and just doing desktop tasks the system barely breaks 50W. Modern components are crazy efficient!

When playing games (for me GTA V or Project:Cars 2) I have managed to push the load up to 158W. Given that the HDPLEX is rated for 200W peaks I think this is fine. Bare in mind my CPU and GPU are running at stock speeds - I wouldn't want to overclock with this power solution.

 

[Tr15]

An update to the original post as I've upgraded my MB to an ASUS ROG Strix Z270I which now allows for some overclocking.

I am getting a very cool all-core 4.8GHz overclock on my i5, with single core at 5.1GHz. The new MB also allows for RGB!

Even more interesting to people here may be my thermal images. I borrowed a FLIROne from work for the weekend and put the PC through some benchmarks and stress tests to see how hot I could get it and where the hottest spots were.

The most worrying temps are actually on the MB heatsinks - sometimes over 80C (think of the poor M.2 drive under there!) Here are the pics:

 

[MoonSUA]

How is your system holding up today?

 

[Tr15]

How is your system holding up today?

It's going great! I have upgraded to 16Gb of RAM now and lowered the overclock slightly as it seemed unnecessary to push the CPU that hard all the time. It's now got a 4.8Ghz all core overclock and runs a bit cooler with no noticeable difference in performance.

 

[MoonSUA]

Sounds amazing, I was a bit scared in supporting my system. I am about to start my build, with a 6600k, Zotac GTX 1060, 16gb of RAM supporting an HDPLEX 160w + Dell 330w brick. After reading a few blogs it seems that some people are scared to push the system due to how high they perceive the wattage is at. After I found your post I feel more relieved of my purchase, so hopefully, everything goes smoothly this week, so I can test my own personal build.