Hi everyone, moving from my 2 yo laptop to Ncase M1 V6.1 here

Hi everyone, i've been reading this forum in order to find an SFF case with no limits, and here i met Ncase M1. So, after a few tries with no stock for shipping, I finally have my black Ncase??

I was thinking on wait for the new ryzen 4000 and graphics cards late this year to complete my build, but I'm looking for the best solutions to keep it cold and noiseless. What would you recommend?

 

[Reedith]

water cool and use Noctua fans and should be very quiet im gonna put in 2 rads and 4 fans with that much surface area fans should be able to spin quiet the pump is the gonna be the hardest part to find a quiet one that fits !

 

[kimaroth]

water cool and use Noctua fans and should be very quiet im gonna put in 2 rads and 4 fans with that much surface area fans should be able to spin quiet the pump is the gonna be the hardest part to find a quiet one that fits !

Thank you for your advise! I've seen the Alphacool Eisbaer LT in some videos, comparing temps and noise with the pump at maximum load and minimum. Conclusion was, pump full load only give 1 more degree, so you can have it at minimum rpm and it should be very quiet, but i'm going to search a little more.

 

[Revenant]

Welcome! I'm late to this party.

I waited 3 years to build my first NCASE M1 , with it sitting in my closet the whole time. Currently, I have a CCD MI-6 sitting on a bookshelf waiting for my next build.

NCASE M1 can be a bit tricky to keep quiet. The aluminum is classic Lian Li which means it's sensitive to vibration. It can hum if you're not careful. Additionally, they allow noise out 3 of the 4 sides, plus the top and bottom.

How much are willing to give up to make the system quiet? I used to be a member of Silent PC Review so I literally took a dremal to Lian Lis back in the early 2000s to add exhaust fans, and was part of the Antec P180 launch buyers. My current main rig is a Cerberus X with an NZXT X62 with Noctua Fans, all SSD, custom fan profiles, solid side panels, sound proofing foam, and a giant mistake in the form of a Founders Edition RTX 2080 that's obnoxiously loud. I'll be giving that to the wifey when the 3080 comes out.

Can you accept high temps? How flexable is your system placement? Does coil whine bother you?

A super quiet rig might consist of a Platinum Corsair SFX 600, Noctua C14, Noctua 92mm exhaust. The GPU would be a carefully selected 2.5 to 3 slot solution that doesn't even spin up till 50C. Use a balanced CPU option like an R5-3600. To top this, you would undervolt everything, and use custom fan control rather than the BIOS. Only SSDs. If you allow the system to run a bit warm, you could then have an essentially silent system at idle or light CPU load.

A more moderate solution might be a Thermalright Silver Arrow 130 combined with a the graphics card and PSU I mentioned, and tuned in the bios. Alternately, you could also try a 240mm RAD with Noctua A12s set for silent running.

 

[kimaroth]

Welcome! I'm late to this party.

I waited 3 years to build my first NCASE M1 , with it sitting in my closet the whole time. Currently, I have a CCD MI-6 sitting on a bookshelf waiting for my next build.

NCASE M1 can be a bit tricky to keep quiet. The aluminum is classic Lian Li which means it's sensitive to vibration. It can hum if you're not careful. Additionally, they allow noise out 3 of the 4 sides, plus the top and bottom.

How much are willing to give up to make the system quiet? I used to be a member of Silent PC Review so I literally took a dremal to Lian Lis back in the early 2000s to add exhaust fans, and was part of the Antec P180 launch buyers. My current main rig is a Cerberus X with an NZXT X62 with Noctua Fans, all SSD, custom fan profiles, solid side panels, sound proofing foam, and a giant mistake in the form of a Founders Edition RTX 2080 that's obnoxiously loud. I'll be giving that to the wifey when the 3080 comes out.

Can you accept high temps? How flexable is your system placement? Does coil whine bother you?

A super quiet rig might consist of a Platinum Corsair SFX 600, Noctua C14, Noctua 92mm exhaust. The GPU would be a carefully selected 2.5 to 3 slot solution that doesn't even spin up till 50C. Use a balanced CPU option like an R5-3600. To top this, you would undervolt everything, and use custom fan control rather than the BIOS. Only SSDs. If you allow the system to run a bit warm, you could then have an essentially silent system at idle or light CPU load.

A more moderate solution might be a Thermalright Silver Arrow 130 combined with a the graphics card and PSU I mentioned, and tuned in the bios. Alternately, you could also try a 240mm RAD with Noctua A12s set for silent running.

Thank you for your extended reply! So much info to process. I don't know if the V6.1 is too much quieter than the V2/V5, i hope so because it's more ventilated and it can help decrease temperatures a little.

I was already planning to use only SSD, and Platinum Corsair SFX 600 was also my choice since I read about it's the one not making coil whine and have better wires than the gold one. About the CPU, I'm waiting for september to see Ryzen 4000 and decide, but it will probably be a 4700X. Actually I have built several Ryzen 3000 computers and they are surprisingly cold. Only need to undervolt at 1.20V and OC frecuency manually as far as it can go (4,2GHz normally). If you let it at stock management of voltage and frecuency, they can be really hot in idle.

Noctua fans are a must, I don't know what to use watercooling or air cooling, but it will definitely have noctua fans.

About temps, I don't expect to have really low values but I hope to make it hit 75ºC at maximum playing, and as long as I've seen, that is a possible match. What do you think?

Sorry for my English, it's not my main language and I hope you can understand me ?

 

[paulesko]

Thank you for your extended reply! So much info to process. I don't know if the V6.1 is too much quieter than the V2/V5, i hope so because it's more ventilated and it can help decrease temperatures a little.

I was already planning to use only SSD, and Platinum Corsair SFX 600 was also my choice since I read about it's the one not making coil whine and have better wires than the gold one. About the CPU, I'm waiting for september to see Ryzen 4000 and decide, but it will probably be a 4700X. Actually I have built several Ryzen 3000 computers and they are surprisingly cold. Only need to undervolt at 1.20V and OC frecuency manually as far as it can go (4,2GHz normally). If you let it at stock management of voltage and frecuency, they can be really hot in idle.

Noctua fans are a must, I don't know what to use watercooling or air cooling, but it will definitely have noctua fans.

About temps, I don't expect to have really low values but I hope to make it hit 75ºC at maximum playing, and as long as I've seen, that is a possible match. What do you think?

Sorry for my English, it's not my main language and I hope you can understand me ?

Revenant´s post is quite spot on. I´m also a silence fan that has gone from a Antec p180 to a Ncase M1

There´s one thing you have to decide: do you favour silence or performance? If you prefer silence you should go air cooling, but if you want some more performance try water. In my experience with the Ncase M1, you can watercool it with either a dcc or a dc-lt. Either of them is going to be noisier than a noctua nf-a 12 at 650-700 rpm being the dcc pump noticeably noisier compared to the dc-lt (I compare de EK dcc 3.25 pump, but my guess is that are all the same more or less)

I have experience only with watercooling on this case, so ask wathever you want about that. To be honest I was expecting a bit less noise when working at idle, I have a dual rad setup with a ddc pump. and when the pump is at 1300 rpm (which is the minimum) it is clearly audible over the fans at 6xx rpm. But when rendering or playing games I bet it is more silent than an air configuration. When I play games the pump stays at 2100 rpm and the fans at 1100 temps stays at 62 (CPU) and 65 (GPU with a joint temp of 84) Numbers are aprox, because they fluctuate, as usual. My cpu is the 3950x with 1.25v and each ccx independently overclocked (4370-4175 mhz) and the gpu a 5700 xt overclocked (1.24v and maximum 2.000 mhz) consuming around 220-240 w.

If i max out both (CPU and GPU) fans ramp up to 1400 rpm pump to 3.200 rpm and cpu temp goes up to 74º or so and the GPU stays the same more or less.

With these temps you can have an idea of what to expect under water. With air it should be more silent at idle, and either more noisy under load, or less powerfull. This last statement is my guess but I don´t think I´m much wrong, lets see if someone with an aircooled ncase comes and say something about his temps.

 

[kimaroth]

Revenant´s post is quite spot on. I´m also a silence fan that has gone from a Antec p180 to a Ncase M1

There´s one thing you have to decide: do you favour silence or performance? If you prefer silence you should go air cooling, but if you want some more performance try water. In my experience with the Ncase M1, you can watercool it with either a dcc or a dc-lt. Either of them is going to be noisier than a noctua nf-a 12 at 650-700 rpm being the dcc pump noticeably noisier compared to the dc-lt (I compare de EK dcc 3.25 pump, but my guess is that are all the same more or less)

I have experience only with watercooling on this case, so ask wathever you want about that. To be honest I was expecting a bit less noise when working at idle, I have a dual rad setup with a ddc pump. and when the pump is at 1300 rpm (which is the minimum) it is clearly audible over the fans at 6xx rpm. But when rendering or playing games I bet it is more silent than an air configuration. When I play games the pump stays at 2100 rpm and the fans at 1100 temps stays at 62 (CPU) and 65 (GPU with a joint temp of 84) Numbers are aprox, because they fluctuate, as usual. My cpu is the 3950x with 1.25v and each ccx independently overclocked (4370-4175 mhz) and the gpu a 5700 xt overclocked (1.24v and maximum 2.000 mhz) consuming around 220-240 w.

If i max out both (CPU and GPU) fans ramp up to 1400 rpm pump to 3.200 rpm and cpu temp goes up to 74º or so and the GPU stays the same more or less.

With these temps you can have an idea of what to expect under water. With air it should be more silent at idle, and either more noisy under load, or less powerfull. This last statement is my guess but I don´t think I´m much wrong, lets see if someone with an aircooled ncase comes and say something about his temps.

Thank you Paulesko, your settings are impressive! About the watercooling pump, I saw this video (results about pump noise on min 8:30 or so):



According to this video, the proved pump at minimum RPM makes so little noise even when playing. And that's a pump for CPU + GPU, I am only interested in CPU for now. What do you think?

 

[paulesko]

Well I had the eisbaer LT solo which is the block + pump combo that he uses and it´s a very good performer. I could hear the pump at minimum rpm over the noctuas at minimum rpm while browsing or working on word or excel and things like that, but for gaming the pump has to ramp up with the fans acordingly, if not, the temps are not going to be good. is not a noisy pump anyway and it´s powerfull enough for cpu block, gpu block and one rad for sure. I used it briefly with my actual configuration but it was too much.

If you want to go the dc-lt (pump) way, I suggest you to look into alphacool web, because they have some impressive things with it. Not only the cpu+pump combo, but also gpublock + pump and if yoiu want there are tiny pump tops with reservoir like this one.

Alphacool Eisstation 40 DC-LT - reservoir

The Eisstation DC-LT Solo Top from the Enterprise Solutions series is an extremely compact pump top and is very powerful together with the DC-LT pump. It shows its strengths wherever space is at a premium or where a pump needs to be...

www.aquatuning.es

 

[kimaroth]

Well I had the eisbaer LT solo which is the block + pump combo that he uses and it´s a very good performer. I could hear the pump at minimum rpm over the noctuas at minimum rpm while browsing or working on word or excel and things like that, but for gaming the pump has to ramp up with the fans acordingly, if not, the temps are not going to be good. is not a noisy pump anyway and it´s powerfull enough for cpu block, gpu block and one rad for sure. I used it briefly with my actual configuration but it was too much.

If you want to go the dc-lt (pump) way, I suggest you to look into alphacool web, because they have some impressive things with it. Not only the cpu+pump combo, but also gpublock + pump and if yoiu want there are tiny pump tops with reservoir like this one.

Alphacool Eisstation 40 DC-LT - reservoir

The Eisstation DC-LT Solo Top from the Enterprise Solutions series is an extremely compact pump top and is very powerful together with the DC-LT pump. It shows its strengths wherever space is at a premium or where a pump needs to be...

www.aquatuning.es

Thank you for your advise, I really apreciate that.

What do you mean when you say "but it was too much?". I understand that any pump will be noisier than Noctua fans but what I want to know is if the noise is heavy or is it avoidable with any music or so.

I'm really planning on watercool only CPU by now, and maybe in future expand to GPU too, but I want something cheap and easy to mount. That's why I was looking for Alphacool Eisbaer LT 240, because it is modulable but it comes like an AIO kit but performing better with a less noisier pump as I've seen. I'm not planning on making a custom loop because that will cause trouble in such a tiny space and will be so much expensive.

So do you really think that what I am looking for is better than air cooling in this case? If watercooling pump is not too much noisy in idle and it performs better in load with less or so noise as a good air cooler I think I'm going that way.

 

[paulesko]

"But it was too much" what I mean is that two radiators, the cpu and gou block is too much for a single dc-lt and I almost always had to put it to work at high rpm on that scenario. It was not very well explained sorry.

I have to say that I havent tried aircooling in this case, so I´m not familiarised with high end cpu coolers like noctua c14. But from what I´ve seen, my guess is that the best combo would be a AIO for the cpu and a good heatsink for the GPU, or look after a GPU that comes with a good and silent heatsink. I say this because it´s going to be difficult to cool both things on this case without doing a custom loop for two reasons.

1 If you try to use a 25 mm radiator (the one on the LT240) on the bottom of the case is barely going to fit because it´s difficult for the fans to suck air... you really need the (thinner) xspc 20 mm rad there in my opinion. I know other people have used thicker radiators on the bottom of the case, but in my experience is not worth it, and it even hurts performance.

2 These expandable alphacool AIO has some quick connector that are a bit bulky, and since you are not going to cut any tubes is very unlikely that they "land" on a place that is good for your interest, so I don´t know if you are going to be force to end up opening up both AIO and redoing all the tubes.

And 3rd (just happened to think about this) If you plan to cool both CPU and GPU with just one radiator on the side of the case, temps are not going to be as good than using a GPU on air on the bottom and a AIO for the CPU.

Hope I have explained everything more or less fine, if you dont understand anything, no problem, just ask me, because like you, english is not my main language, and I use it very little so it´s not that good...