Part One: Makerbeam proof of concept #2 – Vertical dual chamber build for NAS or home lab JBOD with space for SSD’s or HDD’s in lower chamber
I had looked at the Jonsbo N2 and N3 for possible use as home lab or NAS, but decided to build up a new Makerbeam proof of concept to see how I liked it. My GPU’s are either ITX length or max out at twin slot / 205mm length. The base of the motherboard section is a square with 200mm length beams with 10mm corner cubes, The height is 150mm beams again with 10mm corner cubes. This allows for CPU air coolers up to 135mm in height, 2 slot standard height GPU’s up to 210mm in length, 140mm front and 92mm rear chassis fans. I fitted the downdraft L9x65 CPU cooler with a height of 76mm using the A9x25 fan. I used a top mounted Arctic P14 fan also pushing air down into the motherboard components to hopefully complement the cooler’s downdraft airflow. Photo shows top mounted BQ! SW 4 -140mm fan. Fan was replaced with Arctic fan as BQ! fan was used in another build.
The lower chamber uses the same 150mm beams for height with a horizontally mounted SFX PSU and space for a variety of SSD’s or HDD’s and while building the unit I stumbled over the ICY DOCK 4 Bay 2.5 SAS/SATA SSD/HDD Tool Free Mobile Rack for 5.25" Bay | flexiDOCK MB024SP-B for US $35. This hopefully will provide me with the kind of silent, flexible additional data and media storage I was looking for.
The width of the chassis is an exact fit for the Aorus B550 motherboard and RTX A2000 GPU. The A2000 slots into the side rail firmly affixing it to the chassis. An additional corner cube provides additional GPU locking.
As I have such poor drill bits I looked for a different solution to mounting the SFX PSU rather than drilling out larger holes in Makerbeam brackets to allow the use of standard PSU attachment screws. My PSU included a SFX to ATX PSU adapter, and two of the lower mounting holes align with the slot in the beam allowing 2 screws into T-slot nuts to secure the bottom of the PSU. An additional beam was used that simply slots the bracket into the beam at top of the PSU. This is sturdy enough on my desk, but a more solid mounting at the top of the PSU would be required if the chassis were being transported or roughly handled. Vertical mounting of the PSU would allow for an additional 4 bay Flexidock connected via the bottom NVMe slot with a NVMe to SATA adapter.
Part Two: AMD Ryzen 3700X & Nvidia RTX A2000 low wattage draw build.
Decided to update my low-power build to an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X from a Ryzen 7 4750G Pro. As this PC will be running with a RTX A 2000 GPU full time, I wanted to avail myself of PCI gen 4 for the GPU and top NVMe drive along with 32MB of L3 cache vs PCI gen 3 and 16MB L3 on the 4750G. On first use I wondered if I had not applied the thermal paste correctly as the idle temperature was approximately 6C to 7C higher with the 5700X than with the 4750G along with corresponding higher CPU cooler fan speed. After further review of HWInfo, I determined the cause: The 4750G drew 6 to 7 watts at idle with the RTX A2000 GPU installed versus 30 watts at idle with the 5700X CPU. For info: The 5700G also idles at about the same low 6 to 7 watts with the GPU installed. The Ryzen 9 5950X idles at about 40 watts. Motherboard is the Aorus B550 ITX with 32GB 3200 Corsair LPX RAM.
I never concerned myself with idle temperatures until recently, but now have begun to as I am researching setting up a NAS or home lab where PC continuous power usage can become an issue.
For a CPU cooler I installed the Noctua L9x65 cooler with the thicker A9x25mm fan for near silent operation and no blocking of access to the upper NVMe drive slot as I have been swapping NVMe drives dual booting between Windows 11 and MX-Linux and wanting to use the upper NVMe slot for testing. System very quiet in operation.
For a higher wattage system with front to back airflow, I would front mount the Noctua D9L at 110mm height, or the 135mm tall Thermalright Silver Sould 135 CPU cooler and mount a Noctua A9x25 rear fan to maintain proper CPU temperature. Fan speed was set to auto regulate from CPU temperature sensor for testing.
For testing the sound level meter was 30 cm from the right front corner of the chassis and 19 cm in height.
Ryzen 7 5700X Aorus B550 ITX MB
RAM 32 GB Corsair LPX @3200
10 min CPU Z Stress Test & Unigine Valley @1080P Ultra
@25C
Case Maker Beam Proof of Concept #2
GPU RTX A2000
CPU Cooler Noctua L9x65
CPU Fan Noctua A9x25
Case Fan Arctic P14
Initial HWInfo & GPU-Z results:
Photos:
I had looked at the Jonsbo N2 and N3 for possible use as home lab or NAS, but decided to build up a new Makerbeam proof of concept to see how I liked it. My GPU’s are either ITX length or max out at twin slot / 205mm length. The base of the motherboard section is a square with 200mm length beams with 10mm corner cubes, The height is 150mm beams again with 10mm corner cubes. This allows for CPU air coolers up to 135mm in height, 2 slot standard height GPU’s up to 210mm in length, 140mm front and 92mm rear chassis fans. I fitted the downdraft L9x65 CPU cooler with a height of 76mm using the A9x25 fan. I used a top mounted Arctic P14 fan also pushing air down into the motherboard components to hopefully complement the cooler’s downdraft airflow. Photo shows top mounted BQ! SW 4 -140mm fan. Fan was replaced with Arctic fan as BQ! fan was used in another build.
The lower chamber uses the same 150mm beams for height with a horizontally mounted SFX PSU and space for a variety of SSD’s or HDD’s and while building the unit I stumbled over the ICY DOCK 4 Bay 2.5 SAS/SATA SSD/HDD Tool Free Mobile Rack for 5.25" Bay | flexiDOCK MB024SP-B for US $35. This hopefully will provide me with the kind of silent, flexible additional data and media storage I was looking for.
The width of the chassis is an exact fit for the Aorus B550 motherboard and RTX A2000 GPU. The A2000 slots into the side rail firmly affixing it to the chassis. An additional corner cube provides additional GPU locking.
As I have such poor drill bits I looked for a different solution to mounting the SFX PSU rather than drilling out larger holes in Makerbeam brackets to allow the use of standard PSU attachment screws. My PSU included a SFX to ATX PSU adapter, and two of the lower mounting holes align with the slot in the beam allowing 2 screws into T-slot nuts to secure the bottom of the PSU. An additional beam was used that simply slots the bracket into the beam at top of the PSU. This is sturdy enough on my desk, but a more solid mounting at the top of the PSU would be required if the chassis were being transported or roughly handled. Vertical mounting of the PSU would allow for an additional 4 bay Flexidock connected via the bottom NVMe slot with a NVMe to SATA adapter.
Part Two: AMD Ryzen 3700X & Nvidia RTX A2000 low wattage draw build.
Decided to update my low-power build to an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X from a Ryzen 7 4750G Pro. As this PC will be running with a RTX A 2000 GPU full time, I wanted to avail myself of PCI gen 4 for the GPU and top NVMe drive along with 32MB of L3 cache vs PCI gen 3 and 16MB L3 on the 4750G. On first use I wondered if I had not applied the thermal paste correctly as the idle temperature was approximately 6C to 7C higher with the 5700X than with the 4750G along with corresponding higher CPU cooler fan speed. After further review of HWInfo, I determined the cause: The 4750G drew 6 to 7 watts at idle with the RTX A2000 GPU installed versus 30 watts at idle with the 5700X CPU. For info: The 5700G also idles at about the same low 6 to 7 watts with the GPU installed. The Ryzen 9 5950X idles at about 40 watts. Motherboard is the Aorus B550 ITX with 32GB 3200 Corsair LPX RAM.
I never concerned myself with idle temperatures until recently, but now have begun to as I am researching setting up a NAS or home lab where PC continuous power usage can become an issue.
For a CPU cooler I installed the Noctua L9x65 cooler with the thicker A9x25mm fan for near silent operation and no blocking of access to the upper NVMe drive slot as I have been swapping NVMe drives dual booting between Windows 11 and MX-Linux and wanting to use the upper NVMe slot for testing. System very quiet in operation.
For a higher wattage system with front to back airflow, I would front mount the Noctua D9L at 110mm height, or the 135mm tall Thermalright Silver Sould 135 CPU cooler and mount a Noctua A9x25 rear fan to maintain proper CPU temperature. Fan speed was set to auto regulate from CPU temperature sensor for testing.
For testing the sound level meter was 30 cm from the right front corner of the chassis and 19 cm in height.
Ryzen 7 5700X Aorus B550 ITX MB
RAM 32 GB Corsair LPX @3200
10 min CPU Z Stress Test & Unigine Valley @1080P Ultra
@25C
Case Maker Beam Proof of Concept #2
GPU RTX A2000
CPU Cooler Noctua L9x65
CPU Fan Noctua A9x25
Case Fan Arctic P14
Initial HWInfo & GPU-Z results:
Temp | Temp TZ10 | 16.8 |
| Temp UADO | 16.8 |
| TMPIN0 | 42 |
| TMPIN1 | 41 |
CPU | TMPIN2 | 61 |
| TMPIN3 | 20 |
| TMPIN4 | 41 |
| TMPIN5 | 46 |
Fans | CPU Fan RPM | 1962 |
| Top Case Fan RPM | 1295 |
| Rear Case Fan RPM | N/A |
Temp | PKG Temp | 61 |
Power | Cores Max Watt | 77.82 |
NVMe | Top | 39 |
| Bottom | N/A |
Temp | GPU | 74 |
| Hotspot | 80.9 |
GPU Watt | GPU Watt | 69.8 |
GPU Fan | Fan RPM | 3828 |
| 30 CM dba | 40.9 |
Photos:
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