I've recently inducted a friend of mine into the SFF community (yay!) - he wanted to build his first gaming PC, and it didn't take much to convince him that an SFF system was what he wanted (he's an anthropologist, so he travels quite a lot, and having a carry-on compatible PC would be a boon when he's away for months doing field work). Also worth noting is just how easy it is to kit out a relatively budget-friendly SFF build these days - he wanted to stay below 10 000 Norwegian Kroner including a monitor, and with some decent new-years deals, the PC landed at ~8500 (including 25% VAT) with an RX 570, an R5 2600, 16GB of DDR4-2933 and a 512GB SSD, in a Node 202. Might have gone a bit overkill on the CPU cores, but it's built for longevity, only requiring a GPU swap in a few years and possibly some minor OC'ing to stay useful. For budget reasons we stuck with the stock cooler and the included Integra PSU for the time being (no OCing planned ATM).
Anyhow, yesterday we met up to build the PC, and mostly it was a breeze (had to RTFM to figure out the GPU mount) except for one thing: clearance issues with the CPU cooler on this motherboard, specifically the plastic nubbin with the AMD logo on it. Either it would collide with the VRM heatsink, or it would collide with the RAM (which is heatsinkless, standard-profile G.Skill Aegis or something). The RAM collision was close, but still significant enough that we couldn't get the cooler mounted properly. We had to remove the cooler shroud to make it fit. Not an issue, really, but it feels a bit janky. Still, it made me wonder: does AMD's own Stealth cooler actually extend outside of its keep-out zone around the CPU, or has MSI played a bit fast and loose with the specs here? I guess this wouldn't be an issue with the taller Spire cooler, but it was still a bit surprising. In the end I'm just glad we didn't have to ditch a RAM stick or order a new cooler, but it struck me as pretty weird. If anyone knows, is it possible to rotate the fan on the cooler in 90-degree increments? We didn't have anything to measure with on hand, and I didn't have the right screw driver to remove it without the risk of stripping the screws, but the mount looks square-ish. I don't think he cares at all (it's not visible, after all, and shouldn't have any effect on cooling), but it still nags me. Guess I'm a perfectionist.
Anyhow, yesterday we met up to build the PC, and mostly it was a breeze (had to RTFM to figure out the GPU mount) except for one thing: clearance issues with the CPU cooler on this motherboard, specifically the plastic nubbin with the AMD logo on it. Either it would collide with the VRM heatsink, or it would collide with the RAM (which is heatsinkless, standard-profile G.Skill Aegis or something). The RAM collision was close, but still significant enough that we couldn't get the cooler mounted properly. We had to remove the cooler shroud to make it fit. Not an issue, really, but it feels a bit janky. Still, it made me wonder: does AMD's own Stealth cooler actually extend outside of its keep-out zone around the CPU, or has MSI played a bit fast and loose with the specs here? I guess this wouldn't be an issue with the taller Spire cooler, but it was still a bit surprising. In the end I'm just glad we didn't have to ditch a RAM stick or order a new cooler, but it struck me as pretty weird. If anyone knows, is it possible to rotate the fan on the cooler in 90-degree increments? We didn't have anything to measure with on hand, and I didn't have the right screw driver to remove it without the risk of stripping the screws, but the mount looks square-ish. I don't think he cares at all (it's not visible, after all, and shouldn't have any effect on cooling), but it still nags me. Guess I'm a perfectionist.