With the announcement of ASRock's x299 Mini-itx board, I decided if I could go small and powerful in my upgrade this year. My general goal was to have a reasonable video processing workstation in a form factor that can travel in a backpack. I have a few more things in mind for it, but I figured folks would like to see how an i9 fits into an Ncase and some very early and initial look at thermals, etc.
So, the parts list:
NCase M1 v5 case
Intel - Core i9-7920X 2.9GHz 12-Core Processor
ASRock - X299E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2066 Motherboard
Noctua - NH-U9S 46.4 CFM CPU Cooler
G.Skill - Ripjaws Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
Silverstone - 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply
EVGA - GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB
Noctua - NF-A12x15 FLX 55.4 CFM 120mm Fan
Noctua - NF-A9 PWM 46.4 CFM 92mm Fan
Samsung - 840 EVO 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
PC Parts Picker Link
The GPU and SSD drive I get to keep from the old build, but sadly nothing else could be reused.
Here is the motherboard and PSU fit. The 24 pin connector is so close - this would be potentially very slick with a super short custom cable. I'll have to make do with the ones that came with the PSU. Because of the NCase extension cable's orientation, I could not mount the PSU with the fan facing inward.
The Noctua U9S without fans. I mounted it with the heatsink closer to the rear of the case. The ASRock daughterboard that is towards the front of the case has SATA and USB 3 connectors that stick up, so mounting the heatsink this way made sense.
View from the top:
Here you can see clearance with RAM and fans installed. Both fans are set to send air left to right, out the rear of the case. The rear fan is raised slightly, and sits on top of the daughterboard there. But this still fits below the NCase fan bracket. Overall the heatsink seems to rise just above the little cage made by the daughterboards and the ram. Doesn't feel too stuffy in there.
I started some of the cabling before putting on the fans. This case and motherboard play well with each other. The PSU is a true SFX, not SFX-L. There is an 8 pin cable running up to the top of the case, along with the front panel light and power button headers. They seem to fit into a tiny space between the motherboard and the PSU bracket. I use the 24 pin cable to keep the vertical running cables contained.
There are 3 fan headers on the motherboard, perfect for the 3 fans I'm putting in this case. One header is on the top left, and the others are right under the SATA connectors. Those can be tricky to get to - for the 120mm front fan I ended up using the included extension cable just so I can have an easier time connecting and disconnecting the fan.
The biggest thing I was worried about was the USB 3 front header. It sticks straight up out of the daughterboard, and the cable and connector are very stiff. It ended up being mostly out of the way, but I'd love to find some sort of right angle or low profile connector. I will also be picking up some of Silverstone's low profile sata cables as there's really not a lot of room in there.
The GPU fit without any drama - it's a reference Titan X Maxwell from EVGA, blower style.
Here you can see the airflow orientation. The 120mm side fan draws cool air in, and the 92 mm cpu fans pass it over the heatsink and out the back of the case. In an ideal world, some carefully run custom PSU cables would really make this pretty, but as it stands there is plenty of room for the air to move.
You can see why the PSU won't fit the other direction - the angled extension plug was hitting the rear of the case. I could have crammed it in there if I really bent the cable, but it didn't feel comfortable. I think I'm happy having the power supply draw its own air from the other side of the case.
And here it is mostly back together!
I am not planning to do any overclocking. The cooler is rated for 140w TDP with no OC headroom, and I'm just fine with that. I'm already cramming 12 cores into a tiny case.
The CPU, GPU, memory, all benchmark to where they should, so I'm happy.
ASRock's fan curve utility actually works pretty well. I have not run a Prime95 or similar stress test, but I did put the computer decoding Red camera raw files for about 20 minutes with CPU showing 100% utilization. The fans went from silent to audible, but not maxed out, and the temperatures seemed to settle around 65 degrees Celsius with my fan curve. Lots more testing is needed but I feel somewhat safe that I'm clearing enough heat for a non overclocked build.
Next steps for this build will be adding some storage options, either through an SAS card, or building a mini 2.5 inch drive raid inside, or both. I really wish ASRock added thunderbolt to this machine. I would have easily taken less USB 3.0 headers, or less SATA in exchange for a TB3 slot. But for whatever even the big boards don't ship with an onboard thunderbolt connector, so it's not a surprising decision.
This was a blast to build and I'm really surprised at how much space there was in this little black box.
So, the parts list:
NCase M1 v5 case
Intel - Core i9-7920X 2.9GHz 12-Core Processor
ASRock - X299E-ITX/ac Mini ITX LGA2066 Motherboard
Noctua - NH-U9S 46.4 CFM CPU Cooler
G.Skill - Ripjaws Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4-2666 Memory
Silverstone - 650W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply
EVGA - GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB
Noctua - NF-A12x15 FLX 55.4 CFM 120mm Fan
Noctua - NF-A9 PWM 46.4 CFM 92mm Fan
Samsung - 840 EVO 1TB 2.5" Solid State Drive
PC Parts Picker Link
The GPU and SSD drive I get to keep from the old build, but sadly nothing else could be reused.
Here is the motherboard and PSU fit. The 24 pin connector is so close - this would be potentially very slick with a super short custom cable. I'll have to make do with the ones that came with the PSU. Because of the NCase extension cable's orientation, I could not mount the PSU with the fan facing inward.
The Noctua U9S without fans. I mounted it with the heatsink closer to the rear of the case. The ASRock daughterboard that is towards the front of the case has SATA and USB 3 connectors that stick up, so mounting the heatsink this way made sense.
View from the top:
Here you can see clearance with RAM and fans installed. Both fans are set to send air left to right, out the rear of the case. The rear fan is raised slightly, and sits on top of the daughterboard there. But this still fits below the NCase fan bracket. Overall the heatsink seems to rise just above the little cage made by the daughterboards and the ram. Doesn't feel too stuffy in there.
I started some of the cabling before putting on the fans. This case and motherboard play well with each other. The PSU is a true SFX, not SFX-L. There is an 8 pin cable running up to the top of the case, along with the front panel light and power button headers. They seem to fit into a tiny space between the motherboard and the PSU bracket. I use the 24 pin cable to keep the vertical running cables contained.
There are 3 fan headers on the motherboard, perfect for the 3 fans I'm putting in this case. One header is on the top left, and the others are right under the SATA connectors. Those can be tricky to get to - for the 120mm front fan I ended up using the included extension cable just so I can have an easier time connecting and disconnecting the fan.
The biggest thing I was worried about was the USB 3 front header. It sticks straight up out of the daughterboard, and the cable and connector are very stiff. It ended up being mostly out of the way, but I'd love to find some sort of right angle or low profile connector. I will also be picking up some of Silverstone's low profile sata cables as there's really not a lot of room in there.
The GPU fit without any drama - it's a reference Titan X Maxwell from EVGA, blower style.
Here you can see the airflow orientation. The 120mm side fan draws cool air in, and the 92 mm cpu fans pass it over the heatsink and out the back of the case. In an ideal world, some carefully run custom PSU cables would really make this pretty, but as it stands there is plenty of room for the air to move.
You can see why the PSU won't fit the other direction - the angled extension plug was hitting the rear of the case. I could have crammed it in there if I really bent the cable, but it didn't feel comfortable. I think I'm happy having the power supply draw its own air from the other side of the case.
And here it is mostly back together!
I am not planning to do any overclocking. The cooler is rated for 140w TDP with no OC headroom, and I'm just fine with that. I'm already cramming 12 cores into a tiny case.
The CPU, GPU, memory, all benchmark to where they should, so I'm happy.
ASRock's fan curve utility actually works pretty well. I have not run a Prime95 or similar stress test, but I did put the computer decoding Red camera raw files for about 20 minutes with CPU showing 100% utilization. The fans went from silent to audible, but not maxed out, and the temperatures seemed to settle around 65 degrees Celsius with my fan curve. Lots more testing is needed but I feel somewhat safe that I'm clearing enough heat for a non overclocked build.
Next steps for this build will be adding some storage options, either through an SAS card, or building a mini 2.5 inch drive raid inside, or both. I really wish ASRock added thunderbolt to this machine. I would have easily taken less USB 3.0 headers, or less SATA in exchange for a TB3 slot. But for whatever even the big boards don't ship with an onboard thunderbolt connector, so it's not a surprising decision.
This was a blast to build and I'm really surprised at how much space there was in this little black box.
