Log Phat Aircooling Sunmilo C01s Build Log

nero626

Average Stuffer
Original poster
Dec 8, 2016
60
216
Earlier last year AMD and Nvidia had my jaw dropped with the new 5000 series ryzen and 3000 series RTX, I knew it was time to upgrade, but my old build had a full custom loop, I didn't really want to maintain a loop again, pump was screaming at certain RPM, the blocks started discolorating, who knows what kind of deposit is in the rads, I've decided to go back to aircooling and start from scratch


As much as I like sandwich layout, imo it's only ideal with watercooling, low profile CPU coolers don't pair well with high power 8+ core CPUs, especially since I'm very sensitive to noise

I've noticed more and more people deshrouding their GPUs and getting near watercooling performance, at the same time I also luckily scored a 5800x and an ASUS dual 3070, which turned out to be one of the best card for deshrouding as the heatsink is as clean as it gets, no weird tabs and screws sticking out:

(pic cred u/DK426)

So I began searching for the smallest case that would fit this 3070 as well as a CPU cooler w/ 120mm fan, after being off the grid for 3 years I had to catch up with all the new SFF cases and news - it was amazing to see how much this community has grown, mainstream case makers seem be churning out decent and affordable SFF options now; I finally landed on a Sunmilo C01s:

This case ticked all the right boxes for me:
1. supports cpu cooler with full 120mm fans (Thermalright Silver Arrow 130)
2. fits my ASUS Dual 3070
3. tempered glass
4. decent airflow path, gpu gets fresh air from the bottom, cpu from the back and exhausts out the top
5. asap (as small as possible)

And somehow one was available on hardware swap canada? And the seller lives < 50km from me? So I had to pick it up.

And holy is this thing short, width and length is kinda similar to my old case but without the top and bottom rads that's probably where the extra 4-5L went


didn't take too many pics in the beginning.. sorry


First surprise.. this case doesn't officially work with deshrouded gpu, at least not with 25mm fans.. luckily I was able to just lift the bottom panel by 8mm with some stand offs, this doesn't look too bad but I'll get back to this later

GPU power cables were also sticking out like sore thumbs (literally), and I couldn't close the side panel at all, so I ordered some 180 deg adapter, custom cables, while I was at it I also ordered a silver arrow 130 off aliexpress.. and the seller never shipped the cooler and I was refunded after 45 days.. sadge

Second surprise, I was wondering why my gpu temps were terribad when gaming even with the fans at 1400rpm, like 95c throttling bad??
so I took the panel out and I was greeted with this

There was probably some ultra weird turbulance going on that was causing the air to basically recirculate around the hub, either the hole pattern sunmilo decided to put was just too small or poorly designed, or that there was some weird dynamics happening with the hole design and the fans, either way I gave up trying to figure out what it was and just cut out a massive hole on the bottom (that took a while), that brought it back down to 65c @ 1200rpm running cyberpunk.. phew

With the 180 deg adapter I can finally close the side panel
still waiting for the CPU cooler... sold out everywhere...

Surprisingly the rgb stealth cooler I had laying around isn't actually too bad albeit a bit noisy

At this point the build was at a state that I was 70% happy and so I started looking at mods to spice it up

So I was like, hmm the cables are kinda ugly, what if I cover it up with something... hmm maybe a screen??

Yess that's it, look ma no cables


nvm there's still cable outside.. I'll deal with that next time


Now this is pretty much where my build is as of now (Apr 01, 2021), I have a bunch of mods lined up so stayed tuned!

1. the legendary silver arrow 130, finally got my hands on one..



2. cleaned up bottom plate,
3. bottom spacer tray with moar RGB (white ring layer to hide the lifted 8mm spacer)
4. sicc 3d printed legs
5. better screen mounting
6. smoked side panel with better GPU exhaust, saw a 5c difference with and without the side panel on, even though it's getting fresh air the exhaust flow is probably still lacking




feet pic

That's it for now~
 
Last edited:

nero626

Average Stuffer
Original poster
Dec 8, 2016
60
216

got my parts from shapeway!!


swapped out the cooler, it's insanely quiet, but 5800x is such a hot chip.. literally doesn't matter what fan speed I set it at and if the cooler is cool to the touch, with single core boost it will still hit 85+, it averages on 45 and gaming at 60 @1000rpm though, also got a slim noctua at the top to help with exhaust

installed the screen properly with the 3d printed mount

corsair commander pro is the most anti SFF component, why is it so damn big?

just need the laser cut parts next and I should be done for now..
 

BaK

King of Cable Management
Bronze Supporter
May 17, 2016
930
931
Nice mods! :thumb:

I still wonder how the screen is held in place only with this T piece of plastic?

And how is the screen powered and connected?
 
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nero626

Average Stuffer
Original poster
Dec 8, 2016
60
216
Nice mods! :thumb:

I still wonder how the screen is held in place only with this T piece of plastic?

And how is the screen powered and connected?
Thanks~

The screen is taped to the T plastic with some 3m removable double sided tape and the plastic is screwed onto an existing 2.5" drive mount on my case


The screen is powered by the internal usb hub through the corsair commander pro, so it technically draws power through the SATA connector, and the HDMI signal is routed through a slim cable to the back of the case

What is the screen actually?
Seconding this question, that screen looks really nice!
It's a tablet 7.9" 1536x2048 screen made by SHARP (lq079l1sx01), it's made for the ipad mini retina (I think? or maybe some clone of it), not sure if I can post aliexpress links here but if you search [1536*2048 7.9 inch ips] it should show up, you can get a full kit (screen + controller) for around $60, it's IPS and the color is very good, the only problem is that the brightness fixed and it's quite bright at 400 nits, it's alright with my tinted glass and you can kinda fix it with nvidia control panel brightness adjustments, but it's miles better than most RPI displays I see a lot of people use in terms of both color and resolution

EDIT:
To add on, because the screen is so high res it's quite usable as a secondary monitor for things like spotify or even discord, while I think having hardware monitoring is cool, I stopped looking at temps and clockspeeds after the first week of building this PC LOL, it's quite nice to have non important windows on this screen

or some karaoke while you work from home
 
Last edited:

Valantar

Shrink Ray Wielder
Jan 20, 2018
2,201
2,225
Thanks~

The screen is taped to the T plastic with some 3m removable double sided tape and the plastic is screwed onto an existing 2.5" drive mount on my case


The screen is powered by the internal usb hub through the corsair commander pro, so it technically draws power through the SATA connector, and the HDMI signal is routed through a slim cable to the back of the case



It's a tablet 7.9" 1536x2048 screen made by SHARP (lq079l1sx01), it's made for the ipad mini retina (I think? or maybe some clone of it), not sure if I can post aliexpress links here but if you search [1536*2048 7.9 inch ips] it should show up, you can get a full kit (screen + controller) for around $60, it's IPS and the color is very good, the only problem is that the brightness fixed and it's quite bright at 400 nits, it's alright with my tinted glass and you can kinda fix it with nvidia control panel brightness adjustments, but it's miles better than most RPI displays I see a lot of people use in terms of both color and resolution

EDIT:
To add on, because the screen is so high res it's quite usable as a secondary monitor for things like spotify or even discord, while I think having hardware monitoring is cool, I stopped looking at temps and clockspeeds after the first week of building this PC LOL, it's quite nice to have non important windows on this screen

or some karaoke while you work from home
Ah, so the controller doesn't have controls at all? I can definitely see how that might become an issue. Does it react to adjusting the brightness from the quick settings in the W10 notification tray (as a laptop would)?
 

nero626

Average Stuffer
Original poster
Dec 8, 2016
60
216
Ah, so the controller doesn't have controls at all? I can definitely see how that might become an issue. Does it react to adjusting the brightness from the quick settings in the W10 notification tray (as a laptop would)?
unfortunately this controller is very basic, though according to the datasheet you can add a resistor to some pads to adjust the brightness, so I guess if you added a potentiometer you can have hardware brightness control, and sadly it doesn't support display data channel either so no brightness control via software

also there are other displays with better controllers, some have touch support, buttons for brightness adjustments or even full OSD adjustments and things like multi input and audio outputs, but those are a bit more expensive, this is my first experience with these display controllers but I'll definitely try other ones out in the future, they are pretty fun to toy with and with a proper casing I can see this being a decent option for portable displays