Stalled [Pictures of Prototype] Densium APU, 3L, HDPLEX 250, 47mm cooler, Hardwood frontpanel

Overtek

Airflow Optimizer
OVERTEK
Gold Supporter
May 22, 2017
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490
www.overtek.co.uk
I just wanted to pop in to say be careful with the length of screws you choose for mounting the HDPlex.

I had the HDPlex side mounted in an HT5 (which has approximately 5mm thick side plate) using m2.5x10 screws. The screws made contact with the back of the HDPlex PCB and caused a short killing the PSU. I did that twice before I figured out what was happening.

After speak to Larry he strongly recommended not bedding the screws more than 2-3mm. I haven't put my calipers to the Densium mounting plate yet, but just eyeballing it says nothing more than m2.5x5 should be used.

Don't be like me, don't have £270 of dead PSUs sitting next to you.
Damn, sorry to hear that. Hope he makes a future product revision to reduce that risk
 

Puffy23

Minimal Tinkerer
New User
Dec 26, 2023
4
5
Damn, sorry to hear that. Hope he makes a future product revision to reduce that risk
As another update: I've just recieved another GaN 250W for a new build I'm working on and confirm that the PCB either has a backplate or screw-stop are in place as you can now visibly see silver aluminium at the bottom of each of the mounting holes.


 

Puffy23

Minimal Tinkerer
New User
Dec 26, 2023
4
5
As another update: I've just recieved another GaN 250W for a new build I'm working on and confirm that the PCB either has a backplate or screw-stop are in place as you can now visibly see silver aluminium at the bottom of each of the mounting holes.


Make sure to scroll the image above. I should have seperated the links to make it clear but I'm an idiot and didn't do that. You can easily see the difference in the two images now.

Hoping to grab a 8700G tomorrow if they go on sale, looking forward to posting some images of the build. The Densium APU case is pretty awesome.
 

gensa

Minimal Tinkerer
New User
May 12, 2023
4
5
Speaking of the HDPlex GaN, I was in a hurry the other day when I was going to install my brand new and long awaited minisforum AR900i motherboard when, as the man that I am didn't read the manual and therefor connected the red socket on the HDPlex to the CPU socket on the motherboard effectively frying not only the motherboard but also the HDPlex 😱😭
So take this as a cautious warning when you install the HDPlex.
 

jcsato

Cable Smoosher
Jun 20, 2023
8
12
January was a disaster of a month, so I only just now got around to posting pictures. Sorry for the delay.

Threw together an imgur album with some additional comments here: https://imgur.com/gallery/Ko0xxqd

(Not sure if there's anything special I have to do to embed like the above posters - first time using imgur, if you can believe that.)

@Puffy23 Yikes! Thanks for mentioning - I've included that detail in the album comments. Glad to see newer units seem to have a prevention in place, sorry that happened to you. 😞

I've confirmed my system POSTed ok and everything. The build's only got an i3 and I haven't put any "real" loads on it, but it was pretty nifty to turn it on and be unable to hear anything. That passive PSU is already paying off. 😁
 
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Overtek

Airflow Optimizer
OVERTEK
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May 22, 2017
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www.overtek.co.uk
I'd seen some strange things going on with HDPLex 250W GAN mountings.. I looked at this previously and worked out that there appeared to be a dual positional 3 hold alignment.

With a little time free approaching, decided to pull in a HDPlex to physically see myself what was going on with all the odd fittings seen.

It turns out it does indeed fit and has a dual position option. One side blocks the bottom power switch but that does leave the bottom of the other side free if people wish to play about mounting their own 2.5" drives , in fact there's probably enough width space to squeeze in a 3.5".

Anyway here it is, by no means feel bad if you didn't figure this out the first time round.

 

nezbrun

Case Bender
New User
May 17, 2023
2
1
@dovestyle There is a Reddit post under r/sffpc the poster got lucky to acquire early batch of Densium APU. The images there showed various installation angles including how to mount the HDPlex 250W PSU. I am not going to link here but you can search for the following key words.

4L Densium APU, Ryzen 9 7950X email machine

Happy building!
Hello, that was me!


I meant to post details on the build on this forum at the time but had trouble getting signing up here at the time.

This has been my daily driver software development machine since May 2023 and the TL;DR: this is that this is a sweet, sweet build.

It's for software development, I needed multiple displays but no particular need for a discrete GPU (or so I thought - see iGPU woes later).

My choice of AMD over Intel is easy: Intel's strategy for asymmetric performance & efficiency cores messes with VMWare Workstation, plus current Intel thermals and lack of efficiency under heavy workloads just aren't competitive to AMD in SFF.

The only AM5 ITX mobo with triple display capability that I could find was the ASUS X670E-I. You must run the 7950X in 105W eco-mode if you want to avoid thermal throttling, or indeed the HDPLEX PSU shutting down the machine! Even at 105W eco-mode, the CPU consistently chews up 145W under AIDA-64.

[As it happens, the 7950X CPU and X670E-I mobo were hand-me-downs from my Meshlicious gaming rig build, which was "upgraded" to a 7950X3D and B650E-I to tame the RTX 4090 inside].

Regarding those iGPU woes: unfortunately, the AMD display driver for the iGPU randomly timed out and resetting itself, usually with OS UI graphical or video intensive tasks, in particular Youtube videos and VMWare Horizon (a VDI client). I could alleviate the Youtube video timeouts to some degree by turning off hardware acceleration on Chrome, but that had other negative side effects. No amount of driver updates or other tweaking had any effect. Happening about once each day, it was just about bearable, but there had to be a better way.

More recently I tried a handful of low profile single slot discrete GPU solutions including the 30W Nvidia T400 4GB and 50W T1000 8GB. Both of these have worked flawlessly (as long as you have 105W eco-mode turned on).

It's quiet under normal operation, but it gets noisy when I start shredding the code. Just the way I like it, that's the sign to go make a coffee.

To squeeze the fan & cooler in, I had to replace the mobo standoffs with a few washers. The fan intake is flush with the case, and aside from the fan's aperture, I have masked all the ventilation holes on that facia, thus minimising recirculation of hot air. In situ, I have the case on its side, with 4 x 1cm rubber feet on the side with the PSU. Thus, hot air comes in from one side, and egresses from the other 5 sides.

These were the benchmarks I took without the discrete GPU...

Single/Multi (105W eco mode, PBO -15 curve all core).

CPUZ 2.04 : 786.3/15255.1

Geekbench 5 2164 / 23244

Passmark 4396 / 64313

Cinebench R15 316 / 5854

Cinebench R23 2045 / 35003

If I did this again, I'd look at the Minisforum BD790i with the 7945HX 16C 32T CPU, or, now I know the 7000 iGPU driver is flaky AF, use a 7950X on a B650E-I ITX mobo plus a T400, T600 or T1000 discrete GPU, as I wouldn't need the display capabilities of the mobo.

In conclusion this has proved to be a great machine to use for my daily driver, I'm super satisfied.
 
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nezbrun

Case Bender
New User
May 17, 2023
2
1
Hello, that was me!


I meant to post details on the build on this forum at the time but had trouble getting signing up here at the time.

This has been my daily driver software development machine since May 2023 and the TL;DR: this is that this is a sweet, sweet build.

It's for software development, I needed multiple displays but no particular need for a discrete GPU (or so I thought - see iGPU woes later).

My choice of AMD over Intel is easy: Intel's strategy for asymmetric performance & efficiency cores messes with VMWare Workstation, plus current Intel thermals and lack of efficiency under heavy workloads just aren't competitive to AMD in SFF.

The only AM5 ITX mobo with triple display capability that I could find was the ASUS X670E-I. You must run the 7950X in 105W eco-mode if you want to avoid thermal throttling, or indeed the HDPLEX PSU shutting down the machine! Even at 105W eco-mode, the CPU consistently chews up 145W under AIDA-64.

[As it happens, the 7950X CPU and X670E-I mobo were hand-me-downs from my Meshlicious gaming rig build, which was "upgraded" to a 7950X3D and B650E-I to tame the RTX 4090 inside].

Regarding those iGPU woes: unfortunately, the AMD display driver for the iGPU randomly timed out and resetting itself, usually with OS UI graphical or video intensive tasks, in particular Youtube videos and VMWare Horizon (a VDI client). I could alleviate the Youtube video timeouts to some degree by turning off hardware acceleration on Chrome, but that had other negative side effects. No amount of driver updates or other tweaking had any effect. Happening about once each day, it was just about bearable, but there had to be a better way.

More recently I tried a handful of low profile single slot discrete GPU solutions including the 30W Nvidia T400 4GB and 50W T1000 8GB. Both of these have worked flawlessly (as long as you have 105W eco-mode turned on).

It's quiet under normal operation, but it gets noisy when I start shredding the code. Just the way I like it, that's the sign to go make a coffee.

To squeeze the fan & cooler in, I had to replace the mobo standoffs with a few washers. The fan intake is flush with the case, and aside from the fan's aperture, I have masked all the ventilation holes on that facia, thus minimising recirculation of hot air. In situ, I have the case on its side, with 4 x 1cm rubber feet on the side with the PSU. Thus, hot air comes in from one side, and egresses from the other 5 sides.

These were the benchmarks I took without the discrete GPU...

Single/Multi (105W eco mode, PBO -15 curve all core).

CPUZ 2.04 : 786.3/15255.1

Geekbench 5 2164 / 23244

Passmark 4396 / 64313

Cinebench R15 316 / 5854

Cinebench R23 2045 / 35003

If I did this again, I'd look at the Minisforum BD790i with the 7945HX 16C 32T CPU, or, now I know the 7000 iGPU driver is flaky AF, use a 7950X on a B650E-I ITX mobo plus a T400, T600 or T1000 discrete GPU, as I wouldn't need the display capabilities of the mobo.

In conclusion this has proved to be a great machine to use for my daily driver, I'm super satisfied.
Sorry, this is the current spec, I couldn't immediately figure out how to edit posts:
  • Densium APU 4.05L case (mobo standoffs reduced by a couple of mm so cooling solution would fit)
  • Ryzen 9 7950X (run in 105W eco mode)
  • Nvidia T1000 8GB
  • Asus X670E-I mobo (originally chosen as it's the only AM5 ITX mobo to support three iGPU displays I think: now no need with a dGPU installed)
  • 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance Black, PC5-51200 (6400), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 32 running at 6000MHz, removed heat spreader to fit under cooler.
  • IDCooling IS-55 with Phanteks T30 120mm fan (Advanced mode)
  • HDPLEX 250W GAN passive PSU