"Cast Iron Black" is the new stock color in the rotation. This black has a mild texture that combined with the color resemble a cast iron skillet. It is smooth to the touch and is based off of a durable mix.
S4 MINI Classic (S4M-C)
- Thread starter Josh | NFC
- Start date
Seems to be a video as well where he praises Josh's talents
Thanks to an awesome customer who let me borrow his Gigabyte WINDFORCE 960 I was able to test the system with a 65w CPU and the Pico 160XT KIT. Works great--it does ride toward the max "safe" end of the 160XT/adapter's ability, but it ran the system for over a week with no issues.
I don't know how many people are GPU shopping for a 960 but that is about the max the Pico handles without mods.
I don't know how many people are GPU shopping for a 960 but that is about the max the Pico handles without mods.
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Thanks to an awesome customer who let me borrow his Gigabyte WINDFORCE 960 I was able to test the system with a 65w CPU and the Pico 160XT KIT. Works great--it does ride toward the max "safe" end of the 160XT/adapter's ability, but it ran the system for over a week with no issues.
I don't know how many people are GPU shopping for a 960 but that is about the max the Pico handles without mods.
I'd probably be in the market for a modest upgrade to a 960 once prices dip a bit more from the Pascal release. I'm guessing you have done some regular gaming on the Gigabyte 960 when you have been testing it for a week? I have a GTX 950 with 6-pin PEG working succesfully from a HD-PLEX 160W power supply, after modifying one of the cables.
I consider it to be high-quality and robust like the Pico and given your experiments with pushing the Pico past its limits, I'm more confident on a 960 working with that PSU as well. I'm more concerned about the 200w power brick I have, though- that one runs hot during gaming sessions, I'm going in blind without a watt meter so I don't want to risk it going Crashy McSplodey on me until I can get a more powerful adapter.
Mini-Box sure sourced a BEEF power brick. Man I love that thing! I wish there was an equivalent in terms of "Built Ford Tough" for 19v. I've NEVER had a bad one. That doesn't mean someone won't get a bad one eventually, but dang, I've never had this much luck with a computer part in this quantity.
It doesn't turn off when it reaches over voltage, but pushes past by almost 10 watts and will shut off from heat. So many other bricks just say SCREW IT when reaching their listed max voltage and turn off. I really recommend it.
I made sure to play a couple hours of MWO as well as my normal stress tests, ran great all week! Just note that I was at the CAP. Don't go 5w over and expect the same results. 65w CPU and make sure its RUNNING at or below 65w (older chips target voltage doesn't do the cleanest job) and if you get a 960 variant that uses more juice...then what can I say.
PERSONALLY I would have sourced the Pegless EVGA 950...but it doesn't look like it is available in Murica yet.
*EDITED 960 to 950*
It doesn't turn off when it reaches over voltage, but pushes past by almost 10 watts and will shut off from heat. So many other bricks just say SCREW IT when reaching their listed max voltage and turn off. I really recommend it.
I made sure to play a couple hours of MWO as well as my normal stress tests, ran great all week! Just note that I was at the CAP. Don't go 5w over and expect the same results. 65w CPU and make sure its RUNNING at or below 65w (older chips target voltage doesn't do the cleanest job) and if you get a 960 variant that uses more juice...then what can I say.
PERSONALLY I would have sourced the Pegless EVGA 950...but it doesn't look like it is available in Murica yet.
*EDITED 960 to 950*
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Well, since I am not able to use 12V I'm just gonna sell my 150w power brick that's no longer being used and go for the Dell PA-9E 240w brick. I'm still aiming for 200w consumption just to have that extra head room. Shouldn't be too hard, as my CPU is only 35w, and I can replace the GPU with a cheap 960 in the future.
Wait..what? There is a GTX 960 with no additional PEG connector? Or do you mean the GTX 950?
I'm facing a conunudrum with my 90w GTX 950. I wish I can just trade it in for a new 75w 950 (and just pay like 20 bucks more) but that is not gonna be pretty straightforward without losing a lot of money on the sale in the current used market.
I've also even considered selling the 950 and just going back to a 750 Ti. I already once had the EVGA Superclocked edition for 2 years, really liked that little beast of a card.
So I'm still considering these options. An OC'd 750 Ti with modded BIOS still is a great value for the watt-conscious user.
Wait..what? There is a GTX 960 with no additional PEG connector? Or do you mean the GTX 950?
I'm facing a conunudrum with my 90w GTX 950. I wish I can just trade it in for a new 75w 950 (and just pay like 20 bucks more) but that is not gonna be pretty straightforward without losing a lot of money on the sale in the current used market.
I've also even considered selling the 950 and just going back to a 750 Ti. I already once had the EVGA Superclocked edition for 2 years, really liked that little beast of a card.
So I'm still considering these options. An OC'd 750 Ti with modded BIOS still is a great value for the watt-conscious user.
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Hey everyone, I'm thinking of putting together an SFF workstation build with this case so I thought I'd run it by y'all for a sanity check.
Would not be used for gaming at all, and I'm generally confident in hardware compatibility/suitability for what I want to use it for, but concerned about cooling and wondering if there's anything I'm not thinking of.
Anyway, build:
ASRock X99E-ITX/ac
Intel E5-2658 V3 (courtesy of our ES-reselling friends in china, 105W TDP)
Dynatron T318 heatsink with a Noctua NF-A9x14 strapped to the top of it, combined height 41mm (heatsink says good up to 165W, and I think fan should be able to move enough air to keep the temp down but that's one of my concerns)
2x32gb ECC DDR4, probably Samsung (might require some experimentation but there do at least exist some that have been verified to work with mobo + xeon)
M2 SSD, probably Samsung 950 Pro
PNY NVS 510, singe slot, 6.3" length (not a gaming rig, as mentioned - interested in being able to drive 4x4k or 2x5k displays)
HDPLEX 250W power supply, with Dell 330PM111 power brick
As far as I can tell, total system max power usage should be about 225 so power supply ok, cooling should be ok, but am I missing anything here?
Would not be used for gaming at all, and I'm generally confident in hardware compatibility/suitability for what I want to use it for, but concerned about cooling and wondering if there's anything I'm not thinking of.
Anyway, build:
ASRock X99E-ITX/ac
Intel E5-2658 V3 (courtesy of our ES-reselling friends in china, 105W TDP)
Dynatron T318 heatsink with a Noctua NF-A9x14 strapped to the top of it, combined height 41mm (heatsink says good up to 165W, and I think fan should be able to move enough air to keep the temp down but that's one of my concerns)
2x32gb ECC DDR4, probably Samsung (might require some experimentation but there do at least exist some that have been verified to work with mobo + xeon)
M2 SSD, probably Samsung 950 Pro
PNY NVS 510, singe slot, 6.3" length (not a gaming rig, as mentioned - interested in being able to drive 4x4k or 2x5k displays)
HDPLEX 250W power supply, with Dell 330PM111 power brick
As far as I can tell, total system max power usage should be about 225 so power supply ok, cooling should be ok, but am I missing anything here?
If you can find a heat sink with a working fluid in it (ie vapor chamber or heat pipes) that would be much preferable over a solid heat sink. You can also use a slim 120mm fan mounted on the fan bracket above the rear I/O plate, instead of the 92mm fan, which would blow air onto components surrounding the CPU, as well.
225W seems like a decent conservative estimate for power consumption...my back of the hand estimate was 215-220W. I hope you understand that the 4 high res monitors driven off of the NVS unit are typically signage with very simple graphics...I wouldn't expect any decent desktop experience from them.
225W seems like a decent conservative estimate for power consumption...my back of the hand estimate was 215-220W. I hope you understand that the 4 high res monitors driven off of the NVS unit are typically signage with very simple graphics...I wouldn't expect any decent desktop experience from them.
Yup, the T318 is a vapor chamber sink. Re: fan, do you know about what the max thickness I could fit in there is? the heatsink is 27mm.
As far as graphics card, hmm. I'm not really expecting to do anything significantly hardware accelerated, desktop-wise, and my gut suggested that would probably work out fine for that, but I guess I should research it a bit more. For max 60W power budget (as I calculate it, anyway - this would put me at ~250W) and 4 displayport connectors, options are pretty limited - there's this one and a few other workstation cards. For hysterical raisins given my experience with ATI vs Nvidia drivers (on Linux particularly) I'd rather stick with a Nvidia card. Quadro K1200 might be better. Would still fit in power budget, maybe .8x of performance of 750 TI, 3.7x the NVS 510 (per passmark), can still have the ports I want. Not sure why I didn't find that initially. It's even a bit cheaper.
As far as graphics card, hmm. I'm not really expecting to do anything significantly hardware accelerated, desktop-wise, and my gut suggested that would probably work out fine for that, but I guess I should research it a bit more. For max 60W power budget (as I calculate it, anyway - this would put me at ~250W) and 4 displayport connectors, options are pretty limited - there's this one and a few other workstation cards. For hysterical raisins given my experience with ATI vs Nvidia drivers (on Linux particularly) I'd rather stick with a Nvidia card. Quadro K1200 might be better. Would still fit in power budget, maybe .8x of performance of 750 TI, 3.7x the NVS 510 (per passmark), can still have the ports I want. Not sure why I didn't find that initially
. It's even a bit cheaper.
@Josh | NFC may be a better person to answer this, but the thickest I've seen on here is @MarcParis with the ID Cooling vapor chamber @ 30mm plus the 14mm Noctua fan.
Hmm, there's also E5-2690 V3 which is 135W TDP, which would push total max system power to 265W or so. Is that asking a bit much of that power supply? The HDPLEX power adapter says 400W peak, 94% efficiency gives 310W from that Dell adapter and I wouldn't be pegging it for long periods of time for the most part, so it should be fine, I'd think? 135W TDP probably gets into the extra fun area for cooling though Dynatron claims that heatsink can manage 165W.
The wattage is fine, and I am looking for a similar build myself, but I can't seem to find a way to adequately cool a X99 chip. Liquid cooled with a 120x2 rad my current CPU at 4.2Ghz gets to 70C while working hard.
Your CPU TDP is well under, and I doubt you have plans for overclocking, but just know it will be hot no matter what you do methinks.
Your CPU TDP is well under, and I doubt you have plans for overclocking, but just know it will be hot no matter what you do methinks.
