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SKYREACH 4 MINI (S4M)
- Thread starter Josh | NFC
- Start date
Nothing too fancy, I'm waiting for this oneSent my side panels for powder coating today *squeeeeee*
Also...
Just gonna leave this here
What button did you order? It fits so well with the carbon fiber!Look at this beauty
Everything has arrived and there is snow outside in London, so might as well stay indoors and build...
Intel i7 8700K
Asus ROG Strix Z370-i Gaming
Team - Dark Pro 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM
Thermolab LP53 w/ Noctua NF-A9x14
2x 512GB Samsung 960 Pro
Zotac 1080 Mini
HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX PSU w/ Dell 330W AC-DC PSU
Skywire cables
Initially had the Noctua NH-L9i, the Thermolab turned up this morning, so i swapped it for that instead.
Using Ceski's guide that CubanLegend posted a couple of pages back (https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/s4-mini-classic-s4m-c.96/page-209#post-68547), and with some trial and error I am now at
CPU offset = -0.6V
LLC = 6
Speedstep = enabled
CPU temperatures maxed out at 68C. The CPU has been delidded with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut between the die and IHS and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut between the IHS and heatsink.
Next steps for me -
get the RAM running at 4000 MHz with the undervolted CPU.
follow CubanLegend's guide to reduce the 1080 mini's fan speed.
setup and test RAID 0 on the SSDs
Thanks to all on this forum. A huge amount of reading but this has been one of the easiest systems to configure and build in.
Intel i7 8700K
Asus ROG Strix Z370-i Gaming
Team - Dark Pro 16GB DDR4-3200 RAM
Thermolab LP53 w/ Noctua NF-A9x14
2x 512GB Samsung 960 Pro
Zotac 1080 Mini
HDPLEX 400W HiFi DC-ATX PSU w/ Dell 330W AC-DC PSU
Skywire cables
Initially had the Noctua NH-L9i, the Thermolab turned up this morning, so i swapped it for that instead.
Using Ceski's guide that CubanLegend posted a couple of pages back (https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/s4-mini-classic-s4m-c.96/page-209#post-68547), and with some trial and error I am now at
CPU offset = -0.6V
LLC = 6
Speedstep = enabled
CPU temperatures maxed out at 68C. The CPU has been delidded with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut between the die and IHS and Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut between the IHS and heatsink.
Next steps for me -
get the RAM running at 4000 MHz with the undervolted CPU.
follow CubanLegend's guide to reduce the 1080 mini's fan speed.
setup and test RAID 0 on the SSDs
Thanks to all on this forum. A huge amount of reading but this has been one of the easiest systems to configure and build in.
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sweet build! you really put effort into it and on lowering thermals!
Thanks for sharing... So proud of the LP53 users out there! Be careful with the 1080mini BIOS mod and remember its at your own risk, I ended up defaulting back to the stock BIOS cuz the fan noise didnt bother me anymore since I'm on headphones now lol, but I did adjust the fan curve and I undevolted the 1080mini and its quieter than stock.
Thanks dude, a lot of this is down to the advice you've given.
I assumed the thermals would be an issue given the constraints on heat sink size, and the fact that they are designed for CPUs with a TDP of 65W (mine has a TDP of 95W), but i got a handle on that very quickly and easily. The chassis is well designed and Josh's youtube videos help greatly with regards to choosing the right heatsink and fitting it properly. I went further because I can use the added thermal headroom to turn the fans down.
Power on the other hand has been a pain to try and control. I have managed to do it by setting Vcore manually at 1.088V down (intel VID=1.184V), but setting Vcore manually keeps it at that voltage regardless of clock speed, so most of the power saving gained by enabling speedstep is gone.
Setting a voltage offset fixes that issue, but i can't go any higher than -0.6V, without instability at lower clock speeds, leaving me with a Vcore of 1.12V and minor power throttling. I might be able to fine tune it further, but I'm actually fairly happy as things stand.
With the GPU I read your post on reverting back. I've just flashed the bios from the 1080 AMP! card. I've heard the silence. I cannot go back. I'll learn to live with the side-effects. I think I might remove those fans and cable tie some noctuas on instead, I find the stock fans jarring.
I assumed the thermals would be an issue given the constraints on heat sink size, and the fact that they are designed for CPUs with a TDP of 65W (mine has a TDP of 95W), but i got a handle on that very quickly and easily. The chassis is well designed and Josh's youtube videos help greatly with regards to choosing the right heatsink and fitting it properly. I went further because I can use the added thermal headroom to turn the fans down.
Power on the other hand has been a pain to try and control. I have managed to do it by setting Vcore manually at 1.088V down (intel VID=1.184V), but setting Vcore manually keeps it at that voltage regardless of clock speed, so most of the power saving gained by enabling speedstep is gone.
Setting a voltage offset fixes that issue, but i can't go any higher than -0.6V, without instability at lower clock speeds, leaving me with a Vcore of 1.12V and minor power throttling. I might be able to fine tune it further, but I'm actually fairly happy as things stand.
With the GPU I read your post on reverting back. I've just flashed the bios from the 1080 AMP! card. I've heard the silence. I cannot go back. I'll learn to live with the side-effects. I think I might remove those fans and cable tie some noctuas on instead, I find the stock fans jarring.
If you use the included skybracket duo, you won't have to zip tie any other fans on.
Thanks! I'd forgotten about that bracket. I'd taken it out. Fans are coming on Thursday, so I'll have a go at it then.
Yep, at full load. 20C ambient temperature. Ceski did even better, getting 63C at 26C ambient. Both running prime95 26.6
I just finished trying this out myself just half an hour ago. Sorry if all this is already common knowledge but I can tell you that using the skybracket instead of cable ties means that it's a pretty tight fit to slot the GPU in, mainly just getting that DVI port through the i/o slot. But it does fit with a little bit of persuading.
A little quirk with doing it this way it is that the fans don't sit perfectly central over the heatsink so I found my temps actually went up a couple degrees compared to stock but the Noctua fans are definitely quieter.
You'll notice that you can mount the skybracket at 2 points over the GPU and having tried the fans in both places it seems that using the ones nearest the motherboard were keeping my fans slower by roughly 70-100rpm. However I'll end up cable tying them to the heat pipes or drilling new holes in between the 2 existing mounting points just to satisfy my inner perfectionist.
Hardware I used was the Zotac 1080 Mini, 2x Noctua NF-A9x14 PWM with a gpu fan adapter and y-splitter (sadly I never got a hold of the 2500rpm fans). I just used Unigine Heaven to gather some rough numbers and my trusty ears to determine noise, nothing scientific.
Hope this helped!
That definitely helps. Thank you. I might end up cable tying the fans to the heatsink as well.
Not actually after temperature gains with the GPU, I just can't stand the noise the stock fans make.
NFC Machined On/Off switch, proven and tested so fits perfectly
This is amazing. Would you mind posting (sharing) your exact bios settings? I have almost the same specs as you aside from the 960 Pros. I have a single 512GB 950 Pro.
Also, in Image 2/3, I cannot see the copper heatpipe's bent ends and the pointy ends. Where are they? They aren't making contact with the RAM like in CubanLegends flicker images.
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How did you figure out to use LLC 6? What guide did you use or method to figure it out? What effect did that have on the CPU?
wow, i need to get my room to 20c and re-run that P95 26.6 bench to see why my 7700k gets.
hmmm, ive got 2 of the 2500 RPM fans form Noctua and the gpu can adapter and the y splitter...why didnt you just plug them into the motherboard and control them independently using the GPU temp as a curve? What was your fan curve for the Noctuas hooked up to the 1080 mini? what was your lowest RPM and was it quieter and cooler than using the stock fans?
I didn't control them independently from the motherboard because I never knew how to be honest! Would there be a benefit to doing it this way? I get the feeling my afterburner software is lying to me a bit (maybe because I'm using the GPU fan header?).
The software says the noctua fans spin at around 1100rpm at idle and I have the fan curve set to 37%, the lowest speed the stock bios allows, up until 50C. Fan curve is supposed to get to around 60% as it nears 70C and this shows in the software as about 1750rpm at up to 68C, it never goes above that with the Noctua fans.
You'll have noticed the percentages don't tie up with the fan speeds. When I manually set fans to 100% the software says they max at roughly 2040rpm.
Going by ear I'd still say noctua fans were quieter as coil whine is now really noticeable. But going by the Afterburner software they ran 200rpm faster and the card was up 3-5C, both of those were a surprise to me after my success on my L9i.
I've got to make a note of all the changes I did. I'll get them all written down and posted up.
I think someone asked for a guide to undervolting as well, so I'll incorporate that into it as well. I would have like to have helped earlier, but I knew next to nothing about these CPUs before I got one myself. I'm upgrading from a Core 2 duo E8400 in a Shuttle XPC. So that was all I knew.... The thing had a northbridge.
The heatpipe bend is next to the RAM with the pointy ends by the rear I/O ports, so the fins are parallel to the RAM. There is about 2mm clearance between the heatpipe and the RAM. I haven't seen any pictures of CubanLegend's setup with the LP53 in place, but Ceski had wider RAM (Trident RGB IIRC) than I have, and whilst there was contact, it wasn't much and he got it all in. If you had an issue, the fix would be to take the RAM heatsink off.
Used HWiNFO64 to give me a readout of vCore and compare against the value I should be getting (=VID+offset). Changed LLC in windows using Asus AI Suite and looked for the effect it had on voltages.
On Asus boards LLC goes from level 1 to 7. 1 allowing for max vdroop and 7 no vdroop. Setting at 6 kept it at the voltage set. 7 tended to overvolt and 5 undervolt slightly. So I went with 6. Reading around a lot of people go for 5. Not sure why that is...
In my case I set an offset on -0.6V in the bios. VID is 1.184V when all 6 cores are running at turbo. So I should be getting 1.124V. I don't get exactly that
LLC level 5 = 1.088V to 1.12V
LLC level 6 = 1.12V
LLC level 7 = 1.12V to 1.1366V
Running with level 7 increased temps and power draw a tiny bit, level 5 caused occasional BSODs.
wow, i need to get my room to 20c and re-run that P95 26.6 bench to see why my 7700k gets.
Apologies all, I should have mentioned ambient when I posted that temperature up. Big oversight on my part.
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I picked up an i7-8700K and a Strix Z370-I and ran some thermal tests in an S4 Mini. Here's what you can expect to see with two of the more popular coolers, a Noctua NH-L9i and a Thermolab LP53 (using the Noctua fan):
Details:
Test Configs:
The CPU was stressed with Prime95 26.6 (no AVX) with 8K in-place FFTs. All testing was done in an S4 Mini. The following images show how the coolers were mounted:
BIOS/UEFI Settings:
The latest BIOS update is supposed to disable multicore enhancement by default but it still reverts to overclocking focused "Auto" settings once you enable XMP for your memory. As a result, the CPU will draw about 120W at 4.3GHz before power limiting and throttling to 95W at 3.9-4.0GHz. When properly tuned, the CPU power drops to 86-88W and maintains 4.3GHz under all-core load. The "Tuned" settings listed below simply force the processor back to stock behavior. The VCCIO/VCCSA voltages work fine for typical DDR4-3200 and can be adjusted for higher speed kits.
VRM Heatsinks:
Removing one or more of the VRM heatsinks improves airflow and reduces CPU temperature at the expense of warmer MOSFETs. Since no one will be overclocking much, or at all, in the S4 Mini, the MOSFETs should stay reasonably cool. You can buy some small heatsinks if you want more peace of mind. Here are some thermal images of the bare VRM under Prime95 load:
Delidding:
Just like the 7700K, delidding is helpful and pretty easy to do. I used the Rockit 88 kit and liquid metal. There's no tiny resistors to worry about on this chip.
Thermal Paste:
I used Noctua NT-H1 for every test except the last. Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut reduced core temperature by 2-3°C but there's nothing wrong with the stuff Noctua includes with their coolers and it's easier to apply.
Conclusion:
Managing the 8700K in the S4 Mini is a lot like the 7700K and 6700K before it. Expect to spend some time getting temperatures under control by delidding, tuning, or modding. My guess is that the i7-8700 will also be difficult to cool, despite the claimed 65W TDP. Strongly consider the i5-8400 or Ryzen 5 1600 for an easier time. For cooling, like @Josh | NFC has mentioned before, Noctua is still the best overall when considering mounting, compatibility, and price.
Thank you for this guide! After tweaking my system, I'm now getting a stable 60°C after 10 minutes of stability test
Update 2/27/2018
Got a new radiator today, time for some new tests
I undervolted my system and turned off Asus multicore enhancement, as well as some other tweaks.
Now on AIDA64 stability test, after about 10 minutes, the temperature stables at around 60°C!
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