Well Ncase M1 has worse GPU cooling and slightly better cpu cooling compare to SM550...but it's 50% bigger..
For my point of view, AIO interest is becoming less and less interesting nowadays with automatic clocking (both GPU and CPU). Even a GPU water cooled at 50°c is not performing better than a GPU air cooled at 75°C (could be quieter if you have proper pump like D5 or DDC, all smaller pumps are noisy I find).
On GPU side, you could have cool & quiet card.
On CPU side, with zen 2 chips (especially up to R7 3800X), you don't need huge cooling to get good results (I was cooling my R7 3800X with Cryorig C7, stock settings with no issue).
True questions are :
- You mentionned that you are planning to travel a lot with your setup, then watercooling should be banned...one shock, one leak...system dead..
- What do you want to do with your setup? Gaming (if yes, which resolution and refresh rate?)
- What graphic card are you looking for? Even cool & quiet GTX 2080 ti (like Ventus) can fit SM550
- What CPU are you looking for? What is your need?
This is a personal quest..
ps : to repeat myself, as you mentionned you will travel frequently SM550 is a better choice than ncase...especially with AIO inside..
1. This is true. I have never had any watercooling in any previous build but I've thought about this fact and ofc I would like to stick to air cooling if the thermals and noise are good enough. I'm just afraid that they wont be in a SFF case.
2. Gaming mostly,so I don't need a crazy overclocked CPU to be honest.I'm thinking of buying the new rig after summer when the next GPUs are arriving (hopefully) and I'm aiming at gaming at ultrawide (1440p/2K) with 100fps.
3. Probably buy a GPU from the new lineup that is going to be released sometime this or next year!
4. I've been sticking to old 4690k cpus for a while but I'm thinking it is time to upgrade to some new Ryzen cpus. Dont know which ones yet but a mid-tier CPU I guess and then put more money into GPU
How does this case perform thermal and noise wise vs the Sidearmd T1 ?