Log Two dead CPUs, 95°C and 100 decibel - My Ncase M1 Ryzen Journey

fleischverpackung

Caliper Novice
Original poster
Sep 28, 2019
23
15
well, not really 100 decibel. That was just for clickbait. But I had two Ryzen Processors DOA. Chances of that happening are so low, I guess I must have destroyed at least one of them, although regularly grounding myself. This was how my Ryzen experience started.

tldr: go for a few large fans and move the air to make use of the dust filters. also do not wear cheap training pants that might electro shock your brand new CPU twice? so that you have to wait additional 6 weeks until you may finally be able to start building your new pc.

Ryzen 7 3700x @ 3.2 GHz
GeForce GTX 1080ti
32GB DDR4
1TB SSD PCIe
2TB SSD SATA
6TB HDD

ASUS ROG STRIX 470-I
Noctua NH-U9S
Noctua NH-C12P

I started with a stock Geforce and top rear outtake without case fans. Two 80mm fans mounted directly onto the cooler itself. I chose the old chipset because the mainboards came without an active mini fan, and I wanted to go for a low noise build. That turned out to be a really stupid idea, since I was not aware that I would have to flash the BIOS in order to make it Ryzen compatible. With another CPU which I had to ordered from AMD, which then I had to return. To then find out that my CPU was dead.

6 weeks later:



With Furmark and Prime95 it got really cozy in the stylish NCaseM1. Good thing I benchmarked before showing off to my friends with my sleek new ITX platform. Temps shot up until the CPU did an emergency shutdown. 95+. Coming from a Noctua D14 and Intel chips, I was a bit underwhelmed. I cranked up the fan curve, temps went down into the high 80s and were super loud. Good thing I did not go for those later chipsets with the active mini fan. Could have been even louder.


Then I modded the GTX with an Accelero like originally planned. Went actually smoother than expected. Good thing I bought an expensive EVGA card with a good cooling solution just to replace it with an aftermarket cooler. Anyways, I like the industrial look of the Accelero.



In combination with 12mm intake fans on the bottom, temps on the graphics card were pretty decent, but the CPU was still running hot. Mainboard and harddrives got a bit cooler from the airflow coming from below. But overall everything was just too hot with an ~80° Ryzen. I switched to a rear intake configuration and mounted the back fan directly onto the case, to suck in that cool cool air from behind.



This actually worked better, but temps were still too high, and the Ryzon was throttling down when under full load to 4.0 - 4.1 GHz.


Since I often need more overall power than a high clock on a few cores, I decided to lock the CPU at 4.2GHz which allowed me to do a mild undervolt. With the addition of a narrow fan in between the case panel and the HDD (to blow out the hot air coming from the cooler) I managed to get ~75° with all cores @ 4.2 under full load with a maxed out GPU.

Those pesky little 80mm fans were still annoying.. Now I did what I should have done in the beginning: searching for a large legacy cooler which would fit the case with the stock HDD rack. And finally, I stumbled upon the Noctua C12P which was slightly shorter than the C14. Perfect!




I switched to Argus Monitor to control the bottom fans with the GPUs temperature sensor. On Idle All three fans run quite silent @ 900 rpm. CPU ~40° and GPU ~30°. Under load they go up to ~1400 rpm, with ~70° CPU and ~65° GPU.

I really enjoy working with this case. Best case I ever owned. Nothing beats popping off those panels :D The cable management could be nicer and a fan extension to the side panel would suck more cold air into the machine. A man has to have goals, ey? Overall a fun project and a reliable sexy machine package to work on.


Thanks for reading!
 

BaK

King of Cable Management
Bronze Supporter
May 17, 2016
931
931
Happy ending, good thing you didn't give up after the 2 DOA Ryzen!
I didn't know these 3700X were so hard to keep cool btw!

Really liked that one XD
... Good thing I bought an expensive EVGA card with a good cooling solution just to replace it with an aftermarket cooler...