I absolutely love the idea of stuffing water cooled components in as tight spaces as possible, evident by my previous K39 mod and my NSW v1 build. Last time I thought "there's no way to go even smaller than this", but as a certain famous quote goes "Life, uh.. finds a way" and so did I.
First I want to go over the specs , as unimpressive as they are on the surface.
System specs:
-Asrock B460M-ITX
-Intel i3 10100F
-PNY GeForce RTX 2060 6GB XLR8
-16 GB Crucial Ballistix RGB 3200MHz DDR4
-1TB Kingston NV2
Other components:
-A09 3.8L SFF Case
-Barrow LTYK3-04I Water Cooling Block
-Bykski N-GY2070MINI-X Water Cooling Block
-400w Pico PSU Switch(realistically ~270W)+12v 20A 250w Adapter Brick
-80mm Copper Radiator
-Arctic 80x25mm Fan+Scythe 80x10mm fan+Noctua 40x10mm fanx2
-Syscooling SC P60A Pump
-Alphacool TPV Compression Fittings
This might seem like a very mediocre 3 year old system, but not only is it being water cooled in a tiny 3.8L case, it is also powered by an external 250w power adapter. Surely, there is no way all of this hardware can even power on from a measly 250w brick, right? Realistically, it can't. Not unless you heavily undervolt it.
Let's start with the build process. It was probably the most fun project I ever did, despite the challenges. I did some test fitting first and once all the required parts arrived, everything was already planned out and fit like a puzzle.
I initially wanted to give up on the front panel I/O and the power button, but miraculously I managed to keep both, even though I was sure the tubing is gonna be in the way.
The other challenge I had was the GPU water block bridge that was protruding too much and would interfere with the side panel, so I had to sand it down. After that, it fit perfectly right against a closed side panel.
Since the two holes on the back of the case were initially designed for Wi-Fi antennas, I had to slightly widen one of them to fit the PSU barrel plug. Also, the GPU baffle bracket was originally from a k2000 Quadro and was modified to fit this RTX 2060, since it was originally a dual slot card.
Lastly, I cut the PCI-e riser's empty PCB chunk on the side, since it was interfering with the tubing.
Luckily, the 80mm rad in combination with the 80x25mm fan fit perfectly, sandwiching themselves between the bottom of the case and the bottom side of the motherboard, so no screws were even required!
After fitting everything in I tested for leaks, filled the loop and started to tinker with undervolting. It's obvious that stock operation was impossible, so I undervolted the CPU to -85 offset, which was the only stable option and reduced the total system power draw while running Cinebench R23 by around 15-20w. Easy enough.
Undervolting the GPU was much more challenging. I already tested it in a similar system, so moving back the power limit slider all the way down was the first step, but I wanted to try and squeeze as much performance as possible while not going over the power limit and keeping the card relatively cool.
I ended up limiting the temp to 78c, since as I mentioned last time using this same card, it's just not that great and gets extremely hot, even with the original air cooler. Additionally, I set a core clock undervolt curve of 1860Mhz@868mV, which showed to be the most stable setting. I also found that 94% power limit is a sweet spot between acceptable performance and not going over 210w combined system power draw while gaming. When the GPU reaches around 77c, the card eventually drops the core clock to around 1500Mhz, but thankfully gaming performance is not too heavily impacted.
On that note, I've made an interesting discovery while running other benchmarks. According to the 3DMark scores I got, I effectively turned my 2060 into a 1660ti, which is actually perfect, since I initially wanted to get one for this build anyway, but decided to just use the RTX 2060 I already owned and just nerf it to fit the build instead, while also saving some cash.
Finally, I played some RE4 Remake, a most recent AAA title, to stress the system, running it at 1440p mid to high setting with FSR2 balanced. The temps remained at around 70c on the CPU and 78c on the GPU, the total system power draw never exceeded 210w and with an average FPS of over 70 with no stutters, I consider this a mission success in my book.
As always, I want to reiterate that these projects aren't made to be super practical or efficient at cooling, but just to test the limits of small form factor water cooling. I will post a link to the entire photo gallery here and I hope you enjoyed my silly experiment! I have another similar project (with a twist) that has been in the works for a year now due to some delays and I'm going to post it very soon, hope you like it as well!
