Hyped for the video! Very interested in picking up this bad boy when it’s released.
Stalled Winter One -- 15.6L SFF case, 3090 Support, 3-slot GPUs, dual 280mm radiators, CFD Optimized Design
- Thread starter WinterCharm
- Start date
Wow. What a work of art. Especially the version with ventilated side panels. As a plus, the new Noctua NH-L12 Ghost S1 Edition cooler will fit quite nicely. I suspect the thermals will be better than open bench with those (4) 140mm fans set to exhaust. 3 Slot GPU compatible - ready for the new Nvidia 3000 series top card(s)...
This excites me.
This excites me.
Just dropping in to officially confirm, Winter One Will support the RTX 3090 Founders Edition.
Just Look at all that space --- the benefits of a Frameless design.
Just Look at all that space --- the benefits of a Frameless design.
It looks absolutely gorgeous.
if you go double rad full custom watercool loop should you go for the vented side panel or the closed ones?
if you go double rad full custom watercool loop should you go for the vented side panel or the closed ones?
Are there any 280mm radiators in existence that would fit if you made the slight size increase to fit 30mm radiators?
Just a minor warning to those planning to go Founders Edition Ampere with the Winter One - Ali Sayed from Optimum Tech recommends against FE cards in sandwich-style cases since the fan exhaust on the backplate would get blocked by PSUs.
Depends. If we could move the PSU up a bit or rotate it so the PSU fan points up, the FE card would have a clear path to the case core. Especially if used with grille side panels.
Depending on the accommodations made for the 3090 there may be a 280mm radiator or two out there that fit given the dimensions spec'd in the first post, but I'm not expecting to see them officially supported.
If you go full custom water-cooling, with dual radiators, it's highly recommended to go for dual-exhaust, and vented side panels. That gives each radiator supply to cool room air, while flinging the hot stuff away from the case.
Should be fine in Winter One as there's enough Clearance behind the GPU, that the back of the power supply won't choke the flow. With Airflow inside Winter One being linear and robust, the hot air should be cleared quickly. There's also no central spine pressed up against the 3090s' opposing-side fan, that would choke it from exhausting properly. Traditional Sandwich Cases, however, will struggle, and Optimum Tech is right that caution will be necessary for those builds.
You'll have around 150mm of internal width to work with, which *might* give you some room to fit a few 280mm radiators, but this is not an officially supported layout. I went with 140mm fans for air cooling, or 120mm fans / radiators for air / liquid cooling. It was the space efficient choice at the time.
It's not wasted space if you fill it with heat sinks ?
If you are on a Coffee & Cream schedule, maybe in time for Zen4 & RDNA3...?!?
If it is:
Cheaper than water cooling
Performs as well as (or better than?) water cooling
Quieter than water cooling
No possible leaks (unlike water cooling)
How could this not be the go-to configuration for this chassis...!?!
And hey, maybe Noctua has NF-A14x25 PWM chromax.black fans out by then as well...!
Oh...! Might the heat sinks & pipes be black as well...?
I am done now, really... ;^p
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Just an update to the above with some helpful renders and animations from Ali @ Optimum Tech:
Seems that in terms of the founders edition cards, the Winter One may be one of the safer SFF cases to buy if you're getting one, or any 30 series card that has the same flow through design.
Seems that in terms of the founders edition cards, the Winter One may be one of the safer SFF cases to buy if you're getting one, or any 30 series card that has the same flow through design.
That's an excellent video summary. The real trick to running the 3090 In any case will be:
1. can you remove the hot air air quickly enough (no choke points, clear path of airflow out)
2. can you provide cool intake air to both fans, quickly enough (low restriction on the intake, and excellent internal airflow velocity)
3. can you prevent recirculation of hot air, once exhausted. (See my CFD post, Winter One is designed to do this, with flow separation eddies)
4. can you protect the CPU from being choked with hot air (Winter One's sandwich layout does isolate the CPU from the hot air exhausted by the 3090)
Are the revisions to fit the 3090 going to push the timeline for the Kickstarter?
Agreed - but based on this, under what setup does the Winter One satisfy all of those conditions? (Sorry for the rough image editing.)
- Does the PSU block the exhaust through the FE 3080/90's flow-through fan?
- If the PSU is flipped so the fan faces the GPU, is airflow still consistent enough to pull that air through and out the PSU vents towards the top exhaust?
- If it's not enough flow to exhaust heat out the top, will that heat have detrimental effects to the PSU longevity/performance?
- With the edge of the GPU being a solid border with lighting, will bottom intake feed enough cool air to the GPU's fin-side for the exhaust fan to pull through?
- ... Or will the perforated side panel be required to use an FE card - especially the 3090 - effectively?
I don't mean to question the design of the Winter One - I've just been curious about how these new FE cards will perform in the case and if users who are going with FE cards will need to go with the perforated side panels to compensate.
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Agreed - but based on this, under what setup does the Winter One satisfy all of those conditions? (Sorry for the rough image editing.)
These questions are especially important now that several of the AIB designs are incorporating a hole in the back plate for air to pass through like Nvidia's Flow-through design.
- Does the PSU block the exhaust through the FE 3080/90's flow-through fan?
- If the PSU is flipped so the fan faces the GPU, is airflow still consistent enough to pull that air through and out the PSU vents towards the top exhaust?
- If it's not enough flow to exhaust heat out the top, will that heat have detrimental effects to the PSU longevity/performance?
- With the edge of the GPU being a solid border with lighting, will bottom intake feed enough cool air to the GPU's fin-side for the exhaust fan to pull through?
- ... Or will the perforated side panel be required to use an FE card - especially the 3090 - effectively?
I don't mean to question the design of the Winter One - I've just been curious about how these new FE cards will perform in the case and if users who are going with FE cards will need to go with the perforated side panels to compensate.
As gamers nexus pointed out, flow through designs are nothing new, they've been done before. See 5700xt red devil, see vega 56 red dragon, pulse vega 56. In my opinion, putting a solid panel in front of an air cooled GPU will always be sub optimal. As optimum tech showed in the ghost s1, negative pressure helps draw in air to feed the cooling solution of an air cooled GPU, and the winter case just turns that up to 11.
IIRC the solid panels with bottom to top flow is for the SPK or radiator/water cooled build.
I believe that as long as there is a reasonable air gap between the back of the PSU and 3080/3090 exhaust, the air pressure of the top and bottom fans in exhaust should quickly dilute and move the warm air out of the case. Also. i don't think that the air vented into the case at that end of the GPU will be as hot as the air vented out the back of the GPU's blower port.
Nope, not at all. Kickstarter Timeline will be unaffected by these revisions.
The Back Wall of the PSU is 3cm away from the 3080/3090 exhaust fan. This is more than enough space for exhaust to occur -- Winter One's Feet place the bottom opening 2cm away from a flat surface, and that is adequate for almost entirely unhindered intake or exhaust flow. With GPU >>> PSU clearance being even larger, it's going to be totally fine!!
Look at the all exhaust configuration, where there the case is blowing air against a table surface, and you'll see what flow looks like when a fan blows at a surface. It just spreads out like if you pour water on a table. This same exact scenario will take place against the PSU surface.
Flipping the PSU to point the fan towards the center of the case is NOT recommended with any Pass-Through card, as you'll be blowing hot air straight into the PSU. While power delivery components can handle higher temperatures, and it's only about half the total TDP of the card, it's still not a great idea. Just remember that Global Flow overpowers local flow. If you squirt food coloring downward, into water running sideways, the food coloring follows the water. Winter One's is designed such that Global flow is either top to bottom, or parts in the middle and flows downward and upward (see the CFD post), based on how you set up fans in the case. In either scenario, the air coming off the GPU will be forced to leave the case. ?
Winter One has some of the most meticulously engineered airflow found in a PC case, small or large. It will be totally fine. And second, this is not new. This type of GPU design is quite typical of *any* really well engineered card that's designed to be run really cool. It has been done many times before by Sapphire (equivalent to EVGA on the AMD GPU side) in order to tame some of the stupidly hot GPUs AMD has released.
Any 2-2.7 Slot Card can be run with Solid Side Panels, with no issue!. That applies to the 2080FE, as well. Again, there is plenty of airflow in Winter One, that will carry that hot away away almost immediately.
Any 3 slot card, 3090 included, will require perforated side panels whether you're using the FE designs, or a board partner model. This also goes for any CPU cooler with the intake fan bumping up against the side panel, for exactly the reason that being pressed up against a solid surface will airflow starve that component, which is never a good thing.
I don't think you're coming across as questioning the design. It seems to me that you're worried about a cooler design you haven't seen much of before. That's totally understandable.
To try and alleviate this, I want to reiterate. This is not new. It has been done before many many many times, often by board partners that make some of the best performing GPUs out there. Nvidia did not radically reinvent the GPU cooler with this design. This has been a thing that board partners like Sapphire and EVGA have all been doing for years. It's typically done when trying to cool a hot card in a small space, OR when trying to tame a very hot card (like Vega or Fury) in a "regular" space. We didn't see it from Nvidia or their board partners very much, because Nvidia has typically kept their TDP's below 250W. Expect to see a lot more of these with the RTX 3000 series. It's necessary when working with very hot cards, and even when you're not, it gives you an added boost in thermal performance, which is why Sapphire does it on so many GPUs.
Here are some examples of this being done in the last 6 years
Sapphire Nitro 5700XT
Sapphire Nitro R9 Fury
Sapphire R9 Fury Tri-X
PowerColor Red Dragon
Sapphire Pulse
EVGA 2060 Super
Zotac 1080Ti Mini
Another PowerColor Red Devil -- Vega 64.
XFX RX Vega
The point of linking so many of these, is to show you just how common it is. It's going to be fine. I didn't ignore the existence of these types of GPUs when designing Winter One. This type of cooler was necessary from board partners who wanted to tame the very hot running AMD cards such as the R9 290s and R9 390's as well as R9 Fury, and even all the RX Vega GPUs.If you're still anxious after all of that, check out some of the reviews of some of the partner cards I've listed above, and look at thermals. They've been out forever, so you should be able to find data. Pick really hot ones like Vega 64 or R9 Fury.
Aside from that, I ask that you trust the amount of effort, attention to detail, and the rigorous approach used to design this case.
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Also, here's a screenshot from the build video (it's taken a long time to edit, nearly done, just the VO remaining) --- showing just how large the PSU / GPU gap is!
That pic above makes me happy. Looks like a 20-25mm gap. And no turbulence issues. You really designed a winner here.
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Edit: Let's talk 2.5" drive mounting options. Have you considered adding the ability to mount a (1 or 2) 2.5" drives flat against the front panel as an alternative to losing one of the 140mm fans? Or perhaps some other orientation that preserves the fans?
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Edit: Let's talk 2.5" drive mounting options. Have you considered adding the ability to mount a (1 or 2) 2.5" drives flat against the front panel as an alternative to losing one of the 140mm fans? Or perhaps some other orientation that preserves the fans?
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Thanks for all of the information, WinterCharm - you answered all of my questions completely.
Looking forward to the build video! ?
