Black Friday Build

Shiminay

Hi folks, I'm looking at pulling the trigger on the following this weekend when there are hopefully a few discounts.

It's an ITX build and I've got a Corsair gold rated 600W PSU in a box somewhere in the flat, so that's been left out. I'll be taking the GTX 970 out of my current machine and will hopefully have the means to update that next year (stuck with nVidia for the moment as I have a G-Sync monitor and an nVidia Shield I stream things into my bedroom). There are a pile of Noctua fans that are overkill I'm sure, but the machine is going into an Ikea shelf (tested the fit of the Core V1 already), so I want to make sure it's both kinda quiet and also drafty Discussion around some of this on this thread a few months ago.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£119.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9S 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler (£52.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming-ITX/ac Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard (£109.12 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£65.58 @ Aria PC)
Storage: Crucial P1 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£58.25 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4 GB Video Card (Purchased For £0.00)
Case: Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Desktop Case (Purchased For £28.98)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-P14s redux-1500 PWM 78.69 CFM 140 mm Fan (£13.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-B9 redux-1600 PWM 37.85 CFM 92 mm Fan (£10.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-R8 redux-1800 PWM 31.37 CFM 80 mm Fan (£9.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Case Fan: Noctua NF-R8 redux-1800 PWM 31.37 CFM 80 mm Fan (£9.95 @ Overclockers.co.uk)
Total: £478.80
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-19 16:56 GMT+0000

There'll be a couple of other bits like a PWM splitter to manage all the fans and I have 3 2.5" SSD's from the current machine that I'll squeeze in too to make it an all solid storage build (I have a NAS that I never use that I'll throw the old mechanical drives that are starting to creak a bit anyway into). Mostly, I'm looking to make sure there's nothing glaringly wrong with the above list as I'll probably be doubling the order as a friend of mine needs a new build and said he'll go with what I order and probably stick a 5700 in too for graphics.


Thank you all in advance!

K.O.Kiki

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor (£119.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Shadow Rock LP 51.4 CFM CPU Cooler (£33.58 @ Amazon UK)
Motherboard: MSI B450I GAMING PLUS AC Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard (£126.97 @ CCL Computers)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 Memory (£69.00 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive (£59.99 @ CCL Computers)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce GTX 970 4 GB Video Card (Purchased For £0.00)
Case: Thermaltake Core V1 Mini ITX Desktop Case (Purchased For £28.98)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P8 Silent 15.6 CFM 80 mm Fan (£5.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case Fan: ARCTIC P8 Silent 15.6 CFM 80 mm Fan (£5.99 @ Amazon UK)
Custom: NZXT Internal USB Hub (£14.99)
Total: £464.49
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-19 19:35 GMT+0000

Better SSD & mobo.
Removed superfluous 140mm & 92mm fans.
Added internal fan hub.
Changed CPU cooler to something that's just as good for gaming workloads.

Shiminay

Thank you so much for that, I'd looked at the MSI board as I know you've recommended them a lot here. Have had ASRock boards in my last few builds and always got on well with them, but I'm happy to make a switch. I was just wondering about the Cooler - I had thought to get one with a Horizontal fan to try and make sure that the airflow was consistent in one direction through the case and there's definitely room for one at 90mm like the Noctua (or a BeQuiet Pure Rock Slim) - do you think that will have any impact?

K.O.Kiki

Any fans will overcome static airflow.
If you want low noise, better to go with a 120mm downdraft than a 90mm tower cooler.

Shiminay

Sounds good and makes sense. Thanks again for the help.

Shiminay

So I started building one of these machines last night and ran into this:



The 80mm case fans are about 1 mm too deep and are rubbing off the cpu heatsink. Not the end of the world, but the lesson has been learned to check clearance! Ordering some new fans now that are only 20mm deep (The Arctic fans are 25).

K.O.Kiki

What are the odds of that! 1mm, bloody hell.

Shiminay

Yea, it's literally 1 or 2mm of clearance that's needed. I've tested the sizing and fittings of pretty much everything else and it's all good thankfully (the back of the graphics cards have about 2mm clearance from the edge of the CPU cooler which is the only other "snug" fitting thing).

Serephucus

Rather than going with different (potentially worse) fans (thinner tends to equal noisier), why not just grab a stanley knife and shave off the 1-2mm around the frame?

Shiminay

It's not a bad idea, but the fan blades themselves are touching the cooler when I spin them, so probably not a runner.

Serephucus

Ah yeah, no go then, fair enough.

Shiminay

A nice little positive note this morning - submitted a return request for the Arctic fans on Amazon and Arctic responded with "look, it's a load of hassle to do a return, so we're issuing a refund, but you can keep the fans" which is a really lovely gesture.

So in the interest of paying it forward, if someone needs some 80mm case fans, hit me up and I'll send it on

K.O.Kiki

I've found Arctic customer service to be as good as their fans - they punch way above their weight.

Shiminay

So, got some Asaka 10mm deep fans designed for htpcs and carried on building the first pc. The fans are quiet and pushing a decent bit of air.

So,all good, finished everything tidied up the cables (the case is a delight to work with in this regard) booted up and it's waiting for an os install now. Time to start the second pc (my own one).

It was all going swimmingly till I had to install the cpu cooler... For some bizarre reason, the fittings were completely different from the other (same make and model and the same order from Amazon) and forced the cooler to be at 90 degrees to the other, thus making it impossible to fit. I guess it must be an older revision of it or something.

I am never ordering one of these horizontal coolers again, these PCs would have been finished 2 weeks ago if I hadn't picked this cooler. Its been a f[size]u[/size]cking nightmare tbh and I'm now way over budget and none of my family are likely to be getting Christmas presents.

The only half positive is that Amazon will allow me to return it and will refund me in the next couple of weeks.

So when I get some isopropyl to clean the chip, I'm going to have to settle for the stock cooler and hope for the best till the new year.

K.O.Kiki

Sorry about the bad advice, didn't realize they'd be such hassle in your cases.

Homelander

The stock cooler is really not bad. There is a good balance to be struck between temp and max speed of fan too where it will do the job fine and be fairly quiet. especially when you also have a few case fans going.

Shiminay

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

Sorry about the bad advice, didn't realize they'd be such hassle in your cases.

No apologies necessary at all friend, you're always such a great help for everyone here and it just so happens that on this one occasion things just didn't want to play ball. I lay all blame at the feet of BeQuiet for being awkward gits

Homelander wrote: »

The stock cooler is really not bad. There is a good balance to be struck between temp and max speed of fan too where it will do the job fine and be fairly quiet. especially when you also have a few case fans going.

It's here beside me and not making much noise at all, the only thing I can hear is the several year olf 970's fans making a little bit of noise, but nothing I'll notice when I have something on the go.

Shiminay

Couple of days in, no hiccups at all. Had a minor networking thing where connection would drop for a second and reconnect, but it was long enough to pause downloads on things like Steam or XBox, but getting the official NIC and Wireless drivers from MSI's site and installing them made that problem go away. Despite all the stress, I'm very happy with it all now, thanks again for the help folks.