Joshndroid's Build Log [New NZXT Noctis 450]

[Joshndroid]

Hello all,

First topic creation here, I know realistically I am a new member. I had originally been a laptop person having enjoyed the independent aspect of being able to take it anywhere. Finally saw the light and bought a desk and got aquatinted with desktops. I was originally going to just do a thread for my change to the new Noctis 450 case but I thought in the spirit of the other logs in this section I would use my whole a$$ and contribute better. It is rather long I know and not everyone will want to have a read but hopefully someone out there may like it.

My primary objective with my desktop is for a mish-mash of everything. I currently maintain a 3 android devices over on xda developers so I wanted something that would build android rather well. I further dabble in a bit of gaming which has increased since having a desktop which I enjoy. I do a bit of screwing around with photo/design just for my own interest as well as a bit of home movie editing just to keep learning.

Firstly, we will start with my original build.

Here is a list of components that I started with:

Case - Thermaltake Oversteer RX-I
CPU - Intel Core i7 - 4970k 4Ghz 4.4Ghz Turbo
TPM - Arctic Silver 5
PSU - EVGA 750w 80+ Gold Standard
Fan Controller - NZXT sentry touch screen
Fans - CPU Cryorig R1 Universal Cooler
- 2 x 120mm phobya G-Silent 2000rpm
Memory - G.Skill Ripjaws X 2133 32GB (4x8GB) DDR3 XMP enabled
Motherboard - MSI Z97 Gaming 5 Motherboard
Graphics - EVGA GeForce GTX 970 Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB
Storage - SSD Crucial 512Gb
Monitors - 2 x BenQ GL2460 24in Widescreen LED Monitor
Keyboard - Logitech G19
Mouse - Logitech G600
WiFi - TP-Link Archer T8E Dual Band

I don’t have a token “all the boxes” shot, forgot that one dammit.

Anyway, let’s get into it. Started off by installing the power supply

Then moved into the motherboard, placed onto the box as I learnt from linus’ videos. Threw in the CPU and ram.

 

 

Next was the massive air cooler. It was pretty hard getting the tool into the screw heads as well as pushing the cooler onto the board, with the springs being quite strong. I got there in the end and didn’t snap my board in half

 

I then installed the mother board into position and screwed it down which was a cakewalk. I had so much room and so much clearance to the side of the case even with the massive CPU cooler on it. The good thing was the exhaust from the CPU cooler went directly into the exhaust of the case which was awesome.

I then put in the GPU, wifi card and my drive and loosely wired everything up. I thought I better do a second test to make sure everything was working. Unfortunately the GPU did not output to the screen, something I hadn’t planned on. I then decided to take it out and attach only to the graphics output on the motherboard which again booted up fine to bios. At this point it thought maybe the GPU was not going to work, but I forged ahead and installed windows and got to the desktop. Hooray.

I installed all the drivers required for the motherboard and run the live update utility from MSI. Thankfully there was a motherboard update which was months ahead of the initial bios on the board. Once this was completed I figured I would try the GPU again. Installed, worked perfect on the single screen. I got to the desktop and installed nvidia experience and the drivers to which the second screen then came online and I was good to go.

Unfortunately where the desk is gets a little dusty after just a few days there was already dust build up on the front. As much as it looks like it was doing its job, the case was poor and I still ended up with dust on the inside of the case.

I left the setup for a while. I used it non-stop and never had any issues with what I was using it for. It was nice and cool and things were running smoothly. I then started to get the itch to play around with overclocking. I thought that I should probably at least get an AIO water cooling setup before I started playing around with clock speed. I picked up a Corsair H100i and away I went. I swapped that huge cryorig for the AIO which freed up some room in the case for potentially better airflow, I added a 200mm fan to the side intake and set it up with very low rpm. I also had initial dramas with heat in that I may have put on too much thermal paste when initially putting on the AIO. I was getting close to 100 degrees when on full load with 4.6Ghz on the core. I pulled it a part, wiped it all down, put less thermal paste on, reseated and got instantly better results which improved over the coming days with further use.

 

I went nuts a bit with fans to try and lower over temps, as you can see. They definitely did help, but I started to get annoyed with the fan controller and the way that it works. I wanted the ability to control the controller with the CPU so I could get better interpretation of temps, in the meantime I had the probe wedged into the GPU heat sink which on comparison to CPU monitor was only about 5 degrees off.

 

The build runs great and I left it again for a while. I saw the new Noctis 450 come out and as I was unhappy about the Thermaltake case I originally got with the dust problem, non-colour matched, etc I thought I would then get that. I also in the future want to maybe create a custom loop to further reduce temps and get a bit more power out of it as well as the ability to fit 360mm rads in the top and the front which I like. So, I picked one up. I set about taking as many photos (albeit mobile phone camera photos which on reflection seem to be effected by the bright background light, but I did swap and take some with a camera after I saw the original dodgey shots) as I could while I changed my components over to the new case.

 

Here a few pictures of the new 450 case. I think it is a fine looking case. I originally thought that being a mid it would be smaller than the full tower oversteer rx-1, but with the external pieces it is essentially the same size. I must say that the thumb screws in the components in the case were don’t up FAR TO TIGHT and required the use of a screw driver to undo. I understand that they would like to keep things tight for transport/whatever but this was beyond what I would consider necessary, thumb tight would have been sufficient. Don’t judge me on my ‘static free workstation’ it was a cold day and the sun was out so I was like screw it I’m doing this outside so I got some old newspaper, covered the outside table and set to work.

One thing I will mention as a negative is the restrictive nature of the bottom PSU cover. I feel that NZXT could have used a thinner slat system or something

 

 

I then set about removing the shark fan, which I then placed into the rear as an exhaust on the new case. I also took out the graphics card and wifi card. By this time ~5 minutes in, I had already cut myself on the old case, dam metal. I think I will get a better 140mm fan and replace it. At the moment though the shark fan has a far higher CFM than the stock 140mm fan, so that’s why I went with it.

 

I took off the old fans of the corsair AIO H100i cooler and replaced them with some red coolermaster Jetflos. They are not the quietest of fans but they have a high CFM and a higher static pressure than the corsair fans. The corsair fans are not going anywhere and will be mounted on the top of the case above the rad for a pull. The Coolermaster fans are on the inside of the case to utilize the red light glow and set in the push config. More about the top fans in a minute

 

I then removed the motherboard and placed it into the case. The fit was easy and essentially left the AIO cooler in place and just moved it across in one big piece. I then moved the drives and placed them into the top slots. I originally was going to move them down to the bottom to try and keep the PSU cover almost as one straight line. I had a problem with the sata cable from the AIO which needed to be high. I also thought that due to the top fan locations and the fan location at the front, air would travel in through the top fan across the hard drives and although now turbulent should be pulled up and out of the case but the top front fan, limiting further heat and solving my cabling woes.

 

Another thing I noticed with the MSI gaming motherboard was that the port hole did not allow for the front usb 3 header to be easily accessed. This is just obviously in my scenario and due to the vast differences in mobo cofig I can’t be too annoyed by this fact.

Next I slotted in the GPU and the crucial 256 SSD into the slot. Another annoyance I noticed with the SSD/2.5 inch bay was the silver drive looks out of place. I would have liked a different mounting position (I may find one later) to hide the silver drive. I may even just paint it (but then there’s the sticker, hmm). I further placed in the mobo power cables and the GPU cables through to the rear. It then got dark and the photos I took were worse. So I finished it off by doing a little bit of routing of cables and came inside to test it was all good. It booted up and I took a couple of pictures of the window and the new lighting system. I know the corsair white logo looks a little out of place now but I figured if I’m doing a custom loop in the future it does not matter about that now. At this time I also noticed that I had installed the fans the wrong way round, durrrrrrr, so I took them off and repositioned them

 

 

The next day, ie today, I unplugged everything and took the case back outside and took a few more finishing photos of the new setup. I think it’s a fantastic looking case and I would recommend it. Maybe not if you already have a 440 (as there are rubber grommets from the 440 on this case) further indicating the internals are similar if not the same but if you had a crappy case like I did that was an absolute dust magnet, then go right ahead. My cable management at the moment could use a bit of fixing, I definitely understand that. I will re-route everything when I have a little bit more time on my hands. At the moment it does not impede the air flow from the front of the case so I am not too concerned but obviously it does not look spectacular at the moment. Any other questions about the case anyone wants to know I’m more than happy to answer.

 

 

[url=http://s1274.photobucket.com/user/joshndroid/media/Desktop/DSC02073_zpst1fl6kzv.jpg.html]

And now the final product sitting on my desk.

[ImBleu]

Holy Images.

 

I'm glad you swapped out of that TT Crap into the Noctis. I was planning on building in it but I went down the Define S route instead.

 

Nice Cable Management Might want to change your signature now though.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Nice. I like how the build gets cleaner as the pictures progress. Complete mess of cables, to clean ones. 

 

That blue strip on the GPU cooler would annoy the hell out of me though

[DarkBlade2117]

There seems to be a lot of pictures missing? Very nice build log though

[DarkBlade2117]

Had to refresh it twice nice pics

[Joshndroid]

Holy Images.

 

I'm glad you swapped out of that TT Crap into the Noctis. I was planning on building in it but I went down the Define S route instead.

 

Nice Cable Management Might want to change your signature now though.

 

I was silly and just grabbed a cheapo case, it cost me in the end. I was almost going to get a define s as well but i managed to get this one quicker and cheaper

 

Nice. I like how the build gets cleaner as the pictures progress. Complete mess of cables, to clean ones. 

 

That blue strip on the GPU cooler would annoy the hell out of me though

 

I'm actually debating on taking the gpu out and painting some of it to match the build better.

 

There seems to be a lot of pictures missing? Very nice build log though

 

Yeah there is a few missing. I ended up having a couple of beers during both builds and kind of just forgot about the pictures lol

[Joshndroid]

Picked up some supplies to colour match the GPU.. Will take a few pics and outline what I do. Will also change the thermal paste if the heat sink comes off with the plastic shroud

Was thinking about getting some sound deadener as well unsure whether I should get spray on or a matt type

[Joshndroid]

so halfway through painting my plastic shroud of my gtx970.. sanded, undercoated and now white undercoat.. had a problem with the weather which impacted the paint so a light sanding and reapplication of the white tomorrow morning and then onto colours... plenty of pics to come when im finished.

[Joshndroid]

So I started by pulling it all apart the manufacturer TPM was all crusty and dry thankfully it will be re-applied later. I utilized some rubbing alcohol to remove all the old TPM. I then set about using some sand paper and worked on the black plastic. I used 800 grit sandpaper and then 1500 grit wet and dry sandpaper. I then washed it all off and wiped it down. I used some plastic adhesion paint first to allow the paint to better stick to the plastic, a couple of coats was all that was needed. I then used some grey primer colour to cover the black and to give it a nice base. I then used some white undercoat paint so the red had a good backing otherwise it would look far to dark and dull. I then gave it a light sand and then gave it another squirt with the white. I then utilized the red paint and gave it as many layers as I could. I then put everything together, some new artic silver 5 TPM and threw it back into the rig. I think it came out pretty good, not perfect by any means but good enough to suit the build far better. Here is a gif of the progress

Here is a couple of shots of the final assembly and back in the case. Let me know what you think.

[Joshndroid]

Random update

 

So today after a few days of being extremely annoyed over fan noise (sounded like a jet in flight) i managed to get a few more cheap coolermaster jetflos (95cfm with 2.72mmH2O of pressure) played around with the fans until i worked out that the corsair rad fans were the culprit. Once those were unplugged i could barely hear the system. Switched them with jetflos so now i have push/pull as the jetflos and re-tweaked the pwm setup that comes with the case and then further tuned the system in the bios so all fans play nice together with the higher cfm fans ramping up slower than the lower rpm fan to keep somewhat good pressure within the case. Now during idle the system has the slight hum of fan noise however is a dramatic improvement over what it was and i still get the fantastic usage when on full load (with increase in noise but still to a lower level than moderate usage of the stock corsair rad fans).

[joshuabg]

How fast does it build android?

[Joshndroid]

Hey @joshuabg I am assuming your the same as from xda? If so good to see you round here. Ah.. About 30 minutes with no ccache for 32bit can drop down as low as 15 sometimes with ccache. For 64 bit it takes a little over an hour due to building of chromium each run (As using prebuilt Google preview causes too much issue and Webview related force closes) for comparison my laptop takes about another 40-50% extra time with my even older laptop a 2nd gen mobile core i7 taking about 3 hours for a 64bit build lol

Most of my build time is in uploading to a server our Internet sucks here so it takes almost an hour per rom using all upload bandwidth so when I need to use it as well it takes even longer because I have to set max upload speed for like 60kb total for 3 roms which takes forever each day for about 1gb of upload

[Joshndroid]

So i have a little question;

 

I am unsure of what my next upgrade should be for this thing :huh: 

I am thinking of upping my 256gb ssd to a 512gb ssd drive and then migrating the 256 to my notebook. my reasoning is that im starting to hold a lot of android source at the moment and the SSD are great for speeding up building. Sure, there are a lot of read/writes to the drive but meh, its for a purpose its being used for that purpose and I have backups so its all good.

 

My other option is to go for a higher capacity SSD drive and be done with it maybe 1tb. I do have a supp storage drive for the linux partition but it barely has anything on it, so could it be that i do go the higher SSD route and re purpose the HDD drive to specific games or storage for windows (as at present i have a 1tb drive partitioned to 2 separate 500gb with one side games and one side storage)?

 

i realistically was thinking of a pcie ssd drive but the price and the potential incompatibility with linux as a boot drive really has me shying away from that idea

[Joshndroid]

So i picked up one of these things for my 970 - Corsair N970. I wanted to utilize my H100 on it that was just laying around after i picked up a bigger 360mm AIO for the CPU.

It took almost 2 months to become in stock after multiple delays.

First impressions were good, it looked alright out of the box, exactly what I wanted.

It went extremely downhill from there.

I had one of the EVGA 970 cards listed as compatible, turns out it wasn't. There were numerous clearance issues with it hitting capacitors, etc.

I had waited so long to get it I just got the drill out and drilled the holes for the capacitors and the fan connector, filed the edges and all was well.

I went to connect the AIO cooler and the tubes barely fitted past the side or the fan. So i removed some of the shroud around the fan, filed, came out clean.

The AIO still had fitment issues.

I went back to the original layout and managed to get it fit and sit as best i could. Caused a bit of flex in my card (I didn't like that).

Started testing, temps were absolutely terrible. Idle was fine, but load was 92-96 degrees C. The fan on the card itself did nothing for cooling and literally just made the sound of a fighter jet (with HW monitor showing 4000rpm on the GPU fan).

Now i had push/pull jetflo's on the radiator so airflow across the radiator (with the rad sitting on the front of the case) was great.

I tried everything, reseat, reapply thermal paste, waiting a few days for curation of the thermal paste, side panels on/off, day/night operation, everything.

Looking at it closer I observed what i believe are the 2 biggest issues with it;

1st being fitment - the contact for the cooler to the GPU is literally only on the GPU die itself, thats it. No other contact. The cooler sits on the diagonal to the GPU die. The flex caused to the card also caused poor attachment

2nd being Barely, if any, air gets from that blower fan to the VRM's heatpipe/sink, a mouse blowing would do better and this is because of the way the cooler block sits, obstructing that air and there is no easy channel to direct the air efficiantly to the VRM's

I then just put the air coolers back on and load temps with fresh paste on a 30 degree C day was 60-62 degrees C, massive improvement.

[Nutcase-86]

Hi Josh, I'm going to be building a custom waterloop setup on the Noctis 450 using the MSI Z170 gaming M7 motherboard (will be posting a build log). The parts are all in the mail but wont be here for at least 5 days due to new year shutdown period. I just have a small favour to ask if you dont mind, im planning out where things are going to go, and just wondering if you could measure the distance between the top of your gpu (the backplate) and the top of the nzxt branded PSU cover? The z97 M5 and the z170 M7 motherboard dimensions are the same so it should be the same in my case.Iim hoping to fit a reservoir in that space since it doesnt look like i can easily remove the HDD bay cover, and even if i do, it wont be visible through the window. If not i may mount it on top of the case any help will be appreciated, thanks mate

[Joshndroid]

Hi Josh, I'm going to be building a custom waterloop setup on the Noctis 450 using the MSI Z170 gaming M7 motherboard (will be posting a build log). The parts are all in the mail but wont be here for at least 5 days due to new year shutdown period. I just have a small favour to ask if you dont mind, im planning out where things are going to go, and just wondering if you could measure the distance between the top of your gpu (the backplate) and the top of the nzxt branded PSU cover? The z97 M5 and the z170 M7 motherboard dimensions are the same so it should be the same in my case.Iim hoping to fit a reservoir in that space since it doesnt look like i can easily remove the HDD bay cover, and even if i do, it wont be visible through the window. If not i may mount it on top of the case any help will be appreciated, thanks mate

 

From the top of the SSD i have mounted in the slot to the top of the GPU it is about 117mm +/-1mm

From the shroud itself it is 127mm +/-1mm

 

the HDD bay cover can't be easily removed. There would be easy clearance as the PSU shroud does not extend into this area, but it wouldnt be seen so i see where your getting at.

[Nutcase-86]

Thanks heaps Josh pretty sure it should fit within that space, much appreciated