Demonic Donut

What are your temps actually at with your general use? While gaming etc? Try running HWInfo 64 for a gaming session and if you can, post a screenshot of the min/max/average CPU and GPU temps. If CPU temps are low enough to prevent throttling, and GPU temps are the concern, spending money on fans before a new cooler would be beneficial. I've also seen times when upgrading to a better, more airflow focused case will improve temps the most. Luckily components can always be swapped if you change cases later. Bottom intake will probably be more beneficial than side if you only choose one or the other. If you split the CPU header, I would recommend setting a static or at least a bit higher fan profile for it to feed the GPU air and not have it depend on the CPU temp. A 3 way splitter could be beneficial as well to keep the rear exhaust and are a bottom intake as well. You'd need to measure for clearance, but I have the 140mm fan mounted below the fin stack on my wife's computer and it clears fine. Regarding two fans by the U9 cooler, you can always move the heatsink fan to push air through while the rear exhaust acts as a pull fan behind it. That's how my D15 is set up.

To be honest, the chassis fan pin out confuses me. But it mentions that only the CPU header has PWM. You should be able to use any standard 4 pin pwm fan on there. And use 3 pin fans on the chassis headers. Maybe the 5v is for RGB lights on the fans? For the chassis fans, I'd find a 3 pin fan you're happy with just to be safe. Also, the CPU header is rated at 2 amps. So you could easily run 5+ fans assuming you choose something with average power draw. Just buy some 2 way or 3 way splitters. For low budget, Arctic P12 fans are cheap and regarded as one of the best bang for the buck fans. They come in standard 3 pin or a PWM version that is 4 pin. I only have personal experience with the P12 ARGB fans. They are pretty good especially for the cost. A bit louder (they hum) than my Noctua fans though. I've had good luck with Noctua P12 redux fans as well for a lower cost option. They are quiet and move a good amount of air. The Noctua P12 comes in 3 and 4 pin, 1700 and 1300 rpm models. I have two of the 1700rpm version on my GPU and one on my CPU cooler and I can't hear them at 100% when my case fans (Noctua A14) are at 50%. Standard Noctua fans come with an extender, low noise adapter and splitter. Along with the rubber pieces for there corners and different mounting hardware. Redux fans are bare bones and only come with screws. Still great fans though. Edit: forgot to add... For location, can you add a bottom and side fan? Corsair says you can, but the side might impact the GPU? Both as intake if you can. I'd start there and think about replacing them all over time. I love Noctua coolers. But if cost is the reason for not going with a U12 instead, think about going with a less expensive brand. I'm not up to date with them all, Gamers Nexus on YouTube has great reviews, but there are a lot of competitive coolers these days. Second edit: because you're limited to 148mm height. Another good lower height cooler is the Noctua C14. I have one on my wife's R5 3600 and it does quite well. Not sure what other coolers you could use.

There should be a way to remove it. It might be a pain but should be doable. You can try the rubber push through plugs for fans though. Noctua fans come with them, but you can buy any brand off of Amazon etc. You should be able to squish them through the hole then mount the fan.

You can measure from the CPU to the edge of the case and find the rough height you could use. There aren't as many good, cheap options for small form factor though. You're looking at closer to $40 for something good.

Most likely they are gone. If you want to make sure you can write over the drive a few times with formats in between. I'm not sure if you can use dban on an SD card, but that's a very thorough tool.

Most likely the read head moving.

What cooler height can you fit?

You likely won't notice a difference between any decent thermal paste. Noctua NH-2, kryonaut, hydronaut, MX-4 or MX-5 etc. Just get a name brand one. How are your temps? A $20 aftermarket cooler would be a good upgrade considering they usually come with pre applied paste and will outperform the stock cooler if temps or noise are a concern. Just don't use Conductonaut because your cooler is aluminum. *Edit* most pastes last years. I had NH-1 on my old it 3570 for 4 ish years and it never degraded. If you don't remove the cooler it should be fine. I only repaste when I deep clean my systems every year or two and actually remove the coolers and wash them etc. I like to wash them because I've noticed build up of oils etc on tth coolers from (I'm assuming) pet dander.

Have you tried manual OC of RAM instead of XMP?

I haven't seen any recently but it would be cool to see. I always like to see what is on the bleeding edge. I think it comes down to low ROI for the person that does the review. It's not a very popular topic. Not to mention almost all top tier blocks perform within a degree or so of each other. Most people will buy the name brand they prefer or the block they like the look of.

I remember seeing the trailer on X-Play way back when... I was really disappointed it never happened.

This is true on tasks that heavily rely on RAM. You can score big in RAM benchmarks by OCing RAM. You will not get a 30pct increase in FPS in games however. It all depends on use case.

It's not just about voltage. It's about heat and current. Idle at 1.4V is lot different than single core load at 1.4V which is different than all core load at 1.4V. I would be comfortable with 1.3V, much higher and you generally start risking some degradation over time. Again depending on temperature and load on the CPU. And it's really all anecdotal evidence.

Have you tried tightening RAM timings or loosening them and running higher frequency? RAM OCing can be very fickle and you aren't guaranteed to get XMP speeds anyway. Just put of curiosity, you aren't thermal throttling are you? If you run HWInfo64, is your GPU pegged or are you CPU bound with a few cores maxed out?

WoW as a game died for me after WotLK. I never enjoyed it after that. Tried playing it a few times since but it doesn't do it for me anymore. TBH I never paid a ton of attention to the lore. I knew what was going on but I never geeked out of on it, so I can't speak to a story ending. WoW got too "accessible" for me. Everything felt the same, builds went away and nothing had the same grit to it. I love StarCraft, it was the first (PC) game I played a lot as a kid, along with MechWarrior 2. While an MMO would be cool in theory, I'm sure it'd be ruined from the beginning. However I'd love a divergence from the RTS form. Don't get me wrong, I still love playing SC1 and SC2, but an open world RPG like fallout with Mount and Blade army style combat would be freaking epic.

I prefer Noctua fans over others. I recently got a few Arctic P12 fans and they are pretty good as well though, especially for the price. Noctua redux fans are good (I have them on my GPU and one on my CPU cooler) but they don't come with all the extra goodies and they aren't the newest designs. Full price Noctua fans come with an extender, splitter (run 2 fans on 1 header), low noise adapter (makes them run at lower rpm with a resistor so no need for bios control) and anti vibration pads for the corners. I have Noctua fans that are 5+ years old and perform exactly like they did when new. If you can afford them, I'd recommend them. Otherwise go with bequiet, or even cheaper, Arctic P12/P14.

I have an Aorus Elite x570 and it works great for me. Honestly upgrading just to control fans on GPU temps is a bit extreme, but if you want to pay and it's worth it for you, go for it. I use speedfan to modify things if I want to play with speeds, but I usually just leave my fans at a constant speed I find acceptable for noise. Fans changing speeds is generally more noticeable than fans just running. For me, a constant 50pct isn't noticible in my home with my tower where it sits. 60pct is barely audible and 70pct is noticible but not bad. I recommend finding your max comfortable speed and running that all the time. And some fans, depending on location, can be ran at different speeds. My cpu tower fans can run higher than my case fans, for example, and have the same perceived noise level.

1: only if your room gets below the freezing point of the liquid in the loop. 2: No, because the tubing will not get sub ambient and below dew point. Plus when you stress your system it will warm the loop above room temp. Edit: you could theoretically get condensation if your room (and pc) were very cold and you raised the temperature of the air in the room a lot and very quickly. Leave something outside in the cold then bring it into a warm room and this can happen. This happens to your glasses (if you wear them) sometimes in the winter. 3: only add antifreeze if you expect to go below 32F/0C. Antifreeze lowers the water's ability to transfer heat.

The only issue with equalizing in/out flow is that it's very easy to get dead spots that don't get a lot of airflow. A classic example would be front intake and rear/top exhaust. Your GPU tends to get starved of good airflow. But as @LloydLynxsaid you need to try to keep the GPU fed with fresh air. Going slightly negative pressure can help with this if you don't have a side panel intake fan, so that fresh air will be pulled in through empty pcie brackets.

Like I asked before, have you tried Fan Control from this message board? Do you have something against software control?

I'm looking for a better heatsink option for my VRM on my Sapphire Pulse 5700xt. I've got a Morpheus cooler on it with nice alphacool copper heatsinks for the memory but I'm using the aluminum heatsink (pictured) that came with the Morpheus cooler for the VRM. It's adequate but I'm hoping to find something better. I'm going to be using a semi permanent thermal adhesive as I've had issues with the heatsinks falling off after some time and moving the case around. "Thermal Tape" is garbage... I'm thinking about cutting down some copper heatsinks for each module, but my last attempt didn't work out because my bandsaw tried to eat the heatsinks... I can also try stacking them along the chips but coverage isn't ideal due to overlap with how large the heatsinks are. Height can also be a problem but I've bought a new bench mounted belt sander so I can trim things easier now if I need to. I'm hoping to find a one piece solution if possible. Has anyone run across such a thing?

Through bios my "pcie" sensor is an actual thermistor on the motherboard by the pcie slot. So bios control isn't an option for GPU temp. Fan Control can regulate based on your actual GPU die temp though. Download Fan Control and give it a try. Or are you against using software for fan speed?

If you are like my parents and only use your computer for very basic tasks like internet browsing, email and media consumption it'll be fine. For some people, a bicycle is fine for transportation. Other people need more.

I don't remember exactly what was recommended in the article I read. But more paste means less adhesion. I would test glue with your intended materials at 1:1 and see how it sticks after cure.

I'd generally recommend deleting the shroud and using a couple 120mm fans. They will move more air and be more quiet. Don't forget you need a GPU fan adapter.