andrevautour

ADDING COOLING 

5 minutes ago, Oalei said:

youre not going for the chromax black noctua fans? i mean its kinda..........

nah i actually like the colors of the regular noctua fans something about them i have always enjoyed. i also had a X58 sabertooth motherboard years ago and i liked those "desert earth tone" type of colors on there. i was trying to decide between the black case and the white version and i like both a lot but ended up going with the white partly to just try something new and to be able to see inside better plus i thought the noctua colors would match with white.

i probably will be adding some RGB lighting it there eventually, although i really like how it looks with no lighting the tint on the glass panels looks really nice in person the photos dont do it justice. 

17 minutes ago, Oalei said:

i want to know about the TEMPS!!!

ah yes, i was also curious about how the thermals would be especially without any case fans installed. it did feel a little wrong running without any fans, but there is lots of passive ventilation. 

below is the numbers after running Vampye for about 6 hours 4k resolution and all max detail settings and then encoding a 40min 4k video. the cpu idles around 35-40c (the cpu cooler fan is on auto) and it reached a max temp of about 80c during all of that game play and encoding. the GPU is similar its idling around 37-40c and it hit a max of 83c during the gameplay.

i just ordered 4x noctua fans to install and so i will do some similar testing with those and see that the temps are like and report back about that.

NO FANS 5 HOURS OF VAMPIRE by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

I also have one other video I made "unboxing" and showing the case before building.

Hi guys its been a while but I do have something new to share.

back when i built my last machine i was looking at the lian li pc 08 case and i liked it a lot, but ultimatly decided to go with super super understated and plain (the PCaq41). but i have always liked nice tempered glass cases, and i have always loved LIAN LI in general. so i recently case across some reviews of the new(ish) 011 dynamic designed by der8auer i got very excited because it looked like exactly what i like/wanted. a good dual chamber setup with a smart layout, nice tempered glass windows, not too huge etc.  this is not completely done yet because i am going to add noctua cooling fans for case cooling (probably 3 intake on the side and 1 exhaust at the time) and i have a few hardware updates i want to do including adding more ram and another hard drive for storage nothing too exciting. the main stuff 6700K, GTX 1070 is still working well for most new games even though they are about 3 years old at this point so I will hang onto those for a while.

this is not a completely new build. for now i am moving my build from my old LIAN LI PC-A41 case into the new 011 DYNAMIC case.
I have a few upgrades the i want to do soon including RAM, storage, and I will be adding noctua cooling fans for case cooling. there may be more upgrades coming as well, including maybe a corsair commander pro and LED strips. i want to have full control over the fans and lighting so i like the idea of the commander.

current specifications
Intel  i7 6700K
Noctua NH-C14S
ASRock Z170M Extreme4
HyperX Fury 16GB 2666MHz
Seasonic SS-660XP2 Platinum 660W
ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Turbo
Samsung 850 EVO 500GB
Seagate BarraCuda 4TB
Lian Li PC-O11DW 011 Dynamic

IMG_1707 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

DSC05736edit2 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

DSC05726edit2 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

DSC05738edit2_1 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

Here are a couple videos I made today on the system.

On October 19, 2016 at 9:09 AM, flameprincess2000 said:

Tomb Raider was another one of those games.. I can't even max it at 1080p

yes it doesn't seem very efficient. most other modern games run well at 4k resolution and ultra settings on my 1070 so i am pleased with it and i don't really feel i need to get a second card. i was played witcher 3 today and it was at about 30-40 frames but its playable. crisis 3 doesn't quite run smoothly at maxed settings/4k but it is really good looking haha 

i have a single 1070 right now and i get solid frame rates on most games at 4k res. not sure abt ubisoft games specifically. i know rise of tomb raider is pretty demanding. 

love the window in the top/front. makes me slightly regret my descision to not get a lian li pc 08

very pretty

1 hour ago, AlienALX said:

It's called a Magicforce.

 

A while back on Amazon they were selling them for £29.99. They came from a Massdrop, which was £60. I forget the name of the switches now but they're quite well known and a great alternative to Cherry. However, obviously it didn't come like that. The keys are Doubleshot "Miami" and cost me £45, more than the keyboard itself

 

Still, even at £75 it's still half of the price of the Razer I had (Razer mech switches), and the thing is I have kinda realised in my old age just how little of a keyboard I actually use. I was so sick of enormous great keyboards on my desk because I'm an electronics enthusiast (modding, making lights etc) and having a huge great keyboard was a pain. This one? I just shove it up toward the monitor and I have heaps of space in which to work.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Qisan-Mechanical-Keyboard-68-Keys-Magicforce/dp/B01ABUJ0FY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1476032000&sr=8-1&keywords=magicforce

 

Seems Amazon USA have them too ! Here are the keys

 

https://www.amazon.com/Taihao-Doubleshot-Anti-Biosis-Mechanical-Keyboards/dp/B0176HJD48/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1476032030&sr=8-2&keywords=miami+keycap

 

Though they are not stocked any more. I ordered my set three times from various sellers and the first two waited about a week and sent me a refund. I finally found them after about three months.

 

Did I ever mention it sucks to be a 70s kid who grew up in the 80s?

Nice. I like it. It reminds me a little bit of the Happy Hacking Pro 2

I had a Mionix black switch that I got for free (from my dad) when he replaced it. its good but it has a full number pad and takes up a lot of space on my desk. I have two computers on there so I would like something smaller. I had my eye on the Filco 87 key stealth for a while now and it was on sale at NCIX just last week. I almost hit buy but it was sold out by the time I did!   So Im just sticking with my current keyboard for now.

nice to see a build with the x99 taichi! when i saw the graphics on that i didn't know how i felt about it but it is unique for sure. interested to see how this turns out

I havent looked through this entire thread yet but I like this idea!! lots of pictures are always good.  

Also what keyboard is that!   

Here are some temperatures (case closed) 

After 30 minutes of OCCT 

30 minutes of CPU and GPU folding

28 minutes ago, AlienALX said:

Fan splitter looks terrible. Braid it Andre !

 

Absolutely love the rest, which is why that fan splitter sticks out so badly. I would also have had that thing ripped and stripped and had the entire inside powder coated. I can't believe that Lian Li are still making cases that way.

 

Great cable management as ever

Ah, I knew you guys would hate that! I just threw it in temporarily I have multiple of the braided Noctua splitters around but couldn't find one just at that moment.

Here we go

I know a lot of people don't like the bare inside but I actually like unpainted aluminum. I would have loved to have used to Silver model of the M25 case I was looking at if the layout wasn't weird and the silver was actually available! The case I did use comes in Silver, too but they didn't have it in stock. I am happy with the black finish on the outside and silver inside though.

I went in and flipped the power supply over. 

Now the "platinum" graphic is showing on the side instead of the tech info 

This also takes care of the modular connections being so close to the fan that you cannot even plug them in or take them out without unscrewing the power supply 

And the Seasonic is right side up at the back now (not a big deal of course but just a note)

And here are a couple more shots I took as I was taking the side panel off to do this. 

I also took the sticker off the side of the hard drive (this picture was before I did that) 

I have not looked into putting a little shield on the sides of the power LED so it doesn't leak out of the case but I will do that soon.

Thanks for the feedback, John!

4 minutes ago, Lystfiskern said:

Well... Truth be told Im not a big fan of the bare aluminium inside, but somehow this still came out pretty nice with the fan mounted under the cpu heatsink. What i would change tho is to mount the PSU fan up for a much cleaner look, oh and that barcode stcker on your HDD gotta go. I would also to something about that power LED , some sort of shield to prevent the light leak? Great build Andre. Let us know how it performs now it is in the proper case.

Hi John!

You're right I am going to flip the PSU around I'm sure it will breath fine that way since there is some space between the PSU and the ceiling of the case.  It will also solve the issue of the cables being so close to the fan  since the cables are positioned towards the non fan side of the PSU.  Ill get in there with some goo-gone and take off the HDD sticker! and Ill check out the LED situation as well!  Thanks for the input  

My case came in on Monday, which was early because it was estimated to be Tues or Wed. And my plans on Monday were postponed so I was able to go home that evening and put the system together.

First some pictures of the case.

The front of the case does have a very nice clean look. It does have two optical bays, but the bay covers are also made of real aluminum that matches well.  The entire front panel is made from a high quality solid piece of aluminum, as is the rest of the case. 

Around the side of the case is more handsome aluminum. Very minimal and clean looking. The intakes for the front fan are very nicely machined.

The right side of the case has the USB and audio ports.  These are attached to the inside front of the case (not the part of the front that comes off) which is good, and the ports are screwed in securely so it does not flex or feel flimsy when you plug things into it.

The front panel snaps off to reveal the front intake fans. They have their own filters and as you can see the fan intake area is completed open.  I remember back in the old days people would take a dremel and cut out the fan mesh area in the case for extra air flow, so it is nice to see this done from the factory here.

Around the back you can see a nice simple layout that I think is appealing. The inside is not painted which I actually like in this case for a sleeper PC.  The PSU is mounted either at the top to allow for CPU cooler up to 145mm, or it can be mounted at the middle and that allows for a 240mm AIO water loop.   There is a nice mesh plate that will cover whichever slot you do not use for the PSU, as well as some nice quality vented PCI slot covers. 

At the top the nice aluminum finishing continues. the stock configuration comes with one fan installed and one of the fan holes blocked off with a nice plate that matches the finish of the case, just like the optical bay covers.  The only thing is that they do not include a second mesh cover incase you do want to mount a rad, or a second cover incase you want to block off both fan mounts...

The bottom of the case includes another optional fan mounting point, this one does not come with a fan, but it does come with a nice fine filter just like the front ones to decrease dust making its way in through the bottom passively. 

Inside at the front there are 5 very high quality HDD/SSD mounting trays that are made of aluminum just like everything else in the case, and all of them can be individually removed with thumb screws. I was wondering how sturdy they would feel since they are only attached at the back and they are all individual not part of a cage with multiple drives, but they are very strong when installed.

One of the only aspects of the design that I don't really like is the way the top fan is positioned.  The maximum PSU length (if you have a top fan installed is 160mm, which is fine because that is how long my PSU is, but the fan is very close to the PSU to the point where if it is a modular PSU you may have to plug in any cables you need in the top row of cables on the PSU before you put the PSU in because its so close to the fan. If you had a non modular PSU then it would be fine.  The is basically because of the space allocated to the optical bays, which I don't plan on using and dont need. But I understand if they are going to include optical bays they needed to have space for them.  

DSC00754 by Andre Vautour, on Flickr

As soon as I put the MB in with the fan on the top of the NH-C14s I realized that it was not going to work with the fan in the top position on the heatsink.  The specs list max cooler height as 145mm.  the C14s is 115mm without the fan so add 25mm with the fan on the top and that comes out to 140mm. It looked like the fan was exactly flush with where to side panel would be, so I had to install the fan on the under side of the heatsink. 

I did not get many shots of the individual hardware when I was putting it into the temporary case, so here are a few pictures.

When I was picking out memory it was between the Kingston HyperX and Corsair VLP. I liked the look of the heatsink on the Kingston better so I went with that.  The Corsair was available in 3200MHz for about the same price as the Kingston at 2666MHz, but I am not too worried about that because I dont think memory speed is very important.

The ASRock motherboard has been good so far and I think it is very nice looking. Mostly black with some copper colored heatsinks that work well with the Noctua colors. the chipset heatsink is a bit plain looking but that is okay.

Interesting to see power supplies are now positioning the graphics on the side and the back for fan up mounting, which is something I have been a fan of when the power supply is in the bottom of the case, but in this case it will be in the top so it doesn't matter.  I have it fan facing down in the top of the case and the seasonic logo on the back is upside down

The back of the case is well laid out for something that is fairly small. There is only one rubber grommet for cables, but as you can see if you remove some of the HDD trays that will open up additional openings that you can use to pass cables through.  I didn't go too crazy with the cables at the back this time, but there aren't that many cables overall so it's not too wild back here. There is a good amount of space behind the motherboard I would say at least a full inch if not more.  There is a nice large opening for heatsink backplates and a large passthrough for the 8pin power cable for the motherboard. There is not any cable tie down points, but I just added a single stick on tie down point for the MB power cable just to keep it in place.  The side panel went on easily with no resistance and no forcing cables down at all.  

Here it is the inside chamber. I'm really happy with how it turned out. everything looks pretty clean and I like it a lot.

The power LED does shine through the optical bay covers and the side air intakes a bit, but not a big deal. It is also a very bright LED so at night when it is sleeping and the power LED is flashing it lights up the room. ASRock has a feature called goodnight mode that turns off the power LED when the computer is sleeping so that takes care of that minor problem.

With all the doors on it is nice and clean and it is quiet even with the stock fans. I might replace those with noctua fans later on but the stock fans are pretty good.

Update: The computer will sleep now and I didn't change anything, so I'm not sure what happened...The only thing I did was try to update the BIOS with the live update feature in the BIOS but it said it had an error downloading files, so I dont think it actually updated.

Hey all,

I have a new PC that I made with an ASRock Z170M Extreme 4 motherboard. Everything works well except when I try to put the computer to sleep in windows (windows 10) the only thing that happens is the monitor will lose the signal but the computer won't sleep, all fans etc keep running.  Has anyone had any experience with this? I looked everywhere I could in the BIOs and I did't see any settings for it. The only thing I could find was a "deep sleep" mode, but I tried enabling that and it did not make any difference. 

Any info would be helpful! thank you.

here are some CPU temperatures with the NH-C14s. just at stock settings no OC at the moment.  also i noticed that in windows task manager and in CPUz it shows the CPU at 4GHz but it doesn't show it turboing up to 4.2GHz? the only place it seems to show the GPU at 4.2 is in HWMonitor.

3 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Mmmmmm...so you built a sleeper PC for now eh?  

 

On a side note, any reason you went with a blower style 1070? Since airflow shouldn't be an issue with the A41 (2 intake and one out-take should be enough no?).

true, the airflow in the case should be pretty good. i have had internal exhaust style GPUs in the past and the overall temps have always been fine, but i just figured it won't hurt to have the GPU exhaust out the back. if anything it should help keep case temp lower and maybe the case fans and cpu can fan all run slower.  I'm sure either style would have been fine, though. the 1070 is not any louder than any of the cards i have had in the past though. it is quieter than my last card that i had in my cube (the mini itx size 970) 

hey guys

i got all of my hardware on thursday, except for the case which will not be here till next week because its shipping from the US.

but i thew it together in an old case i had in the basement just so i could set everything up and start using it right away.

here are some photos, nothing special, i will have more photos when i start building in the actual case!

of course i had to take a picture of all the boxes 

i did not get to take glamor shots of all the hardware (i will do this when i build it in the real case later) but i did get a shot of the motherboard, which i think is very attractive. the copper heatsinks look very nice in real life.

the graphics card has a nice subtle aesthetic to it and i think the glowing asus logo is a nice touch. although you can see the LEDS glowing between the PCB and the cooler shroud 

as always the noctua NH-C14s cooler is extremely quiet and performs impressively well (more details on this later)

here it is setup in a stripped down case from the 1990s, a taste of whats to come

3 minutes ago, alpenwasser said:

Oy, Andre, you're still alive! Long time no see.

 

I'm quite liking the A41 to be honest. Can't say much on the rest of the hardware though, I haven't really been keeping up (still rocking my LGA1366 Xeons  ).

Just now, Lystfiskern said:

Looking forward to this. Have u considered this for grahics? http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-6278-KR

Hi guys!

I must say even though I use macs on a daily basis and I like mac OS etc. every so often I still get this strong desire to play around with hardware.  

I quite like the A41 too! I hope I do because I just ordered one! something about a very plain looking case with powerful hardware inside is appealing to me right now. I don't need a ton of LEDs and flashy stuff.

John, I'm sure that hybrid card is good but I have never really liked AIO loops that much -- You know me and my air cooling  Plus the Asus blower card is on sale right now and the reviews say that it is actually pretty quiet to I'm not too worried about it.

I don't have any pictures of the hardware yet but here's a couple of my desk including my fairly new dell 4K display. I know that shelf behind is kind of ugly but its also kind of rugged and its useful for putting computers and parts on so my entire desk is more clear. 

After more consideration of various moderation small cases I am now leaning more towards the PC-A41.

Pros

It is very basic looking (which is exactly what I want) but still seems to be well built from nice aluminum.

It checks all the boxes I'm looking for in terms of layout and cooling compatibility. All the HDD tays are removable with thumb screws, so I can remove the ones I'm not using for better airflow. It has 2X 140mm fans at the front 1X 120mm top and 1X at he bottom that is optional. the CPU mount is not blocked by the PSU, so I can install a good cooler (up to 145mm)   and it's not completely riveted together (roof is removable with screws, and the HDD trays aren't riveted like the M25, font panel also removable)

It also has some space behind the MB so I can do some better cable management vs the M25 which has no space behind MB.

And it is cheaper than the M25.

Cons

It is not as sleek looking as the M25 from the outside since it is not one continuous piece of aluminum on the top/font/bottom like the M25.

It has 2X optical bays which I do not want or need.

But it seems like the pros outweigh the cons here. 

I can install a Micro or Mini ATX board in this, so I figured I might as well go Micro and get those extra memory slots and PCI slots. 

I am considering 

ASRock Z170M Extreme4

GIGABYTE Z170MX-Gaming 5

They are both similar in price but I am leaning towards the ASRock because I have never been a fan of "gaming" branding, or the red color scheme of the Gigabyte. Not that it matters much since there are no windows.

I have also decided that a blower style GPU would be best since it will further help with the cooling. So I am looking at the ASUS GeForce GTX 1070 8GB Turbo Edition since it is well priced right now and the cooler is nice and minimal looking. 

For the CPU cooler I'm thinking about the Noctua NH-C14S this time. I used the NH-L12 in my last build and it was impressive with my i5, but since I have the space this time for something larger and I'm doing an i7 I feel it makes sense to go with the NH-C14S.

I am confident that with the Noctua cooler, blower style GPU and available case fan options in this case I will be able to produce a system that is very quiet, relatively cool, in addition to being very plain looking from the outside.