Wednesday, December 18, 2024

new medium sized gaming system in a form T1 case


 The Graphic card side is shown here. I used a 2 fan pny rtx4070 after removing the shroud, and cable tying 2 noctua 120 * 15 mm fans to the heat sink.


The fans are a few millimeters from the mesh when the case is closed, but there is no rattling sound. They left enough room at the top of the case for a thin all in one water cooler, but, for this low wattage system, I used 2 phanteks t30 fans. These are the best 120 mm fans that i have found. they move a lot of air, make almost no sound, and are adjustable to low medium or high on each fan.



The motherboard side, with the asrock a620i mb mounted with the amd 7600x processor. cooling the processor is the noctua L12 cooler. I had to try mounting it several ways to get the cooler to fit in the very restrictive case. 

 

This processor is impressing the heck out of me, and games well better than the intel 13600 KF, using much less power, and producing much much less heat. I actually tried the intel processor in this case, but it could not be air cooled.

 This low end motherboard is very impressive for 120 bucks, with a fixed io shield, 2 m.2 slots, and a somewhat beefy power solution for the cpu. It has 3 full sized fan ports, so you dont need those stupid little dongles that plug into the miniature ports on high end mbs. And, there are no daughter boards poking up from the board to cause issues and block airflow. There is one m.2 slot on the front, with a nice heat sink, and the second is on the back, with no heat sink. This is much better than the stack of 2 m.2 drives with their complicated attachment that you see on most boards now.

 

The board is free of rgb, as is the case. I do not understand the rgb craze, perhaps because i am 66. i do not want a light show in my case. I want a nearly silent gaming computer that stays super cool. 

for drawbacks, this motherboard lacks usb 4, or even fast usb 3 ports. there is a single usb-c port, and it is slow as well. Otherwise, i have no complaints.

 

The power supply is the corsair 750 sff. It is spaced out from the center, so that the hot air that blows through the back of the 4070 has a nice way to depart. also, if the fan operates, it gets cool air right through the mesh, and not a mix of cool outside air and hot air from inside the case. Of course, this psu is not working hard with a 200 watt gpu, and a 75 - 100 watt cpu. So, it mostly operates in it's fan-less mode. 

 

I do not want to give the impression that i am only doing crossword puzzles and looking at you tube videos on this machine. I am playing doom 2016, cyberpunk 2077 etc on a 360 hz 2k monitor. I am downloading large files and making large file transfer, even while gaming. The processor and the video card have no trouble with these tasks, and so far, i believe that there is no reason to upgrade the amd 7600x until i get a more powerful video card. I do intend to eventually upgrade to the 9800x3d and something like the upcoming rtx 5080.

 

 but, for now, i am gaming at around 200 fps, and it is not a good deal to spend 4 times as much to get up to 250 fps.



Monday, December 9, 2024

trying to build a nearly impossible computer system. very small, very quiet, very low power consumption and nontheless not too bad for gaming and photo editing.



 Here is my first attempt. The equipment is:  

hdplex 500 watt atx power supply, 

noctua L12s cooler,

gigabyte b550 itx motherboard,

amd 5600G processor,


gigabyte low profile rtx 4060 gpu.

 

In this iteration of the design, I have tried to replace the stock fans of the low profile graphics card with larger noctua fans. this did not lower the temperature or the noise level, so i later went back to the stock shroud and cooler. 

The case for the early prototype is actually part of the shroud for a trace sw4024 inverter.


With either cooling solution, the low profile graphics card was fantastic in this build. both small and quiet, as well as gaming nearly as well as the much larger rtx 4070 for older games. For video playback, the 4060 does the rtx super-resolution quite well. It should be noted that super-resolution would cut out when i undervolted the card to 0.90 or 0.95 volts instead of the 1.1 volts that it goes to under load. One has to run this tiny card full bore to enjoy all of the rtx enhancements. It still uses as little as 100 watts , even when gaming.


The older amd 5600G processor can not keep up with the more modern graphics card, so there are very long load times when the scene changes in a game. To fix this, I ordered an inexpensive am5 motherboard, a amd 7600x processor, and the newer ddr5 memory. I hope that these parts will better compliment the tiny graphics powerhouse.


I should mention that although the 4060 was received poorly because it has little memory and a low power limit, this low profile model is quite at home in a small form factor gaming build. I highly recommend this gpu for it's low noise, low heat, and it's more than adequate gaming at 1080 and 1440 P.


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I was a traveling climbing shoe repairman. Now, i take care of remote property, and attempt to create a new kind of lifestyle using portable buildings with solar power and passive solar heating.