Cooler Master NC100 chassis | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net KitGuru.net - Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards Wed, 29 Mar 2023 23:06:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-KITGURU-Light-Background-SQUARE2-32x32.png Cooler Master NC100 chassis | KitGuru https://www.kitguru.net 32 32 Intel NUC 9 Extreme Water Cooling Project – Part 3 https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/james-dawson/intel-nuc-9-extreme-water-cooling-project-part-3/ https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/james-dawson/intel-nuc-9-extreme-water-cooling-project-part-3/#respond Thu, 11 Feb 2021 13:14:09 +0000 https://www.kitguru.net/?p=503941 It's time to start building our Intel NUC 9 Extreme modded system!

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In part three of our Intel NUC 9 Extreme water cooling project, we move to the test build phase to ensure that all of our custom loop components will fit inside the tiny Cooler Master NC100 chassis. There isn't much space inside this case but we manage to fit everything in with some careful deliberation… and a bit of physical persuasion.

To kick off the third video in this series we take a closer look at the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition graphics we plan to use in the final build. There isn't much footage published of the disassembly of these cards or how to fit a water block to them, so we run through the process of installing the brand new Alphacool Eisblock GPX-N water block that is specific to this card.

Disassembling the card before installing the water block gives us the chance to take a closer inspection of the board layout. It is interesting to see how compact the graphics card is once the stock heatsink is removed and how heavily populated with components the rear of the PCB is. Removing the stock cooler also significantly reduces the length of the card which creates approximately 80mm extra space inside our Cooler Master NC100 chassis, which is exactly what is needed.

This increase in space inside the chassis will allow us to fit a compact pump/res combo, there isn't enough space for a traditional style pump res that could normally be installed inside an ATX desktop system, but thankfully Alphacool came up trumps again with one of their ES Reservoirs designed for 1U server chassis, which looks ideal to fit in the new space we have created behind the graphics card.

The idea was to hard mount the 1U reservoir to the power supply casing with screws or bolts, but upon closer inspection the power supply PCB is very close to the steel casing which will make this quite difficult. Alphacool supply some self-adhesive velcro mounting pads with the ES Reservoir, I wasn’t expecting much from these but they actually came in very handy, and the pump seems to be securely mounted using this method.

After mounting the pump in position, we turned our attention to the radiator, which was always going to be somewhat of a compromise, right from the beginning we knew that it might be impossible to install the radiator inside the case. We opted for a 2 x 92mm radiator initially, mounted externally on the chassis top panel. With a bit of modding to the top panel, the 2 x 92mm radiator is in place, we also cut out most of the top panel grill to provide undisturbed airflow between the fans and the radiator.

With the radiator installed, the rest of the system is piped up ready for filling, everything seems to fit inside the case well. Surprisingly, it wasn’t as difficult as expected to connect up the tubing, the extra space inside the chassis created by removing the NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element fan shroud, the stock GPU cooler as well as using flexible soft tubing was a real bonus.

Once everything was connected up and the system filled up with fluid, we ran a thermal performance test to see if the i9-9980HK CPU temperature improved with the Alphacool water block zip-tied to the stock vapour chamber. Our tests show that the CPU temperature is reduced by 5-7⁰C on average compared with the stock heatsink setup, but more notable is the reduction in noise. The radiator fans didn't run past 1100RPM during the CPU stress test, which meant that the system was very quiet, the only noise we could hear was coming from the pump which is running at its maximum speed for now.

Though thermal performance hasn’t improved by a huge amount yet, the reduction in noise is very promising and it gives us hope that our own solid copper heat spreader will improve thermals and noise levels further in the final stages of the project.

Find out more here:

INTEL INNOVATION: intel.com/innovation

VISIT INTEL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7SjrXVXAj8m8BLgzh6dGA

VISIT INTEL TECHNOLOGY:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9tBCeHdBG13If451X7FRw

GHOST CANYON: https://simplynuc.co.uk/ghost-canyon/

SCAN: https://www.scan.co.uk/shops/intel/ghost-canyon-nuc

EBUYER: https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Barebones/Intel

KitGuru says: Are you guys enjoying the project so far? Make sure you keep an eye on the site for the next instalment. In the next video, we have case mods and cable upgrades planned as well as other tinkering and fine-tuning of the setup.

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Intel NUC 9 Extreme Water Cooling Project – Part 2 https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/james-dawson/intel-nuc-9-extreme-water-cooling-project-part-2/ https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/james-dawson/intel-nuc-9-extreme-water-cooling-project-part-2/#respond Wed, 03 Feb 2021 12:04:10 +0000 https://www.kitguru.net/?p=503150 Let's design a custom CPU block for Intel's NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element!

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In the second part of our Intel NUC 9 Extreme water cooling project, we run through our ideas and detail how the custom water cooling solution for the Compute Element card will be designed and made. A CAD drawing of a copper heat spreader will be needed for manufacturing, so I contact KitGuru's resident engineer, Luke Hill, to help out before mocking up the design using the stock heatsink with some Alphacool CPU water blocks.

We have a few ideas about how to approach the custom water block for the NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element. Due to the lack of useable space on the board around the CPU, we are rather limited in what we can do. Our initial idea is to make a copper heat spreader, similar to what you would find integrated into a desktop CPU. The stock heatsink uses a large copper base plate with a combined vapour chamber and an aluminium fin stack heatsink cooled by a small fan.

The plan is to replicate part of the stock heatsink, mainly the baseplate but using a solid copper heat spreader design rather than a vapour chamber, retain the stock mounting solution and backplate while shortening the copper base plate to cover the CPU and VRM only. The chipset will be passively cooled using an aluminium heatsink and an off the shelf Alphacool CPU block will be mounted directly to our custom copper heat spreader.

For this, we will need the copper heat spreader manufactured by CNC machining, most likely a milling machine, so Luke pops in virtually to discuss whether the idea will work and to help out with the CAD drawing that will be needed to get our custom heat spreader and custom water block upper mounting bracket manufactured.

Both Luke and myself agree that the copper heat spreader idea should work in principle but we have a backup option in case it isn't successful, in the form of some small water blocks from Koolance. These blocks should allow us to perform direct die cooling, however, these blocks are not easy to obtain in the UK, shipping costs are high and could potentially take a while to reach us and, of course, it would be cool to manufacture a solution of our own even if it does not work as hoped.

With all this in mind, now is a good time to test whether our custom copper CPU heat spreader will work in the real world, so I proceed to mock up the installation using the stock heatsink, an Alphacool NexXxos XP3 Light CPU block, zip ties and some creativity. Desoldering the copper VRM heatsink extension was necessary and with a layer of thermal compound applied to the mating surface, the Alphacool block fits in position. With two angled fittings installed there is about 1mm clearance between the fittings and the back of the RTX 3080 graphics card which is tight but means that our solution will physically fit.

In the next video, we will take a look at fitting the water block to the graphics card, figure out where to mount the pump/res and decide on the radiator size, placement and work out how to route the tubing inside this tiny chassis. Case mods will be required to fit all the water cooling hardware, we will look at this in more detail during future videos, as well as adding some custom side panel designs, acrylic and our own lighting.

Find out more here:

INTEL INNOVATION: intel.com/innovation

VISIT INTEL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7SjrXVXAj8m8BLgzh6dGA

VISIT INTEL TECHNOLOGY:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9tBCeHdBG13If451X7FRw

GHOST CANYON: https://simplynuc.co.uk/ghost-canyon/

SCAN: https://www.scan.co.uk/shops/intel/ghost-canyon-nuc

EBUYER: https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Barebones/Intel

KitGuru says: The layout of the water cooling will start to become clear in upcoming videos so, if this is something you are interested in make sure you stay tuned to our YouTube channel for upcoming videos. You won't want to miss seeing how this ultra small form factor water cooling project turns out!

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Intel NUC 9 Extreme Water Cooling Project – Part 1 https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/james-dawson/intel-nuc-9-extreme-water-cooling-project-part-1/ https://www.kitguru.net/desktop-pc/james-dawson/intel-nuc-9-extreme-water-cooling-project-part-1/#respond Thu, 28 Jan 2021 14:19:55 +0000 https://www.kitguru.net/?p=501684 Can we watercool one of the smallest mini-PCs around?

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To kick off a new year of modding projects we have partnered with Intel to build one of the smallest high-end water-cooled gaming systems possible. We have previously received numerous comments asking for a small form factor mod project, and that is exactly what is going on here with the smallest of small form factor desktop systems.

Timestamps:

  • 00:00 Video start
  • 00:03 A little history
  • 01:29 Project details and specs – Challenge accepted
  • 03:04 Plan for the first video
  • 03:45 NUC 9 Extreme compute element card in detail
  • 07:03 The naked compute element up close – not a lot of space to W/C!
  • 09:02 Mod plans for the case – without increasing size
  • 10:00 The Cooler Master case – stripping it down
  • 12:42 Power supply discussion
  • 14:54 Stock form BUILD for reference readings/power draw
  • 20:00 Removing the power extension lead, cable check and accessory box
  • 21:22 Installing the board and PSU
  • 25:04 Installing the graphics card and finalising the ‘reference’ build
  • 28:12 Build complete (only kidding!)
  • 29:10 Minor setbacks – the reason we do a test build FIRST!
  • 31:00 Checking PSU pin outs – cable discussion and modding
  • 47:17 Installing the new modded Seasonic PSU
  • 48:53 Almost back together – front panel on bench grinder
  • 50:15 Boot test with reference build
  • 51:50 XPG drive test – still got problems!
  • 53:42 Updating the BIOS and our findings
  • 55:57 Testing the stock system, results
  • 58:06 Load results for future watercooling compares
  • 59:06 3DMark – CPU/GPU clock and temps
  • 1:01:40 Thoughts before we start the watercooling mods – troubleshooting

Intel got in touch with KitGuru and challenged us with an interesting idea of making a custom NUC 9 Extreme gaming system. We love a challenge at KitGuru, so not only did we accept, but we also want to take this build one step further by adding water cooling to the mix. Since there is no “off the shelf” water cooling solution for the Intel NUC 9 Compute Element so we will have to make or adapt our own.

In the first video for this new project, we take a look at the NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element card in more detail and check out the Cooler Master NC100 chassis that will be used to house the system. An initial build of the system in its stock form is needed to measure the CPU and GPU performance and running temperature before water cooling, however, we ran into some issues with the Cooler Master V650 SFX power supply so adapting a Seasonic SGX-650 unit was the first mod needed to get the system up and running.

Test System Specification:

  • CPU: Intel Core i9-9980HK
  • Motherboard: Intel NUC 9 Extreme Compute Element board
  • Memory: 32GB (2 x 16GB modules) G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-3200MHz (XMP) SO-DIMM
  • Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition
  • 1st Storage device: ADATA 2TB XPG SX8200 Pro PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
  • 2nd Storage device: ADATA 2TB XPG SX8200 Pro PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
  • 3rd Storage device: 512GB Plextor M9PeGN PCIe® Gen3x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
  • Case: Cooler Master NC100
  • Cooling: Stock / Modified Alphacool Custom water cooling with flexible tubing
  • System Fans: Cooler Master
  • Power Supply: Cooler Master V650 SFX / Seasonic Focus SGX-650

Seasonic doesn’t make an SFX power supply specifically designed to fit inside the Cooler Master NC100 or even a one that is intended to be compatible with the NUC 9 Compute Element board, so testing pinouts and modifying cables were necessary to make the Seasonic SGX-650 work with the NUC 9 Extreme. As well as modify the cables, I also flipped the power supply 180-degrees so that the fan no pulls in air from outside of the system via the vented side case side panel which should give us more space to play with when it comes to fitting a pump/res combo for water cooling.

To ensure that we have data to compare whether our water cooling efforts are having a positive effect on thermals and system performance, we measured the performance of the system in its stock configuration. The Core i9-9980HK process that is soldered to the NUC 9 Compute Element board is essentially a laptop CPU with short and long duration power limits that determine clock frequency over time. CPU boost frequency is also affected by thermals so hopefully, our water cooling solution will significantly improve performance and allow us to raise the long duration power limit.

A series of stress tests on the CPU, gaming benchmarks and 3D stress test will be carried out on the system with the stock CPU and GPU thermal solutions. The same series of test will then be run on the system with the custom water cooling installed, to determine whether the new liquid cooling solution improves thermal performance and boost frequency, and therefore improving performance, which is our aim for this project.

Find out more here:

INTEL INNOVATION: intel.com/innovation

VISIT INTEL: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk7SjrXVXAj8m8BLgzh6dGA

VISIT INTEL TECHNOLOGY:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_9tBCeHdBG13If451X7FRw

GHOST CANYON: https://simplynuc.co.uk/ghost-canyon/

SCAN: https://www.scan.co.uk/shops/intel/ghost-canyon-nuc

EBUYER: https://www.ebuyer.com/store/Components/cat/Barebones/Intel

KitGuru says: Water-cooled small form factor builds are always challenging, the NUC 9 takes small form factor to another level which makes this project even more interesting. Make sure you stay tuned to our YouTube channel in the coming weeks and months to see how this project pans out.

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