NCASE M1 v5 Build

For those of you that might be interested.
I recently did a build in the NCASE M1. It was an absolute heap of fun and I'm really happy with the results.The case is absolutely awesome - I take my hat off to the designers as the fit, finish and forethought is impressive.
Yes I candied out with some RGB strips and made use of the motherboard RGB pins. I actually blocked off the light coming from the MB itself because it was overkill. I've tried to still keep things somewhat understated..

Full Gallery here - http://imgur.com/gallery/AFjxJ
Appologies for not embedding this, the Imgur code seems to not be working in this forum



SPECS:

SYSTEM
Intel 7700k @ 5.0Ghz
EVGA 1080ti FE
ROG Strix Z270i Gaming
G.Skill 16GB (2x8GB) 3600 @ 4000Mhz

STORAGE
1x Samsung 950 Pro 256 nvme
2 x Sandisk x300 1tb
1 x Crucial 1tb m.2 (inside 2.5" case)
1 x Samsung 4tb 15mm 2.5" HDD

OTHER
Corsair H100i v2
Corsair SF600 SFX
2 x Noctua 120mm
2 x Cougar Vortex PWM 120
Phanteks RGB strip

 

That is a sweet build, nice job.

 

Very Nice indeed. Love that case.

 

That's a cute build and packing some serious power! Amazing how small the case is with everything in there. I took a look at your pics in your gallery, does it get hot inside the case for the motherboard, because it looked like there was no space for air flow - looked like all space taken by the components and the leftover cabling, etc? I'm sure your CPU stays cool due to water cooling & the air being pulled through the radiator from outside the case, and it looks like your GPU can stay cool as you have intake fans pointed directly at the GPU, but what about motherboard temps, 'cause case airflow looks a little dodgy?

The good thing about that small build, you can have it on the table looking good & not taking up too much room - I have to have mine under the desk, although from the outset I set out with the function over form premise.

 

Cheers bro. Yeah the cabling unfortunately is about as good as I can get it (visually). It's hard to see in the pictures which are rather unglamorous (and yes dodgy) from a aesthetic cabling perspective, but the fans have about 1-1.5" of unrestricted clearance except for the AIO tubing and that 1 Sata cable drooping down from over the top. I tried to prioritize this for turbulence and acoustics sake as well.

It's good you recognized MB temps as a possibly a problematic area. Before I put this together I was concerned that the MB might not get enough cooling - partially why I put the fan on the inside in pull. Fortunately the temps are surprisingly good on the MB. I've not seen them venture above the 50s and are usually in the high 30s low 40s. I was also worried since there is no exhaust fan but I'm happy to report it doesn't need it.
I'm also suprised that the 1080ti holds boost at 1847 with only 49% fan speed.
I thought I'd be looking at getting a Artic Accelero Xtreme III but it seems unnecessary. I put metal on the GPU too so that might have had something to do with it.

Let me know if you want me to run and stress/ temp tests for science sake

 

Your motherboard temperature is probably indicative of the air temperature within the case, but the good thing is that your CPU & GPU don't rely on air case temperature air for their intakes, so that's all good for them - and your motherboard temps are not dangerous, so that's good. My motherboard temperature is 34 degC as I type this, and the highest I've ever seen it during gaming is 45 degC, but the difference is I have loads of space in the case & it's more important for me because my GPU relies on that air inside the case for cooling (the CPU can suck in a good portion of air through the ventilation holes in the top of the case).

I don't think you should change your GPU cooling away from the stock blower design, because you want to vent most of that heat out of the case. Oh right, you used liquid ultra metal paste for the GPU? It would have been interesting to have seen a before & after testing with stock paste vs liquid metal. I repasted my GTX 1070 with Kryonaut when I modded the back plate to aid in cooling. I do have quite a bit of Liquid Ultra left over from my CPU delid, so that could be something I'd consider using on my GPU, but I think I remember some @Mr. Fox tests where he found that liquid ultra didn't improve GPU cooling efficiency vs non-conductive pastes? His tests are laptop based, I wonder if liquid ultra on GPU would show bigger performance benefit? Have you tried overclocking your GPU, would be interesting to see where you could end up? Oh, and for your liquid ultra on your GPU, what precautions did you take around the GPU core to protect some of those parts from any leakage of liquid ultra?

 

@Robbo99999 yeah bro, I wish I was more scientific with measuring the GPU improvements. I wasn't too bothered because I've also found over the years Liquid Metal to not make any meaningful difference on the GPU. If I've ever had any gains with it, it's been too inconsequential to bother recommending. I've heard people on YouTube claim they reduce temps by 10 degrees with Pasqal, then the other goofs who spread on the core and forget to spread on the Heatsink claim they only get 1 degree reductions. In all fairness it's probably somewhere in between.
I want to say that GPU fan speed was around 70% before and around 49% now, which is what I've noticed, but I can't say that that with any accuracy. I'll start testing what kind of overclock I can get soon. I'm going to set my fan limit to around 70% - anything beyond that enters hairdryer territory on the blower cards.I'd be happy if I can get 2000 Ghz.
Applying the metal, all I did was cover the little metal parts (capacitors?) around the GPU core with heat resistance tape. I'd say it's worth doing if even just for kicks. There's nothing to loose and the card barely has to be disassembled to repaste.

 

Yeah, you don't want it sounding like a hair dryer, so good call on the 70% fan limit. Yeah, it's a fairly simple operation repasting the card, and I've got some Kapton tape to cover parts of the GPU. So it's better to put liquid metal on the heatsink as well as the chip? Do you put the thinnest layer possible on the heatsink, I'm thinking you would spread it as thin as possible on the heatsink? Is there a different technique or anything to know about applying liquid metal to the heatsink that's different to applying it to the chip? I've applied liquid metal to a CPU chip before (my CPU during Delid - hardest part was getting the small ball of paste to detach from the syringe!), but never applied it to a metal surface, so want to try & avoid surprises! Not sure if I'm gonna put liquid metal on my GPU, but I'm considering it for now. And you say you saw about a 20% reduction in fan speed going from standard paste to liquid metal, that's a pretty big difference?

Will be interesting to hear how you get on with your overclock, and maybe some Firestrike comparisons.

EDIT: I think the biggest thing that might prevent me from putting liquid metal (CLU) on my GPU is the ease of repasting. I've never had to remove CLU and I've heard accounts of it staining heat sinks & then needed to be polished off. I'm also wondering if it would need to be polished off if repasting later with the same CLU. And then if I choose to go back to Kryonaut for any reason, then I'm thinking heatsink would need to be polished off for max performance. CLU on the heatsink is feeling a little permanent?

 

What benchmark 3dmark11 performance score are you getting with this setup?

 

Hi TBoneSan, what happened, you've not blown up something with your overclocking attempts have you! ;-) Well in all seriousness I hope you haven't, how did it go?

 

Lol sorry I haven't gotten back to you guys. I've been busy with work and all of my have been from my phone. I haven't forgotten about y'all. I just wanted to wait to reply to you with more detail from a keyboard. Will do as soon as I get some home time

 

Hey bud. Yeah so just to clarify. It's really hard to be specific with the gains I had from Metal on the GPU core since I never measured it accurately or at all to begin with. Mainly because GPU Boost 3.0 always has clocks and fans bouncing around based on temp intervals. What I did notice though was that at stock clock on long gaming sessions the fans were around 75% prior. Now they are around 49%. However I can't say emphatically that was due to the Metal because I didn't do due diligence in testing before and after with controlled variables. My hunch says it was down to the metal though.

Regarding getting the ball of liquid to break off from the syringe. I usually aim it at the underside of the IHS in case I overshoot or goof up - I've had CLPro and TG squirt out of the syringe before from accidentally applying too much force. So I usually get acquainted and spread on the bottom of the IHS first.

You can push the ball off with a Qtip too. I personally like the black ones as I find it easier to see the metal. The spread doesn't have to be as thin as possible - you can and I recommend to be a tad more liberal, but it has to be thin enough so that gravity won't allow it to gather and create a pool big enough to roll off. I usually hold the machine up on it's side for a minute or so to get an idea of how it could behave in the worst possible scenario.
If you're really worried about it dripping off on the motherboard, just cover the surrounding areas with heat resistant tape and you'll have piece of mind too. Don't worry about damage too much. Unless you're a like THIS clown (nice find Paps @papasan), which I'm sure you're not, you'll be fine on all your Metal ventures

Nothing worth writing home about yet my friend. Here is a bone stock GPU run with Powersettings maxed. At the CPU at 5Ghz and the Ring at 4.7 and RAM shaved back just under 4000Mhz.
Room for improvement here. But you can also check out the temps.
I also highlighted the MB temps for you @Robbo99999

 

Thanks for the Liquid Metal tips, I'm fairly confident I can use it on the GPU without ruining my GPU, but I do have reservations about it staining & adhering to the copper heatsink - although my curiosity to see how much it would lower temps might get the better of me, I don't know yet!

Your motherboard temps are good!

Have you got any tips on RAM overclocking? I've historically been running with the RAM timings tightened to their max on my XMP 3200Mhz RAM, and recently I tried trading some of the tight timings for an increase in Mhz, but I couldn't really get very far - I only ended up with 3333Mhz and at looser timings (with no performance improvements, some slight negative), I couldn't seem to get any higher in Mhz. I tried increase DRAM voltage in various stages all the way through to 1.5V, but DRAM voltage seemed to make no difference. How far have you overclocked yours from stock, and what specific variables did you find were the key to hitting higher clocks on the RAM?

 

Yeah the temps are surprisingly good all round. The ram I have is 3600. I used only an XMP to get to 4004mhz. But I had to up the voltage to 1.37 to get stability. The next stepping up was aroun 4137 and I couldn't even get the machine to boot with 1.45v. I should have tried 1.5v for science but I probably wouldn't have kept them there because of the diminishing returns.

I'm an absolute RAM timing bimbo though.I might try and tighten the RAM up at 4000Mhz and call it a day.

 

I've spent a lot of time since my last post trying to overclock my RAM further. I have learned that if you want to increase frequency you may need to increase CPU SA and CPU IO volts (which I found to be the case) - I tried to get 3433Mhz stable with this knowledge but it helped to get it only borderline stable. I've now backed it back down to my previous 3200Mhz and manually reduced CPU SA & CPU IO voltage below the levels that the XMP profile auto sets on my motherboard (why use more voltage than necessary), and I've also tightened timings from CL15 down to CL14 by increasing DRAM voltage from 1.36V to 1.4V - currently testing stability with HCI Memtest, looks stable now. I've read a lot about RAM overclocking in the last day and it does seem that 3200Mhz CL14 RAM is the sweet spot in terms of performance and how little comparative CPU SA and CPU IO voltage you need - so I think is probably a finalised RAM overclock for me until I get really really bored & have way way too much time on my hands - RAM overclocking takes ages!! I've now got my RAM at 3200Mhz 14-15-15-34-250-1T @ 1.4V, CPU SA @ 1.232V, CPU IO @ 1.16V. (Previous XMP profile auto voltages for CPU SA were 1.288V and CPU IO at 1.248V)

I learned quite a lot from this thread:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1569364/official-intel-ddr4-24-7-memory-stability-thread

EDIT: Argghh, the CL14 setting wasn't stable, failed with just a frozen screen on a Prime95 Blend test after about 45mins. Gone back to my previous RAM settings in sig - but have left it with the reduced CPU SA & reduced CPU IO voltages. Will do further testing with Prime95 to see if stable, because this reduced SA IO voltage setting was HCI Memtest stable to 400% on 8 threads.

EDIT 2: Weird, saw some strange artifacting playing Mass Effect Andromeda, never seen that before with my GPU, might be because I've lowered the voltages for CPU SA and CPU IO maybe. Humph! Back to my very initial setting of auto controlled voltage for CPU SA & IO! To be fair I've tried tweaking RAM overclocks at least twice before on my system, but I always end up at the same 3200Mhz & slightly tightened timings - think I've probably wasted enough time on RAM overclocking now - mental note: don't tweak the RAM in my system anymore!

EDIT 3: Possibly the final edit! Wasn't the lowered CPU SA & IO causing the artifacts, even happened at previous settings, and removing GPU overclock didn't remove artifacts - must be a bug in the game, only happens in one specific spot in the game. Ah well, will lower voltages for CPU SA & IO again then - praps I therefore managed at least one positive from my recent RAM overclocking adventures then!

 

Thanks for the link my friend. Yeah I've had my Windows install get botched up a few times recently.. I'm not 100% it's RAM but my suspicions is it's due to fiddling around with settings / OCing - although I never get errors using TM5. It hasn't been the end of the world using a Macrium Backup to another SSD but it's still somewhat troubling.
Yeah RAM takes a lot of time to get right, it's a PITA but it's always hard saying 'no' to free performance on the table

 

I was gonna say use Macrium Reflect but then I kept reading & saw you use it! Yeah, if you don't mind taking the time to overclock your RAM and then test it thoroughly then it's worth doing, but only if you realise that it can be frustrating & all for nought! It's easy to do an initial rough tweak to get a little chunk of extra performance, but I wouldn't bother going any further to try and fine tune a RAM overclock - I gained nothing subsequent to doing the first sucessful rough tweak that was thoroughly tested.

Hey, like you did, I put some liquid metal on my GPU a couple of days ago. I got a 3 degC temperature drop in comparison to Kryonaut the first time I tested, but on subsequent runs it was only 1 degC temperature drop in comparison to Kryonaut - so somewhere between 1-3 degC temperature drop by using Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra. Since then I swapped out the 2 stock Phantek case exhaust fans and replaced them with Arctic F12 fans that I had lying around - that gave me a further 2 degC drop in GPU temperature and 1 degC drop in case air temperatures. I then created some extra rear ventilation near the GPU by removing the PCI slot covers at the back of the case and replacing it with a 'fine' mesh - this mod enabled the GPU to stabalise at the next boost up (+13Mhz, lol!!) while staying at the same GPU temperatures - sucks in a little cold air from outside the rear of the case (GPU fan is only an inch or so from the mesh). So, when combining all these little gains over the last couple of days (liquid metal, more efficient case exhaust fans, PCI slot cover mesh mod), I lowered GPU temperatures by 4 degC while at the same time allowing the GPU to stabalise at 1 extra notch of boost and decreased case air temps by 1 degC - this is not to mention a previous GPU back plate cooling mod & repaste with Kryonaut that I did a while back now that had dropped temps by 6 degC in comparison to stock. If I add it up all these little changes since I first built my rig back in November they've resulted in a 10 degC lower GPU temperature while at the same time boosting a little higher - ha, it's a bit like the F1 philosophy of hundreds of miniscule improvements that add up to a big sum!

@TBoneSan , because I'm editing my post so you might not see it if you've already read my post, did you ever get round to overclocking your GPU? I know you've got the Founders 1080Ti, so maybe there's not much thermal headroom to make practical use of it, but if you overclock without adding voltage it will still make your GPU more efficient for any given performance level, because you're shifting the Mhz up at all the pre-existing voltage points on the curve - so theoretically you're getting more performance per Watt.

 

Yeah, new thermal paste roundup article published today, shows Liquid Metal only 1 degC better than Kryonaut, which tallies pretty much exactly with my findings in my previous post:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/thermal-paste-comparison,review-33969-11.html

 

Yeah there's not much of a difference between all the metal pastes. I'm not too fussed which one I get hold of, even Pro is all good in my experience. I probably prefer Kyronaut right now though.

 

Kryonaut is not a metal paste, your post makes it sound like you think it's a metal paste - my point was that a non-conductive non-metal paste like Kryonaut is only 1 degC hotter than a metal paste like Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra.

 

Whoops yeah. I got confused, I was thinking it was Conductonaut.
I've never found metal on the GPU to be a day and night difference like with CPUs. I haven't done my homework and read the whole article but I would be interested in knowing how they applied it - did they apply it in the HS too. Also with metal it's ever more sensitive to getting the pressure and pads height right. It's hard to scientifically replicate tests or call any of the reviews definitive. However because it is so fickle on the GPU it does make a lot more sense for people to just use conventional pastes and let the thickness take out all the surface pressure guesswork.

 

With laptop CPU's metal paste doesn't do a whole lot. I do like Kryonaut a lot now though. I still use IC Diamond on a system I need to paste and let it go (like friends or family) because it has a solid track record and really doesn't need to ever be replaced that I've found. Kryonaut, I don't know yet, haven't used it for extended periods.

 

I think they did apply it to both the heatsink & the GPU. I too applied it to both surfaces, and I'm certain that my heatsink makes very flat contact with my GPU core - it's a really good flat mate (not the kind that leaves all the dirty dishes in the sink - ha!) - so I'm quite certain that my liquid metal vs Kryonaut temperature comparisons are valid - only 1 degC difference between the two.

 

Kryonaut is my favourite paste now, it's given me the lowest temps I've ever seen (apart from liquid metal, but that's only 1 degC less). I've had Kryonaut on my laptop CPU since Jan 2016, and it doesn't need repasting yet, all cores are still within a couple of degrees of each other, etc. I'm done experimenting with liquid metal - I'll keep using it on CPU delids but that's all.

 

Yeah I don't blame you either bro. I don't know why but metal on the GPU has never left a lasting impression on me - I've never lost any sleep going without. Delid on the CPU though.. metal is where it's at.
I should ask some of the DM3 users with 1080 SLI what they think overall. I used metal on a single 1080, it made no difference but I was using the stock thermal pads.

 

I just want to fair in and say the better the cooler and heatsink, the larger the impact liquid metal provides.

Greater value is provided once OC'ing comes into the picture, next to some good fujipoly thermal pads.

 

I've been considering a move to Kryonaut personally. With you on ICD, it's pretty much one and done unless you really mess it up.

 

I love this case. A bit pricey but its elegant and getting custom cables made it a charm. Now i am running full SSD with very minimal cable slack and its quiet AF!

 

Same. I'm still loving it. I'm surprised how silent it is - even under full load.