I have a MiniITX build in the Hadron Air.

AsRock H97 Mobo

Intel i7 - 4770K - stock speeds

Noctua NH-U9S with additional fan

Zotac GTX 1060 6GB

16GB of DDR3 RAM

Western Digital 1TB Black Edition

250 GB Samsung 850 EVO

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MODIFICATIONS:
I removed the HDD cage (you have to drill out the rivets) because the HDD cage is massive, and takes up a lot of space. With the HDD cage removed I have the HDD mounted vertically with the drive screws along the left side. I have my SSD double stick taped to the HDD.

Also with the HDD cage removed, I was able to add a 120mm fan to the front of the case, which greatly improves cooling for this tiny case. (Also have to remove the front plastic panel, you can put foam spacers to grant airflow while retaining this, but I just keep it off)

I just went to a three day LAN, so the room was hot, and the CPU hit a max of 45C and the GPU 60C. At home it idles around 25C and 30C or so.

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Total Fans: 8 Fans (CPU: 2, GPU: 2, PSU: 1, Case: 3)



Ask any questions you want if you have them.

If you want a shroud, you could always fabricate one. 3 flat surfaces is a world of difference to painting fans. A million ways you could make a shroud and fasten it into place.

3d print as someone mentioned, cut from an existing piece of plastic or metal, re-shape from sheeting of various materials, etc etc.

One novel thing you could do is use a block of wood or a thicker plastic chunk for the top, drill holes exactly where the heat pipes come up and use those to fasten(making sure to not block any screw access holes so you'd have what looks like one access hole and a divot at the back). Hot glue or epoxy in the pipe-holes, and you don't have to worry about clips or bands or zipties to fasten it to fins(or damaging said fins).

>>Disclaimer: Fan/heatsink shrouds can mess with air-flow in counter-intuitive ways. Sometimes the engineers really do know what they were doing...

>>You can jury rig with card-stock or similar cheap materials and tape to test temps before you decide on a final design or if it's worth doing at all.

>>I've done this with case fans as well as making my own shrouds, and the temp differences can sometimes be improved, or very much decreased, depending on specifics.

____

Those covers are for a completely different size/shape heat-sink.

Cromax:

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NA-HC4-chromax-white-heatsink-NH-D15S/dp/B076575LND

For cooler:

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NH-D15-heatpipe-NF-A15-140mm/dp/B00L7UZMAK

Thinner 140mm wide heatsinks (2x)

Your cooler:

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NH-U9S-Premium-Quality-Cooler/dp/B00TBHYYFK

A single fat 95mmx95mm heatsink.

At which point, you're modding the fuck out of them, may as well start from scratch in true maker fashion, from the ground up for your specific need.



Painting the top of the cooler would be easy and not affect performance much, if any, slide some sheets of paper in underneath the topmost layer(no need to paint the whole thing, imo) for over-spray, spray lightly, don't drench anything, let dry even if it's not complete, repeat as necessary. Ten "too thin" coats adds up to a better finish than 1 complete coat with runs and globs and dried in wrinkles....If you miss a spot, hit it next time, repeat. Patience is a god-send when painting. (All that provided you've completely removed the cooler, otherwise you'd need a lot more than just a sheet of paper for overspray.)


I wouldn't paint the fan blades. It can be done, but it can be done very badly and mess with balance or even airflow, not to mention if you ever touch them by accident or something, even when not running, say if you're wiping dust off or moving/removing to replace cooling paste, etc, it could flake off because fan blades are a bit flexible usually.

Fans are the one thing I wouldn't mod, unless you're talking about painting the exterior frame only or you seriously know what you're doing.

Noctua NH-U9S Premium Quality Quiet CPU Cooler https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00TBHYYFK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_tTOIBbWZM0VMS

I would get this if my case was small.

You're probably better off building around the NATEX combo. This used to be just under $500, but $608 currently for: http://www.natex.us/Intel-S2600CP-Motherboard-Package-Deal-p/intel-s2600cp2j-128gb.htm

• Intel S2600CP Motherboard w/ Dual E5-2670 SR0KX
  
• 128GB (16 x 8GB) 2Rx4 PC3L-10600R ECC DIMM
  
  Other stuff you'd need:
  
  4U case, $95: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0056OUTBK/
  
  Power supply, $103:
  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IKDETOW/
  
  2x CPU coolers, $58/ea:
  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TBHYYFK/
  
  That takes you to $922 without storage for a beefier setup (16 cores, 128GB ECC). For storage, the easiest route will multiple SSDs, with VMs split across each. Just make sure you have nightly backups if you go with no redundancy on storage itself.
  

Not normally, no.

With that case, pretty much anything should fit. I'm personally running a 6600k @ 4.5 GHz topped out around 50 C under a NH-U9S. Noctua is pretty solid. If you want cheaper, the 212 EVO is pretty much universally acclaimed for its price point.

Noctua NH-U9S, Premium CPU Cooler with NF-A9 92mm Fan (Brown) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TBHYYFK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_6wiYCb9J1PK95

I got this cooler, it works well. I also got an additional fan for intake on the other side of the cooler. I'm sure the stock cooler works, but I wanted to be sure I would get the best performance, and not have to swap coolers later and worry about replacing thermal paste.

I've got the same cpu. Here's what I'm using. Great cooler. It's not super big and if you ever do want to OC a little you'd be good.

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NH-U9S-Premium-Quality-Cooler/dp/B00TBHYYFK

Noctua fans might do the job!

Here's one at $50, and here's one a bit pricer at $80. They should both fit your clearance height and I've heard nothing but good things about how quiet and effective they are

make sure your fans on cpu case and gpu are clean and spinning
also make sure your voltages aren't neccesarily to high.

i am biased but you should seriously consider a corsair water cooler such as

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A0HZMGA/ref=psdc_3015422011_t1_B019EXSSBG

or
Noctua NH-U9S Premium Quality Quiet CPU Cooler
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TBHYYFK/ref=psdc_11036281_t3_B002VKVZ1A

going to get this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00TBHYYFK?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=ox_sc_act_title_1&smid=A1H9NMCPZH97BO#Ask

I just wanna say the Noctua NH-U9S is awesome. I can't believe this little 95w TDP rated cooler can punch so high above its weight.

I'm pleased to report that a delidded 8700k/ASUS ROG STRIX z370-I combo will run great at 5Ghz (3 Offset) on the NCASE M1 with a Noctua NH-U9S with a single fan, an identical NF-A9 PWM as rear exhaust (Y splitter with the NH-U9's fan into the CPU fan header), and a single 120mm Noctua high static pressure fan as intake on the side panel.

VCORE is offset to produce 1.344v under load

Ambient Temp: 24°

Motherboard Idle: 34°C

CPU Idle: 34°C

Motherboard Load: 43°C

CPU Gaming Load: 65°C average, 71°C highest logged

CPU Prime95 26.6 Load: 82°C highest logged (same with Handbrake encodes, Aida64, and Blender)

This replaced a Corsair H100i V2 that I was not comfortable with because of the high motherboard temperatures (50°C) and even VRM throttling due to lack of airflow. I traded 15°C in CPU cooling performance for an overall cooler and quieter running system and I am happy. These days I'm more concerned about VRM and overall system temperature than I am about having the lowest possible CPU temperature. As long as I reach my overclocking goal, I'm perfectly fine with CPU temperatures in the low 80°C on unrealistic stress testing. It seems in such a small case its almost a zero-sum game of trading CPU cooling for system cooling: you either keep your CPU cool, your system cool, or find a happy medium.

One observation: really hope motherboard manufacturers start taking VRM cooling more seriously. A stylized metal block is not enough, we need good proper heatsinks with fins and heat-pipes if we wanna continue overclocking high core count CPU's inside small, airflow constrained SFF cases.

I used this one in my ITX build and it's been great. It's more expensive, but it fits in small places.

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a cpu cooler for my "Xeon 1231v3" in a "fractal node 804" (max. cooler height of 160mm), because the box cooler started makeing noises. It should be balanced in performance and low noise. I'm using my PC mainly for gaming and working with resource intense programs, so the CPU is under heavy load, most of the time.

My budget is around 50€ (cheaper would be nicer). I found Noctua NH-U9S to be fitting for the cpu and case, but I'm not sure if it's an overkill.

Would be grateful for any advice.

You must be doing it wrong (op definitely is). My friend's runs so cool it's practically silent under load with an clocked i5 and a 1060. Not sure about yours but OP has a janky little horizontal cooler moving air at a 90deg angle to the exhaust with no rhyme or reason with airflow and doesn't appear to have intakes on the bottom. Of course it's hot.

This case is barely SFF, at 20l it's at the upper limit. What that means though is that there is plenty of room to use comically large coolers and pay attention to orientation and airflow.

OP, get rid of that cooler and put in a proper one for this case like a Noctua NH-U95 (biggest/best vertical cooler that fits)... lots of surface area, way more heat pipes, and importantly is not pushing air at 90deg angles to the flow, which is out that exhaust on the back. Put 2 intake fans on the bottom.. there is no reason at all for this case to run hot or loud under load.

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-Premium-Quality-Sockets-NH-U9S/dp/B00TBHYYFK

Thanks :)
Should that one work ?
Noctua NH-U9S, Premium CPU Kühler mit NF-A9 92mm Lüfter (Braun) https://www.amazon.de/dp/B00TBHYYFK/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_jtA4DbF3NNVR3

I'm using a Noctua NH-U9S with my OC'd 8600k and it performs very well. Running at ~1.25vCore temps do not exceed 80c or so during stress testing (small FFT). Never exceed 68c or so while gaming intensively. Idles around 31-34c.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TBHYYFK/ref=psdc_11036281_t1_B0065SFEE8

Looking at exactly the same combo with the ncase m1 - ordered the 2080 Ti, waiting for the 9900k + a mini-itx board now, but looking at going the aircooling route, most likely a noctua U9S with NF-A9s. Not planning to overclock as mostly going to be used for gaming. Hoping to get an opinion on whether an Accelero will help further lower temps, or better to stick with stock?

Maybe try one of this or this for a still decent but cheap cooler or you could just straight up by a NHD-15 ;)

I was looking at the larger version but was worried it wouldn't fit.

Thanks! I found this one but I have a potentially very stupid question. I am finding a lot of coolers that don't specifically have LGA 1151 listed. Will those still be compatible with my LGA 1151 motherboard?

After an agonizing research process of trying to find a CPU cooler that was strong enough for my i7-7700k and small enough for my case, I've narrowed it down to these two. Can anyone recommend one or the other?

Noctua NH-U9S: https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NH-U9S-Premium-Quality-Cooler/dp/B00TBHYYFK/

Cooler Master Geminii M5 LED: https://www.amazon.com/tekit-Cooler-Master-GeminII-LED/dp/B0785GCTQ1

That cooler is really nice quality, can also look at this.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TBHYYFK/ref=psdc_11036281_t3_B00QCEWTAW

I have had your same exact setup before. Same mobo, I overclocked my fx-8350 though. Get another 8GB of DDR3 RAM to run in dual channel, the CPU will run much better! The motherboard hates 4 sticks of RAM and memory controller is such utter garbage. So only use two ram sticks.

Read your motherboard manual. There is a PDF of it on the MSI website under support for your motherboard. very easy to find. Yes, you will put it on 2nd and 4th slots.

Your CPU will love you with a better cooler, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XJMQDUM/ref=twister_B06ZZ1T1KL?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

You want to get a minimum TDP of 150W cooler.

The VRM gets super damn hot with that motherboard, its great to have air flowing over the entire board. You can get than with heatsinks that blows air down like the be quiet one that I had linked. If you have case fans that can blow air over the MSI motherboards heatsinks fine then you will do aliright.

That GPU will gelp you alot, and do just fine. Any GTX 1060 6GB.

Good luck.