Tom's Hardware Member System Gallery

[Phaaze88]

How do you position your hybrid PSU?

The question is simple. Do you position it with fan facing bottom, or with fan facing upward[so it will get intake air from inside the case]. I heard that hybrid PSU should be placed with fan facing upward, since they can accumulate quite a lot of heat, that is otherwise trapped when facing downw...

linustechtips.com

Post number 7... isn't that one of his old accounts?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, that's Jon's account. I still don't agree with it AND that's not who I was referring to though. But regardless, there are, as with most things PC, various camps and each of them has their own beliefs and their own reasons for those beliefs. And that's ok. As long as they all understand that I am right and they are wrong, they are entitled to have that opinion.

 

[Phaaze88]

Bad-a55...

 

[Darkbreeze]

LOL.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Yeah, I remember. I also disagree with it, but it's not my system. Personally, I would never run my unit in passive or hybrid modes anyhow, so there is that. Low speed fan operation isn't enough to bother anybody and it's unlikely to be heard over case, graphics card or CPU cooler fans anyhow, so I just don't get the need for them in the first place. PSU will last a lot longer IMO with a fan running at all times, and I know there is at least one PSU guru running around here somewhere that agrees with me. But, to each their own.

Like you said, you're entitled to your (wrong) opinion

Secondarily I have it pointing up because Seasonic gave it a very cool mirrored finish which reflects my RGB very nicely.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Seasonic gave it a very cool mirrored finish which reflects my RGB very nicely.

I know. I have the same PSU. Mine will last longer though.

 

[Phaaze88]

I THINK I get where you're coming from though.

Psu shroud aside, typical front to back airflow... with a fan-up unit, the psu fan is going to draw most of, if not all of the air from the rear of the chassis, through the pcie slots.
But there's no filtration there, so the psu introduces itself to more dust intake compared to fan-down.
Plus, the air outside of the chassis isn't being influenced by the fans... so the psu's exhaust rises, only for some of it to get pulled back in again.

Huh. The use case for fan-up + Hybrid Mode seems niche... well, one could always just place a filter on top of it to deal with the potential increase in dust intake?
That just leaves the exhaust recycling. Decisions, decisions...

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Well, I essentially built the PC equivalent of a ricer.

https://ibb.co/1ZNY6VW
https://ibb.co/GTh2yFL

Tempered glass case - check
Touch of aRGB - check
Fancy Corsair aio with LED corsair logo- check
Massive GPU with 3 fans - check

Looks great on the surface.

When you dive deeper it isn't quite so nice.

i7 940 (a decade old) which will be getting a hefty overclock asap
Corsair H100 240mm AIO (likely just as old)
Asus X58 Sabertooth
2x4gb Corsair 1333mhz DDR3
PNY GTX770 2gb
Corsair CX600
Dual WD Black 640gb 7200rpm sata 6gbps
Deepcool Matrexx 55 argb

Essentially I bought the PC as "working" on eBay for $75 plus $100 shipping. It was listed for $150 so I lowballed but they did accept.

However, when I got the PC, it had 2 apparent problems.
Wouldn't post. The CX600 was dead, ¡que surpresa!
The listing said 24gb ram. Due to Corsairs TERRIBLE policy of marking the capacity of an entire kit on each stick, it only had 8gb ram.

I was able to get $50 back from the seller after letting them know what happened.

With the help of the people at jonnyguru I was able to identify the issue with the CX600 and replace the faulty cap with a donor from a spare PSU I had. Works alright now.

The case it came in was a VERY beat up Corsair Graphite 600t white and black. Though it did have some nice fans including a 200mm front fan I robbed from it.

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categ...Graphite-Series™-600T-Mid-Tower-Case/p/CC600T
Then I threw it into a $55 case from Amazon and have a very nice looking PC. My first experience with aio actually

 

[Phaaze88]

Visibility isn't too good, and the reflections don't help either...
That Corsair logo is LOUD though!

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Well, yea i will have to take some better photos. Im waiting for a new phone with better camera to come in the mail too.

 

[Rogue Leader]

I THINK I get where you're coming from though.

Psu shroud aside, typical front to back airflow... with a fan-up unit, the psu fan is going to draw most of, if not all of the air from the rear of the chassis, through the pcie slots.
But there's no filtration there, so the psu introduces itself to more dust intake compared to fan-down.
Plus, the air outside of the chassis isn't being influenced by the fans... so the psu's exhaust rises, only for some of it to get pulled back in again.

Huh. The use case for fan-up + Hybrid Mode seems niche... well, one could always just place a filter on top of it to deal with the potential increase in dust intake?
That just leaves the exhaust recycling. Decisions, decisions...

While I will say dust is a minimal problem where my stuff is. I have ZERO dust in my PSU running it like this. It just doesn't seem to build up or get pulled in that way.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Some better pictures. Still shot with a spare Iphone 5s, but nvm that.

https://imgur.com/iJxUksw

View: https://imgur.com/iJxUksw

https://imgur.com/j387Lun

View: https://imgur.com/j387Lun

https://imgur.com/mC8qoBJ

View: https://imgur.com/mC8qoBJ


This PC airflow makes me cringe. a 120m rear exhaust and the aio mounted at the top has 2 fans set to exhaust. 0 intake fans. I have fans to put in it, but honestly it works "fine" and I want to keep my fans.

 

[USAFRet]

ummm... green label CX600?
AKA CXTNT.
AKA the thing that killed one of my motherboards.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

ummm... green label CX600?
AKA CXTNT.
AKA the thing that killed one of my motherboards.

That PSU wasn't even working when the PC arrived due to a bulging Chinese cap.

Now it has been replaced with a different 10-year-old Chinese cap out of an OEM PSU and seems to be working.

 

[Phaaze88]

@Rogue Leader
Funny how physics works sometimes - then again, I'm no aerodynamic engineer. I'm making assumptions how I though the air would behave.



HUGE EDIT: After some more thermal testing, I ended up changing my setup from the pictures(removed) that were originally posted here.
Tried as I might, I found the Thermalright Silver Arrow IB-E Extreme performing worse than my NH-D15S with 2x NF-A15s.

The top panel mod - while fun, didn't do all that much for thermals VS the original acrylic panel; margin of error difference. I put the original panel back in; I can change between the 2 at will.

Front intake: Push-pull, 3x NF-A14 Chromax > Fractal Design Celsius S36 > NF-S12A Chromax
Rear exhaust: NF-A14 Chromax
Top intake and exhaust: Crazy, but it actually works slightly better than exhaust only. I have a foam bar set near the middle, so the exhaust doesn't flow towards the intake fan and exits the chassis instead.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Dressed up my system and setup a lot over the past little while.

New PC parts:
New Deepcool Matrexx 55 white ARGB case
Some new fans to complete look
New Ryzen 5 3600 CPU
New Sabrent Rocket Q 1tb NVME ssd
"New" Asus Xonar DG PCI Soundcard
--------------------------
New peripherals:
New keycaps for keyboard
"new" 1080p 144hz AOC
New Logitech G300s mouse
Some wrist rests

Spoiler: Specs now

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price
:----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor | Purchased For $167.00
CPU Cooler | ARCTIC Freezer 34 eSports CPU Cooler | Purchased For $35.00
Motherboard | MSI B350 GAMING PLUS ATX AM4 Motherboard | Purchased For $115.00
Memory | G.Skill Aegis 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory | Purchased For $55.00
Storage | Sabrent Rocket Q 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | Purchased For $120.00
Storage | Samsung Spinpoint M9T 2 TB 2.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive | Purchased For $15.00
Video Card | MSI Radeon RX 5700 8 GB MECH OC Video Card | $301.00
Case | Deepcool MATREXX 55 V3 ADD-RGB WH ATX Mid Tower Case | Purchased For $65.00
Power Supply | Corsair CXM 550 W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-modular ATX Power Supply | Purchased For $65.00
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit | Purchased For $14.00
Sound Card | Asus Xonar DX 24-bit 192 kHz Sound Card | Purchased For $15.00
Wireless Network Adapter | Rosewill RNX-AC1200PCE PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter | Purchased For $23.00
Case Fan | Cooler Master Blade Master 76.8 CFM 120 mm Fan | $13.99 @ Newegg
Case Fan | ARCTIC Arctic F14 PWM 77.3 CFM 140 mm Fan | Purchased For $12.00
Case Fan | ARCTIC Arctic F14 PWM 77.3 CFM 140 mm Fan | Purchased For $12.00
Case Fan | ARCTIC Arctic F14 PWM 77.3 CFM 140 mm Fan | Purchased For $12.00
Case Fan | ARCTIC F12 PWM 53 CFM 120 mm Fan | Purchased For $8.00
Case Fan | ARCTIC F12 PWM 53 CFM 120 mm Fan | Purchased For $8.00
Case Fan | Thermaltake CL-F011-PL12BL-A 40.99 CFM 120 mm Fan | $9.99 @ Newegg
Monitor | BenQ GW2270 21.5" 1920x1080 60 Hz Monitor | $80.00
Monitor | ViewSonic VX2458-mhd 23.6" 1920x1080 144 Hz Monitor | Purchased For $65.00
Keyboard | Redragon K552 Wired Gaming Keyboard | Purchased For $49.00
Mouse | Logitech G302 Daedalus Prime Moba Wired Optical Mouse | Purchased For $18.00
Headphones | Avantree Audition Headphones | Purchased For $48.00
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total | $1325.98
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2020-07-27 20:29 EDT-0400 |

Glamour shots:

https://imgur.com/a/so719dQ

View: https://imgur.com/a/so719dQ


Current issues and my short term remedies:
I do not like the red color in this PC so I painted the VRM and Chipset heat syncs on my motherboard, as well as the heat sync on my wifi card flat black. I also removed the red stickers from my ram.

My motherboard still has red on it, and I managed to break the audio circuit somehow and it just outputs a hissing noise. I will want to replace this board eventually, but currently, it works well. Also, I had a spill of milk in my PC (yes I know I'm dumb) which caused my GPU to stop outputting any form of HDMI or Displayport audio to my monitor. Currently using a $15 sound card off of eBay.

The GPU, in addition to having no audio, (which is not an issue tbh) overheats badly. I ran MSI Kombustor on this card and it reached 92c immediately and leveled out at around 94c and probably was throttling. Oddly enough the fans weren't maxed according to MSI afterburner but they sure were noisy. Furmark hits like 89c after awhile. Unacceptable, to say the least. Tried NTH1 thermal compound to no change really. During games it's not TOO bad but needless to say, I would prefer to have never bought this card. Its only a couple of months old too. Even my MSI Ventus 2060 which apparently has one of the worse 2060 coolers ran way cooler and quieter. I shouldn't have sold it for a flip.


To do:
Get new chair since mine is stuck in lowest position and annoying.
Get a bigger desk since I don't have near enough room.
Get better-looking ram at higher speed
get a new motherboard with non-broken audio.

I will not be needing to upgrade my CPU for a while. The GPU will be upgraded whenever next-gen parts come out from either company.

I have been overclocking and got the CPU to 4.4ghz stable. I grabbed some fancy ram out of my brothers PC, overclocked that, and managed to get a 4020cb in r20 multi core and like a 505c single core.

I will continue to mess around untill the novelty runs out.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Looking good. Now I just have to send you a proper table to perch it on.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Well, I took a gamble.

https://ibb.co/Bw0T8hC
A PC advertised as a "HP Compaq 6000 Pro (250GB, Intel Core 2 Duo, 3.06GHz, 2GB)" and condition was for parts or not working.

But the PC in the pictures didn't look like an ancient Compaq. I asked the seller and he said I would get the pc in the pictures.

I risked it and bought it for $30 plus $15 shipping.

It came today.

I had to fix it up. The CPU cooler was only attached by one pushpin and one of the pushpins was even broken. The HDD was just chucked in the case rattling around. The HDD cage was removed from the cage so it's still rattling around now. The motherboard was attached by 1 screw and was not even lined up with the rear io cutout anymore. the IO shield was loose in the box. PSU was facing up, which meant it had 0 venting. A lot of plugs weren't even inserted into the mobo.

I also removed some stickers off of the front of the case since they weren't put on straight. Heck, one of them was upside down https://ibb.co/GVmCG9j

So what did I get? Not an old Compaq, but a rather modern custom build.

On the outside, it doesn't look like anything special. Just a basic ThermalTake case without any window. It has a rather clean black look, however.
https://ibb.co/RC7FRRS

On the inside, It looks rather basic, but not too bad.
https://ibb.co/mBFsfRs

IMG-20200730-195100954 hosted at ImgBB

Image IMG-20200730-195100954 hosted in ImgBB

ibb.co

Turns out the specs are A LOT better than anticipated. Hello Coffee Lake!
i3 8100 4c/4t 3.6ghz
Gigabyte H310M A motherboard
1x4gb HyperX 2666mhz ram
1TB WD Blue 7200rpm HDD
CoolerMaster Masterwatt LITE 500w 80+ PSU
Thermaltake H17 MicroATX case

This would have been a decent PC for web browsing had it not shipped with 4gb ram, though for the price I cannot complain.

After I assembled it properly It works fine. The HDD was blank so I had to install W10 onto it and it works fine.

I plan on installing a GPU of some sort and more ram, then selling it for a MASSIVE profit.

Unfortunately from what I hear the Masterwatt lite PSUs are utter garbage, though most reviews are of the 230v one however this one supports the North American input range.

 

[vMax]

Okay I could not help myself....After watching the Gamers Nexus video on the Lian Li Lancool II Mesh I had to get one! Overclockers in the UK had a deal which included the Type C USB front panel cable so I took the plunge.

Build was a breeze except for one area and that was a screw that was near on impossible to remove. The screw opened the panel which allows for AIO's in the front. After at least 20 minutes I finally got it off....They had just tightened it way too much.

Overall a great case with exceptional airflow...At least a 7 degree drop in CPU/GPU temps. Great design though that is subjective but everything fits perfectly (specs in my sig) even the largest GPU's. May be a dust magnet but I will find out soon but nothing a can of compressed air cannot fix..

https://imgur.com/ZlumCHm

View: https://imgur.com/ZlumCHm

https://imgur.com/2MsrYbP

View: https://imgur.com/2MsrYbP

https://imgur.com/RP3ybfj

View: https://imgur.com/RP3ybfj

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I'm assuming you also got the arctic aio because of a gamers nexus video?

 

[vMax]

Yep Tech Jesus also know as Steve is a must watch for me!....Quite simply one of the best AIO's I have used...The radiator thickness is more than most at 38mm so you have to be careful as it might not fit in some cases but overall the performance is stellar.

I'm assuming you also got the arctic aio because of a gamers nexus video?

 

[Phaaze88]

nothing a can of compressed air cannot fix..

I don't even recommend using those anymore. Just take your vacuum, attach the nozzle extension, run it over the panel - wipe the stragglers off, and done.
Those cans are a money sink, and not very effective either, at least, from my experience... and screw those data vacs!

 

[NightHawkRMX]

I use an air compressor.

The best way to clean computer cases is with a garden hose imo. (Mod edit - Attempt at humor. Do NOT use a garden hose to clean out your case!)

 

[Phaaze88]

Wow...
For the open mesh and radiators, I use the vacuum.
For heatsinks, a straw brush.
Everything else is done by hand.

 

[NightHawkRMX]

https://ibb.co/vsLDvGt