Is there enough airflow?

[Cheenie]

1st build noob would like to know if this case will keep my innards cool enough or do I need more airflow? I' like to keep the fan noise down. Thanks

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x Kolink Observatory Midi Tower RGB Gaming Case - Black Tempered Glass Window= £69.95
• 1 x MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX (Socket AM4) DDR4 ATX Motherboard= £94.99
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Six Core 4.2GHz (Socket AM4) Processor - Retail= £188.99
• 1 x Team Group Vulcan T-Force 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 PC4-19200C14 2400MHz Dual Channel Kit - Grey (TLGD416G24= £52.99
• 1 x Bitfenix Formula Series 550W 80 Plus Gold Power Supply= £66.95
• 1 x Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700 Gaming OC 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £319.99
• 1 x WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0A)= £99.95

Total: £907.01 (includes shipping: £13.20)
​

 

[Minibiker]

There's plenty of fans in there to keep things cool enough... What are your plans with this system? Gaming?

 

[Cheenie]

It will be on all day because I work in spreadsheets and do a bit of browsing but nothing more strenuous planned than a couple of hours a day of Total War and World of tanks or maybe an FPS like CoD.

 

[Cheenie]

I wasn't sure if these cases were build specifically for liquid cooled systems and was just concerned that as it has a tempered glass front the front fans would not be drawing enough air through the thin air vents down the side to keep a fan only system cool enough.

 

[Minibiker]

I wasn't sure if these cases were build specifically for liquid cooled systems and was just concerned that as it has a tempered glass front the front fans would not be drawing enough air through the thin air vents down the side to keep a fan only system cool enough.

The case will get enough air through the front as the 3 fans have mesh either side of the case to draw in the air, the rear exhaust will be enough to get rid of any heat so all good

 

[Cheenie]

Thanks for taking the time to clear that up for me.

 

[tamzzy]

1 x Gigabyte Radeon RX 5700 Gaming OC 8GB GDDR6 PCI-Express Graphics Card= £319.99

i'd swap this for:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powe...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-19f-pc.html

only £20 more to get a 5700XT
makes no sense to get a 5700 for £320. well overpriced.

 

[Cheenie]

i'd swap this for:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powe...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-19f-pc.html

only £20 more to get a 5700XT
makes no sense to get a 5700 for £320. well overpriced.

Your right, thanks for pointing that out.
Prices change fast on here notice the CPU has gone up £10 since I put it in my wishlist.

 

[Zig13]

i'd swap this for:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powe...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-19f-pc.html

only £20 more to get a 5700XT
makes no sense to get a 5700 for £320. well overpriced.

Your right, thanks for pointing that out.
Prices change fast on here notice the CPU has gone up £10 since I put it in my wishlist.

I have that exact card. Reviews are few-and-far-between unfortunately but I can tell you it's solid. Temperatures are fine enough and I can confirm it supports Fan Stop despite that feature being absent on PowerColor's website.
The average bench for a RX 5700 XT on UserBenchmark is 106% and mine benches 107% so you don't loose performance with the cheaper model.
I like it because the fins are horizontal so in a positive pressure environment it actually vents out the PCI-e slot whereas most RX 5700s vent their heat into the case above and below the card.
Only corner they cut which I wish they hadn't was there are no thermal pads between the PCB and the back-plate.
Here are some photos I took of it as again there isn't much coverage of the Dual Fan model.

as it has a tempered glass front the front fans would not be drawing enough air through the thin air vents down the side to keep a fan only system cool enough.

It's certainly not ideal for cooling and not a case I would choose myself but it is a really good price and you could definitely do worse.

Judging from the photos it looks like the fans come mounted inside the front panel/from the front level-with/blocking the side vents. If you don't mind diminishing the aesthetics slightly, you would get much better performance moving the fans back and mounting them from inside. Might slightly improve acoustics too. Possibly the bottom-most fan can't be mounted that way but that one is only cooling hard drives anyway. You could just take that fan out allowing more air for the important fans supplying air to your CPU and GPU.

 

[Cheenie]

It's certainly not ideal for cooling and not a case I would choose myself but it is a really good price and you could definitely do worse.

Judging from the photos it looks like the fans come mounted inside the front panel/from the front level-with/blocking the side vents. If you don't mind diminishing the aesthetics slightly, you would get much better performance moving the fans back and mounting them from inside. Might slightly improve acoustics too. Possibly the bottom-most fan can't be mounted that way but that one is only cooling hard drives anyway. You could just take that fan out allowing more air for the important fans supplying air to your CPU and GPU.

I came real close to buying this today. Thought I would check out YT see if I could find a vid of someone building in it first. I found this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8onx8czmAo which really didn't show much but reading down the comments I have been put off by other owners complaining about the the fans blocking the side vents as you say also quality of them and and them failing often. One owner said the general quality of the steel and the machining and spacing was poor too. The pci slot covers were a punch out and not individual. Maybe I need to up by case budget a bit.

 

[Zig13]

Gamers Nexus is the place to go for performance-focused case reviews.
Here is their case review playlist.
If I remember correctly, the 2nd most recently reviewed case - the Bitfenix Nova Mesh - is of a broadly similar price to the Kolink observatory.

I will reiterate though that you can likely rearrange the fans in the Kolink observatory so they do not block the side vents. There is a Gamers Nexus review of a similarly fronted case and in testing they found moving the fans back just a little bit had good results.

 

[tamzzy]

I have that exact card. Reviews are few-and-far-between unfortunately but I can tell you it's solid. Temperatures are fine enough and I can confirm it supports Fan Stop despite that feature being absent on PowerColor's website.
The average bench for a RX 5700 XT on UserBenchmark is 106% and mine benches 107% so you don't loose performance with the cheaper model.
I like it because the fins are horizontal so in a positive pressure environment it actually vents out the PCI-e slot whereas most RX 5700s vent their heat into the case above and below the card.
Only corner they cut which I wish they hadn't was there are no thermal pads between the PCB and the back-plate.
Here are some photos I took of it as again there isn't much coverage of the Dual Fan model.

Thanks for your opinion on that card.
I've been saying for some time now that getting the costlier 5700XT is of limited value.
Your real-world usage has vindicated my opinion

 

[Cheenie]

Gamers Nexus is the place to go for performance-focused case reviews.
Here is their case review playlist.
If I remember correctly, the 2nd most recently reviewed case - the Bitfenix Nova Mesh - is of a broadly similar price to the Kolink observatory.

I will reiterate though that you can likely rearrange the fans in the Kolink observatory so they do not block the side vents. There is a Gamers Nexus review of a similarly fronted case and in testing they found moving the fans back just a little bit had good results.

The Kolink has other issues apart from the airflow. The fans are poor quality and there is no way to control their speed. I think there are better cases available around this price. Yes been watching Gamers Nexus case reviews the scale between the quietest and noisiest seems to sit between 30db and 50db, is there much difference in noise between these two? Just checked and think I will need something 40 db or under. I was just trying to reduce the noise by avoiding the mesh fronted cases as the pc is going in a shared office space and I don't need the wife throwing me daggers when the jet engines turbines crank up.

 

[Cheenie]

I like the idea of being able to have the option of quiet operation or good cooling in a mesh front case with manual control of the fan speed from the bios. So think I might go with a SilverStone RL06 as it looks to offer me that and partpicker says the msi Tomahawk Max motherboard is compatible.

 

[tamzzy]

i suggest getting the phanteks P400A
slightly dearer than the kolink, but well worth the outlay

 

[Cheenie]

i suggest getting the phanteks P400A
slightly dearer than the kolink, but well worth the outlay

I had noticed it popping up quite high in the airflow charts and low in the noise ones but must have got distracted during the Gamers Nexus review as didn't give it a second look. But just had a look on their website the non rgb version has fan speed control on the case, I do like that..Thanks for drawing it to my attention.

 

[Cheenie]

i'd swap this for:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/powe...ddr6-pci-express-graphics-card-gx-19f-pc.html

only £20 more to get a 5700XT
makes no sense to get a 5700 for £320. well overpriced.

haven't ordered yet as can't find a good review of that card. Low ratings and complaints of freezes and glitches everywhere I look are putting me off. These poor reviews have all been left just this week...Or are these just Nvidia fanboys being naughty?

"A very regrettable purchase of this graphics card. Completely unstable and unable to launch games after trying several drivers with DDU in between installs. Fresh installs of windows tried everytime too with the same outcome. Wish I hadn't bothered. Will be returning as it's not fit for purpose and replacing it with a 2070 from elsewhere for the same price!"

"Caused endless black screen issues and crashed my system Constant issues with driver failures. Eyefinity would not work with my three monitors. Have returned and replaced with a RTX 2070 super."

"It often freezes when playing graphically demanding games thus requiring a restart which means dropping out of multiplayer games mid mission.This is very frustrating for me and also spoils games for other players."

 

[tamzzy]

Low ratings and complaints of freezes and glitches everywhere I look are putting me off. These poor reviews have all been left just this week...Or are these just Nvidia fanboys being naughty?

no. you are right.
however this is not exclusive to the 5700xt that i linked, and gettig the gigabyte 5700 will have the same chance of the same issues
rather this is due to the amd drivers not being as great as we'd like it to be...but that being said...it is getting better and most of what you'd read are the vocal minority (as usual) and the vast majority of users are unlikely to have any issues though
so we can't really say you'd definitely not have any problems, but the vast majority won't

 

[Zig13]

haven't ordered yet as can't find a good review of that card. Low ratings and complaints of freezes and glitches everywhere I look are putting me off. These poor reviews have all been left just this week"

This was covered in this month's Hardware Unboxed Q&A.
It's a really difficult topic. I'm not an AMD fanboy as such but I'd like to see them do well and for there to be improved competition in the CPU and GPU spaces so I'm probably biased by that. I have had good experiences with AMD GPUs and I prefer their software to that of Nvidia*.
That said Nvidia is a much larger company in Revenue, Income, Assets and Equity than the whole of AMD of which The Radeon Technology Group is only part. That means they have more resources to throw at driver development and testing. The majority of AMD drivers are Beta with not insignificant (although often niche) known issues whereas almost all Nvidia drivers are recommend/certified. The release notes of Nvidia drivers are also much more detailed if harder to get to.

Personally I have experienced the black screen/stop outputting issue but only when under-volting quite significantly. I decided to just be patient and wait a few months before I get back to the tweaking.

Or are these just Nvidia fanboys being naughty?"

Some of the specific wording they use makes me a little suspicious but not enough that I'd get all accusational. Does the site these reviews are from allow anyone to leave a review (like Overlockers.co.uk) or only purchasers?
There's also the fact that people having a negative experience are more likely to say something than people where the graphics card behaves as they expect.
Like the best case for a graphics card is that it works. It's not a product that's likely to impress you enough that you're going to go out your way to rave about it online

For a technical consumer product I'd rather just read/watch/listen to as many professional reviews as I can as at least user error is ruled out from their verdict.

*[My GPU history Geforce 6200, HD 4850, R7 265, GTX 970 & RX 5700 XT]

 

[Cheenie]

no. you are right.
however this is not exclusive to the 5700xt that i linked, and gettig the gigabyte 5700 will have the same chance of the same issues
rather this is due to the amd drivers not being as great as we'd like it to be...but that being said...it is getting better and most of what you'd read are the vocal minority (as usual) and the vast majority of users are unlikely to have any issues though
so we can't really say you'd definitely not have any problems, but the vast majority won't

Sure I understand that they are the overall minority and a negative experience is more likely to prompt a review. It's just a bit disconcerting when your cursor is hovering over the buy button and 4 out of 6 reviews are poor. So I came back for some reassurance . I thought all these driver problems had been sorted before Xmas. Maybe I should have good read of the 5700 XT thread.