"As long as it doesn't look like a black monstrosity"

[Donnie Fisher]

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not really into gaming, or overclocking, or trying to eek out the last few numbers on some cinebench test. I just really want machines to work, work briskly enough, and do so consistently.

Over the last while I've been principally using an Alienware r15 laptop as the main machine, and when at the desk its plugged into a 4k TV. The trouble is i've various external drives hanging about and its all just a bit messy. I'm also taking a lot more photographs and videos. Whilst the laptop can/should handle it ( i7 6700HQ, GTX1060, 16Gb), in reality it runs very hot, regularly touching 90-95°C, thermal throttling etc. It even hit 101°C once. Its a known issue, and it needs a strip down and repaste and re-pad. So I'd like to move to a desktop machine of somesort as the main machine for the photoediting / video stuff that I know shouldn't have these thermal issues. Thing is, the project has to get past the wife!

So I sold it to her as needing a 'box' for more hard drives of all the pictures and videos. That passed the test, but with the comment:

"As long as it doesn't look like a black monstrosity!"

So long story short, I've settled on the following build. There are compromises to it... but in essence, its enough to get me going, but with a potential to expand/upgrade it further down the line.

Ryzen 2400G + Wraith Prism RGB Cooler
Asus x470-F Strix
16Gb RAM DDR4-3000
480Gb SSD
2Tb HDD
600W PSU
Corsair ML120 fans
Streacom F12C Case

For some of the reasons on why, see the spoiler below:

Spoiler: Reasons

Ryzen 2400G
Ryzen holds, to me, far more future potential to upgrade. Its my plan that further down the line I'll change the CPU to a much higher core count / speed, and add GPU card, but that costs too much the now, so the APU will do for me. I've sacrificed in this area a little, to benefit other areas. On paper, CPU is comparable/slightly better to the existing laptop CPU. I'm happy with that performance at the moment, so i should be fine. GPU I accept will be poorer, but it should run the 4K display fine in a desktop environment.


Wraith Prism RGB Cooler
Although the 2400G came with the stealth cooler, I wanted to have plenty of overhead in the cooling department. Found an new Prism cooler for not too much money new (£25), so got that early on, and can easily use it for higher power CPU's further down the line. Its a top down cooler, so with the f12C case, it should be reasonably close to the vents on the top of the case. It should be able to draw some fresher air in from the top vent areas, and blow it down across the VRM's too. A wee bit of RGB might look nice too!

Asus x470-F Strix
Full ATX board, and with the reportedly better VRMs for the CPU over the Prime Pro, which should see me in good stead for when I upgrade the CPU to something higher spec. 2nd generation, so the 2400G should work out of the box. Basically a good balance of spec vs price vs future proof.

16Gb Trident Z RGB DDR4-3000
Its RAM, it'll work .. hopefully. It'll look nice with the Prism cooler + x470 board. I'll not be looking to push it to crazy overclocks. I'll probably add another 16Gb later on as with Adobe After Effects, I was touching 15Gb RAM usage even on a fairly simple task.

A Crucial MX500 480Gb SSD - I had it lying about. System drive + Apps
A 2Tb HDD - I had that lying about too. Bulk storage.
I'll maybe add an m.2 style drive further down the line and move the system onto that.

Streacom F12C case.
Basically an HTPC style case, thats silver, and will sit on a shelf. Can take ATX board, ATX power, full length GPU, and flexible with cooling. Its a little bit different, you dont see much chat about it and the wife approves that it doesn't look awful ... enough said ... its for winners.

2x Corsair ML120 Fans.
2 fans to provide some positive pressure into the case. Non RGB, as I dont really want it blatantly lit up like a christmas tree. I dont mind some RGB deep within, which you'll be able to see through the vents, but not dancing circles of light distracting me right at the edge of the case.

Thermaltake TR2 S 600W ATX power supply.
It was a cheap deal with the motherboard. It'll supply enough power at the moment for my needs at the moment. Nuff said.

Airflow
In terms of airflow. The current plan is to use the 2x 120mm fans to draw air from the right, across the motherboard towards the CPU. CPU will use that plus air it draws in from the top to cool. ATX power supply will draw out the warmer air from near the CPU and exhaust it. The left over air will vent out the case via the openings, including going past the hard drives which will on the PSU side. Adding a GPU later down the line may block that air flow, so it may all need revised further down the line. A benefit of this case is that such things are easily done.

The current setup:
(Actually quite tidy for once. The lads lego normally covers the desk! )




The boxes:






So over the next few posts I'll start building it together and commenting on how it goes. I dont plan on doing a full review of the case per say, but there is little out there about it beyond intial impressions. So I'd like to give back some observations and comments from an actual build of an average PC for others if they are considering the same.

Any thoughts or comments welcome.

Thanks!

Donnie.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Well, its built, I'm typing this on it, and I'm extremely pleased. Took plenty of pictures where I came across aspects of the case, so am preparing a few posts to update this thread with over the next wee while. Still sorting out the software on it, and also the tuning of the CPU and RAM speeds ( it defaulted to 2133Mhz for the RAM ), but that will come in time. Here is a single pic for now:



And as per the thread title. My wife looked at the box from a distance and went "hmmm, its ok", but from an angle due to the mesh vents you cant see the RGB stuff. When she looked down into it, I got the comment "Oh that's really pretty, I like that!"

Me: "So you're telling me you wouldn't have minded a multicoloured rainbow effort ?"
Wife: "Nope"

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Yeah, that's one of my observations of the case. The alu frame chassis part feels rock solid, thick and chunky and to me, extremely well finished. This is join between the front, side and lid which comes off:



However, although the mesh vents are an equally neat fit, they are extremely thin and flexible. So its very easy to press them inwards and they feel like they want to bend and pop out. I imagine that they will crease easily if bent too far. The down side of that is whilst the case is strong enough for it, you cant really sit anything on top with confidence, unless you were sure that whatever on top would not rest on any vent area. I had thought about putting it at the bottom of a hifi stack cause it looks like it would be suited to that, but in reality it likely wouldn't work.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

The Build - Part 1
Bare case, out of the box. Nothing on the front. Very clean.



Removed all the vent coverings and twin brackets running across the top for access, and installed the extra riser pins to support the motherboard. It came with ITX pins in place only.





ATX power supply shoved in. Nice touch to have counter sunk screws.



Installed the Wraith Spire cooler. I've only plugged in the standard RGB cable. I've since learned that this only controls the fan lights. If I want to control the outer ring light, then I need a USB header RGB setup and more software. It can wait.



Memory installed no issues. Took me a little while to realise that only 1 side of the RAM slot opened. Its 15 years since I last built a desktop ... they used to open on both sides. I do plan on another 16Gb down the line. A quick check shows that there should be no issue with the clearance of the Trident RGB kits and the Wraith Prism.





When installing the board, it was a quite tight fit between the power supply and the far side of the case. I'd say it was less than 1mm clearance. But a benefit of the side vents being open was that you could support the board from below when moving it in, rather than grabbing it by the CPU cooler. At this point, I was impressed with the Streacom manual and its description of what to use.



Power and LED cable attached. Rest of cable is just pushed under the motherboard to keep it out of the way. Thats about as tidy as you can get on this case.



Next post - the fans ...

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Next job was the fans. The F12C case has a unique way of mounting things to the sides of the case. You attach the device (fan, HDD, radiator etc) to vertical brackets, slot the bracket into grooves on bottom edge, and use a spring clip pushed into the top edge which grabs the top lip of the vertical bracket. When you take a bracket by itself, its so simple. When you add a device … a bit of a different story.

Anyhows, I bolted a fan loosely to a couple of brackets and tried it in place. Immediately apparent that height is an issue within the case. With an ATX board right up to the edge, a 120mm fan can only fit by being right up at the very top of the bracket. Even then, cables coming out of the headers have to be bent over to clear the bottom of the fan.

Test fit - see how close it is to the board headers.


Fixed in place right at the very top of the bracket:


Installed this fan first as the cable header had to be fitted before the 2nd fan would cover it.



USEFUL TIP:

Because the fan is so high up to the top edge, its difficult getting the spring clip into to place if you have the bracket fully pushed in. The easier way to do it is to pre-place the clips where they need to be, and then push the combination in. It still takes a bit of force to push the clips in, but this was by far the best method.

Clips pre-placed:


How a clip to fix into place:


Both fans fixed in place:



At this point, I'm really glad I didn't RGB the side fans. The combination of having to fix the fans to their highest point, and that the bracket blocks them a little means that RGB rings would not centered on the vent, nor fully be visible … it'd look pants.

As it is, the black/grey combo actually really matches the case in general.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

So all built
After that I moved onto the cables and drives. Other reviews of the case comment on no cable management … they were right. There is none, zero, nada. So the main power was just plonked along the front edge.



The drives I installed vertically. Much like a 120mm fan, a 3.5" drive vertical takes basically all of the height available. As a result, the drive can only orientated with the SATA connecters to the inner side. When on the outer side, its simply not possible to fix the bracket in place, then attach the SATA cable, or to attach the SATA cable and then fix the bracket. So to the inside it is. With an SSD, its not an issue.



Again, height being the issue, the cables are very close to the top lip … with the cables bent over, its no big deal though.



I think in hindsight, I should have explored fitting them horizontal. If I was adding another 3.5" drive, I would do that, and mount them towards the top so that the excess power cables can fit underneath that space. See the pic below of where the cables go round the corner of the board. A 2nd large drive would block that space if vertically mounted.

Which leads onto the general issue of cable management. As before, there is none. So I took the leftover power cables and tied them together at the front. To be fair, its not that untidy, and completely unseen from the front of the case, and even when peering in the top.



So all built together … power plug in … ATX switch on … nothing …

… recheck cables … power plug in … ATX switch on … nothing …


Ah ! I have to press the power button on the front … doh !

Lights, action:

 

[Donnie Fisher]

So Win 10 Pro installed, Office added, Adobe stuff added, utilities etc etc. Fairly pain free process. RAM tweaked upto 3000Mhz, and the Ryzen tweaked a fraction over stock by the self-tuning utility. ( I still need to understand that side of stuff ) and the fans auto-profiled as well.

I've not bench tested it with a full load test, but a quick mess about with video editing which was pegging the CPU at 100% at times, the cooler fan barely adjusted above its normal running speed.

Under normal light use, browsing etc, and a quiet fan profile the side case fans either idle very slowly, or stop all together which is impressive. In this profile the CPU seems to be steady at about 39degC. I still need to mess around with the fan profiles more. My original airflow plan does seem to be on the money though. With the fans running, I can feel the air flowing past the HDD's and out the rear of the power supply nicely.

I am aware though that a big GPU would block a lot of the air flow from the side fans, so when it comes to that, I'll need to revisit that.

General performance wise, I'm very happy, I would say that the desktop in 4k feels snappier, and smoother than the laptop, and in programs like premiere Pro, photoshop etc the system is responsive enough for me needs. It can only get better over time.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Thank you.

And finally, a quick pass over showing how the filters make the RGB lighting only visible when you reach a certain angle of looking into it. Its quite a nice effect in reality.

Some initial hindsight thoughts on the build in general.

Pros:
- Very pleased with the case. Its well made and the aluminium is a great finish.
- The final look is better than I thought it would be.
- The user experience performance for my uses is considerably better than I thought it would be.
- Encoding seems to peg the CPU at 60degC … compared to my 90+degC of the laptop , this is much better.
- Its extremely quiet. I love how the case fans spin down to a stop, even when typing this.

Cons (if they are that):
- ATX motherboard in the case will limit some aspects of builds … if I need to use some of those board headers later on, that could be an tight fit.
- I'd recommend a modular power supply is likely best suited to a build in this case so that you can choose which cables you want in the box. Mine are all just jumbled together. Simply not having them at all would make for a cleaner build.


Overall … very pleased so far.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Not sure that would work. The vents are thin mesh which sit in a very shallow groove on the outside of the case, and then a ring sits on top of them to hold in place fixed by magnets. The whole combination is about 1mm thick in total. Cant really see how a glass panel would be able to replace that. I have the unit now sitting on a shelf next to the desk, so nothing needs to sit on top of it.

It all would depend on where the feet are located on the unit on top. If they are right to the edge it would be fine. If not, and you really needed to stack it, then I think the best solution would be to get a glass panel with feet in the corners to lift the glass panel off the top by 5 to 10mm ( for venting ) and then the unit on top of that.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

I know what you mean, the case just screams that it needs to be about 1" wider, or just about 15 - 20mm taller. That being said, at 1" wider it just simply wouldn't sit as part of a hifi style setup as it most hifi stuff / home theater stuff is 44cm wide like the case is. As for being a bit taller ... I think it might just lose its proportions and look too tall. The case is really minimised down to the smallest it can be to fit standard bits in.

A common mount point for radiators on reviews was using the centre brackets above the CPU area.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

There isn’t an independent one as such. The atx power supply has a fan which vents out the back and it’s orientated so that it draws it’s air from inside the case facing the cpu. Some of the idea being that the cpu cooler will blow warm air down and outwards and the powesupply will suck that out the back of the case thereby directly exhausting the warm air out.

The2 side fans will supply fresh air into the space as a whole and can create positive pressure in the case. But all the grills are vents so the air can go out just about anywhere really.

Yet having said all that, when the setup is configured to quiet mode , the fans stop spinning... so it’s all a mute point sometimes.

My temps have been fine to date. Rendering at 100% load on the cpu stabilises at 60ish degC when on standard fan mode. Pushing all the fans to max brings that down to low 50’s.

 

[Donnie Fisher]

Thanks for the comments. Still very pleased with the whole setup. Its doing what I want, and how I want. I had a bit of a spell with instability. Wouldn't boot from sleep correctly, wouldn't remain stable etc. I think the cause was the BIOS level. Updated everything again to the latest one, and its all sorted - super stable again.

Another aspect was I've turned back the overclocking of the CPU. I was noticing that on task manager, the CPU was pegged at max frequency ... not necessarily high usage, just frequency. Turning off the overlocking and some adjustments of the power management now means that I can see the CPU adjust its clock frequency to demand. This has kept temps lower as well under lighter usage.

A few upgrades since original posts. I've since added another 16Gb RAM to it. Overkill I know, but as time goes on, I thought I'd be better buying another one of the RAM pairs from the same source as the original which would save me trying to match it later on. All 4 are running happily at 3000 after the bios updates etc.

Also added a GPU. The APU of the 2400G was alright, but limiting what I was wanting to do with the machine. I thought long and hard about it, waiting for RTX etc etc ... but bit the bullet prior to launch and got a Zotac 1080Ti Mini. Reason for a short card was it allowed air to flow past and into the CPU zone of the box. It was also not that tall, as the case is limited in what card height you can fit in it. Things like Strix cards and the like just wouldn't fit. Toyed a lot with going for a Vega 64 too ... but having only a 600W power supply, was concerned a little about the power draws etc.

1080Ti has been perfect to date so far. Has more than enough power for my needs, isn't noisy and just works. Messing around with Team Fortress 2 ( about the only game I play at the moment ) at 4k seems to only use it to 50% of less ... so very happy.

A quick pic of the setup:




Thoughts on the future. I can see myself upgrading the CPU further down the line. I'm very please with the 2400G though, and on upgrading, I'll probably make use of it in a very small mini-ITX PC build for some other use elsewhere down the line.