Best cooler for Dan Cases A4-SFX

[chapplejc]

Hello all.

I've got a Dan Cases A4 build on order with OcUK. It's just crossed my mind though I didn't really give a lot of thought about cooling vs noise. I'm really not up to speed at all with where we are with components these days so I just wanted to lay out what I've got on the table and my thoughts and see if anyone can give me some advice.

The setup on order is a Ryzen 5 2600X with a Inno3D GTX 1070 on a Gigabyte B450 I Aorus board. The selected cooler for the CPU is the Cryorig C7 (the standard one, not the full copper one).

The Dan case is obvs pretty compact and everything is relative, but everything I read suggests it does a pretty good job of venting and you can throw some pretty powerful hardware at it.

My first question is - is the Cryorig C7 a good cooler? It seems pretty popular for this build? You can see the full list of supported coolers here. Does anyone have any experience of it? Is it effective? Is it loud? Etc. The other one I always see mentioned is the Noctua L9i/L9a. Any thoughts?

I should really stress now I'm not going to taxing the system too hard - I mainly play RTS, strategy, city builder type games rather than FPS, although I do intend to get properly stuck into GTAV and RDR2 at some stage, and I'd like to get some pretty sweet visuals out of the games I do play at 1440p. So with that said, I doubt I'll be pushing the system to its absolute limit all that often, if at all.

Therefore, second question - would it be worth downgrading my CPU a step to the plain Ryzen 5 2600 (65W) rather than the 2600X (95W)? Will that step in power/performance have a significant effect on heat, cooling, thermals, etc?

Sorry to sound so utterly clueless! Your collective experience and wisdom here would be greatly appreciated . So excited to get my hands on it soonish.

 

[chapplejc]

Yeah, I would go for the copper one but it’s been out of stock for ages now.

Again, excuse my ignorance, but ‘binned’? What does that mean? I’m sure you’re spot on, but how does a higher TDP, higher clocked CPU run cooler than the base model?

 

[chapplejc]

Okay, is that some kind of quality control measure then? I.e. the 'better' / more expensive the chip, the higher grade (?) of silicon used?

Re the C7, I'll do that. I know there's not masses of choice when it comes to low profile coolers, but is it worth considering any others like the Noctua ones?

 

[chapplejc]

Thanks @Distracted, really appreciate the insight. I’m a techie at heart so I’ve been enjoyed getting back into PC tech in the last few weeks.

Ta @doyll too, food for thought. I’m not in deep enough to go modding coolers if I’m honest. It’s going to have to be a straight call between the Cryorig and the Noctua I think. And I think I’d probably veer towards the quieter one if pushed, which I presume is the Noctua. The copper C7 though seems like an excellent unit. Argh. Decisions!

 

[chapplejc]

Btw, there are two versions of the low-profile Noctua - the L9a and the L9i. So far as I can deduce, the L9a is an updated version for AM4 boards / CPUs. Is that right? In short, if I went for the Noctua, which one should I get?

 

[chapplejc]

Derp, that makes sense . Thanks.

 

[chapplejc]

Yup, that’s what I spotted when I looked at the l9a on OcUK.

So in fairly simple terms, it boils down to slightly better cooling but more noise with the C7 and vice versa with the l9a. And the sweet spot likely a Noctua fan bodged onto the C7.

 

[chapplejc]

Thanks @doyll. I’m going to go C7 and see what it’s like. It won’t cost much to switch if I fancy it further down the line.

 

[chapplejc]

Hello again all. Got my system, very pleased, etc.

The C7 though is loud and it is flush against the casing (yes, I know, I knew things would be tight in the Dan case).

My CPU seems to fluctuate around the 36C to 42C mark idle, this is making the fan spin up and down a fair bit do I’m looking at a custom fan curve but I really don’t have much experience of setting them.

I’ve got a Gigabyte Aorus board so I’ve downloaded the Smart Fan 5 software so I’m going to have a play with that. Ideally, I’d like it as near as damnit silent when I’m in Windows, watching YouTube, streaming, etc.

I’ve seen others set a threshold of around 50C before cranking the fans up - presumably that’s pretty safe. Also, is it possible to make the spin up and down less sensitive? In short; if I just open Chrome, bam!, the fans are going. I’d really like it to take 5-6 mins before it makes that decision, just openimg the browser is hardly killer.

Any thoughts? And is there other settings software I should look at?

 

[chapplejc]

The system was built by OcUK, not me. I'm therefore assuming it was done properly . I haven't actually tested it under load as again, I don't really know the best way because I've not really done any benchmarking, etc, for a long, long time.

I looked into Speedfan but as you say, its pretty old now. I'm using the Gigabyte / Aorus SmartFan utility atm. I've got my CPU fan curve set up as below. It's quite a good balance atm but I'd still really like to try and make it near silent in just about all uses except gaming.

 

[chapplejc]

Yeah, I've heard about the Noctua fan hack. Something to consider. It's my fault for failing to research the 1cm different between the Noctua fan and the C7. The C7 really is flush up against the case. For now though, I've got the fans under control for basic usage - and I was pleasantly surprised when I gave it a bit of a test with something more challenging. The noise was very bearable and at a consistent level under load.

Also, most of the time, I have headphones in so it's not an issue. But I just wanted to make sure it wasn't ridiculously load during those times I don't have them on.