Cooler Master Silencio S400 - Ryzen 3600 / 1660S Build

Adamantium42

Adamantium42

Adamantium42

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Joined
3 Jun 2013
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8
Evening all,

Wish I had started a thread here sooner, forgot how fun it was building a new PC.
I’ve done a few builds in the past, including custom watercooled CPU/GPU in the past, but this time I wanted to build something that was:
  • Built for light gaming and also office work.
  • Good looking / centre piece.
  • Simple to maintain.
  • Silent / very quiet.
  • Upgradeable graphics.
I had a budget of £1000 - although I didn’t get too near to that.

The Hardware
Quite a few parts purchased from OCUK – although not every single one! Didn’t have this case with glass side panel!
  • Cooler Master SILENCIO S400 Midi Tower ATX Case (with glass side panel) (+ 1 case fan on the front)
  • AMD Ryzen 5 3600 Processor
  • Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black Edition CPU Cooler
  • Gigabyte B550M AORUS PRO mATX Motherboard
  • Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4 3200 MHz C16
  • MSI GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER VENTUS XS OC 6144MB GDDR6
  • be quiet! Pure Power 11 500W 80 Plus Gold Modular Power Supply
  • WD Blue SN550 1TB High-Performance M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD

The Rationale
I am looking for any feedback or improvements to my thought process.
  • I think the CPU, RAM was probably a solid choice.
  • I think the Case is probably not well liked?
  • GPU might be controversial at the moment.
  • M-ATX might be questionable.
  • Time of build might be considered wrong, with new CPUs and GPUs coming out.
I chose:
  • The Silencio S400 case because it looked good and was noise dampened - which I think does make a subtle difference. There were some reviewers saying it had an airflow problem - add a 2nd front fan and its fine.
  • Ryzen 3600 because it was really good value.
  • The GTX 1660 Super because my monitor is limited to 60htz at 1440p, and I’m not changing it, so didn’t see the point in upgrading any further.
  • I went with a PCI-E3 SSD because I couldn’t see any real-world performance benefits from the extra £100 for a PCI-E4 SSD.
For Motherboard / GPU / Ram Brand - I chose because it matched the colour scheme of the case – everything in shiny black! I obviously checked reviews and it all seemed good enough for my use.

How does it perform?
  • Games are 60FPS, system is quiet and airflow is nice.
  • CPU is 28-32 on idle (except for Ryzens random spikes..).
  • Neither CPU or GPU spin up under normal load playing games.

The Mistakes
  1. GPU Brand - I picked the GPU because of the nice backplate and decent fans - annoyingly I overlooked that they run at 40% minimum. It's not too bad - but it is the noisiest thing in the case, annoyingly! It will do for a while though. I'll have to make sure next GPU can power down the fans.
  2. PSU Capacity - I have 500watt and it seems like RTX3070 needs much more than this.. not a good sign! I will likely go to something like a 3060, depending on performance, so might be okay.
  3. Gigabyte fusion RGB not as compatible as some other motherboards are! But not too bad.
  4. I didn’t appreciate how good RGB looked.. now I want some more!
Overall, quite happy! Everything booted first attempt which was nice.



Some odd pictures – wish I had taken more!
CPU cooler mounted on motherboard.
20201019-215518.jpg



Space the PC is going into – quite tight if this was a full-size ATX case! (both height and length)
20201019-204132.jpg



All-black colour scheme.
20201019-222859.jpg



Finished build - so far - different LED colours - case is setup to fill the window with on colour!
20201024-170617.jpg


20201024-170646.jpg

20201024-170708.jpg



Next steps

I do need some more RGBs.. so I will be added phanteks halo lux RGBs black aluminium to the CPU fan and the back fan. I'm not sure if I will run those as the same colour or a complimentary colour.. will have to play around.

I will also be adding another LED bar to the front of the case, and lowering the brightness of that bar and the bottom bar to minimum, as the bottom bar is a bit too strong and its linked to the top bar at the moment..

I also need to remove the top 5” drive bay.. as it's just in the way.

This should complete the look. Will post a few more pics when this is done hopefully this week!


Performance wise – next winter I will upgrade the GPU to a more powerful, yet quieter GPU, like 3060 (if it exists) and switch the front 2 fans to noctua 140mm and both the cpu and rear fan to noctua 120mms – ready to make it a really-silent gaming pc.

Any other recommended changes or things to be aware of? All feedback welcome :)
 
Last edited:
It's got even more space now!

Installed the phanteks LEDs, another LED bar, adjusted a few things and removed the top drive cage.

20201028-185326.jpg


In the bottom I installed a pci-e wifi card.Wifi 6 / 3gb/s with 2 very large antenna.
20201028-192729.jpg


This was after everything has been plugged back in. Lots of space at front now and very clean too.

20201028-201835.jpg


Now just need to choose colours.. fans, bottom bar and (top and front) bar are all on different channels so plenty of colours to try.
Gigabyte fusion seems to have worked perfectly in this case.
Will just have to make sure the next GPU I get adds something to the mix!

20201028-202804.jpg


20201028-202814.jpg


20201028-221655.jpg
 
Adamantium42 said:
That was as was intended really. Nice and clean and simple. Admittedly could have used a slightly smaller MATX case.
Any suggestions?
Click to expand...
smaller case would look better.. but maybe you will decide to put an AIO in the front ... i would leave it as it is.. its looking nice mate
just get rid of that sticker form the tempered glass :)
 
Hello, I'm considering this case too, as I appreciate it being silent and I need an ODD. May I ask a few things about your experience?
1) Do you have now the two preinstalled fans in the front and back and one extra in the front? So two total in the front?
2) Is the extra a 12 or 14 cm fan? And pwm too?
3) I presume the front fans are both sucking air in and the backside pushing out, correct?
4) How have you connected the 3 fans into the motherboard, i.e. are all in the same header or in two different ones, and in which order?

Thanks if you can tell your experience and any further ideas from anyone else too!
 
kissel said:
Hello, I'm considering this case too, as I appreciate it being silent and I need an ODD. May I ask a few things about your experience?
1) Do you have now the two preinstalled fans in the front and back and one extra in the front? So two total in the front?
2) Is the extra a 12 or 14 cm fan? And pwm too?
3) I presume the front fans are both sucking air in and the backside pushing out, correct?
4) How have you connected the 3 fans into the motherboard, i.e. are all in the same header or in two different ones, and in which order?

Thanks if you can tell your experience and any further ideas from anyone else too!
Click to expand...

Hi Kissel,

I can help here. To answer simply:
1) Yes
2) Was 2x 12, now 2x 14 and both PWM. I have no 3pin / non-pwn fans on this case. All of them are temperature controlled through the motherboard.
3) That's correct. High pressure fans at the front because of the fairly small gaps in the side the air can come in.
4) I have used the cpu_opt header for rear fan, cpu 4pin fan for CPU fan, so both of these increase in speed at the same time. Then I've used a single 4pin header for the 2 front fans.


Or, a more detailed description:
I did purchase one more silencio 120mm fan - the same that comes with the case, to go on the front.
That solves most of the airflow / heat problems the case has that are reported in various reviews.

HOWEVER - I have since purchased 2x 140mm Noctua high pressure fans on the front.
The reason being that being these 2 front fans are 90% responsible for the cooling in this case.
Using really high quality, and larger, fans has made a huge difference to the airflow, case temperatures noise.
They also run quieter than the cooler master silencios, which only go down to about 750 RPM, and push far more air.

Now, even at 600RPM, these 2 front fans are easily the loudest in the case. From 30cm away, I can actually hear them slightly.
If I turn them down to 400RPM the PC is completely inaudible from even 30cm away.
However - they really do make a big difference to airflow & temps, so it's definitely worth getting 14cm high quality fans here.
So I have those running from 550-850 depending on case temperature (never goes above 700 generally) and you can feel notable amount of air coming out the back of the case.

At these RPM they are slightly audible at 30cm away, but if I wanted silence for something in particular, I can just turn them down temporarily through software at a click of a button, so it's not much of a worry.

So I would highly recommend to do that rather than purchasing another silencio fan as they're not that good.. not really quiet and airflow is a bit poor.


Further changes
I actually changed the CPU fan and rear fan to noctua chromex fans too.
I don't believe this made anywhere near as much difference to cooling/noise as the front fans so I don't recommend you do this if you are on a budget.

RGB Fans
I would actually recommend just to get 2 decent RGB fans to sit on CPU cooler / rear fan.
I have 2x rgb halo lux and 2x noctua fans and it certainly wasn't worth the money - although the halo lux effect is quite cool.

GPU Change
I also now have a Gigabyte RTX 3070 Eagle in the case too. The massive silent cooling on this cards works well in this case
It can happily run at nice idle/under load at nice temperatures with the cooling I have on the case now.


Hopefully that gives you some information so you won't make the few mistakes I did!

PC-22-11-2020-2.jpg
 
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