ITX vs ATX cooling/noise/performance?

Haggisman

Haggisman

Haggisman

Soldato
Joined
6 Oct 2004
Posts
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Location
Birmingham
Due to WFH arrangements, my PC is going to be in the living room for the foreseeable future, so I'm thinking of moving from ATX to an ITX case with a smaller footprint (and more "living room" aesthetic than my current RGB monstrosity :p), however one of my main concerns is increased heat & noise due to the reduced airflow. My current system is as follows:

Ryzen 5 3600x with Alpenfohn Matterhorn cooler
MSI B550 Tomahawk
16GB Patriot Viper 3600MHz (2x8GB)
RX 6800 MBA
1x NVME
2x SSD
Corsair RMX 750w module PSU

Case is a Be Quiet! Pure Base 500 DX with 3x Be Quiet! 140mm Shadow Wings 2 fans

Obviously I'd need a new motherboard and cooler (and possibly PSU & fans depending on case), but I'd like to keep the rest of the components.

Currently my system is basically silent at idle, and only really starts to make any noise when the GPU fans kick in if I'm pushing it during extended gaming sessions - ideally I'd like to keep it that way if possible?

Case wise, I really like the look of the NZXT H1 - a bit pricey, but includes an AIO and PSU which saves me buying those, and as far as I can tell will fit my GPU and drives, but is it likely to get significantly hotter than my current system (and so increase noise levels?)

Any other suggestions for similar style cases which will fit my parts and maybe some 140mm fans to keep the temps/noise down?
 
Meshlicious is supposed to be the best airflow ITX case at the moment. The NZXT H1 is known to cause quite hot GPUs which is of course accompanied by increased GPU fan speed and noise.
 
Haha, well there is that too! But if buying it new he shouldn't have an issue :) It was due to a cheap riser cable being used, which shorted when the screws to affix it to the chassis bite into the pcb - NZXT remedied it by changing to nylon bolt and nut to attach it to the chassis as their remediation - not sure if that's how the new ones ship now or whether they addressed the core issue of the crap riser cable used.
 
It looks like the burning your house down issue has been fixed - assuming suppliers don't have old stock then hopefully would come with the new cable!

That Meshlicious does look nice (not quite as nice as the H1 IMO) but it's less than half the price and looks like my current PSU should fit, will keep an eye out for stock :)
 
Silverstone Sugo SG14, Ncase M1 or Coolermaster NR200. Nothing like the H1, but superior cases intended to actually be ITX, not ridiculously large and move some air around.

The M1 is money though :(
 
Meshlicious vs NR200 really at the moment.

Best-in-class CPU cooling vs best-in-class GPU cooling. NR200 is more flexible in terms of layout and cooling options. Meshlicious is smaller, and takes up around half the desk space.

Take a look on r/SFFPC at NZXT H1 posts. You'll get the gist of the cooling situation pretty quickly; a lot of H1 builds either have a vented front panel, or 40mm Noctua fans stuffed in spaces round the back of the case.
 
My cougar QBX with a couple of noctua reduxes is very quiet under load compared to my dad's big E-ATX full tower. in my opinion, it all depends on how your airflow is setup and what fans you use, if you're striving for quietness don't go look past noctuas or artic p14s for sure.
 
Meshlicious and nr200 have the most space and comparability with components.

my sg13 was very quiet with an aio and undervolted gpu, also cool.
The sharkoon qb one is worth a look as well
 
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