Parts Showcase

In my haste of working parts around I did forget to take individual pictures of certain items, namely the processor and power supply, Oh well~ let's start with the goodies:





















You might be asking "why did you buy a PCI bracket with ports on it? Most dedicated ITX cases only have at most 2 slots." All will be revealed shortly.



A shot of one of the low profile SATA cables compared to a regular USB cable. The molding comes out to be a little less than half the thickness as the cable comes out from the side instead of straight out. The cable itself is actually made of two 30 gauge cables, but still is practically 2/3 the thickness when including the braiding, and a quarter the width.



Believe it or not, but I never saw the post about using a low profile USB 3.0 extension mentioned here. I found out myself that while I COULD fit the Scythe heat sink in and use the original connector, it would have been extremely tight and would be putting some pushback pressure on the heat sink. I opted to get one myself from the same vendor. A word to the wise: using free shipping from Moddiy is a huge game of Russian roulette, and took 32 calendar days to get this part from China (where they ship almost everything out of). It's one of the reasons why my build took so long.



As you can see this thing is VERY small compared to the cable included in the ML08, and matches the style of the Silverstone PSU, and skipping a head a little bit, here's a picture of it installed in the case.

 

Case Showcase











Fairly typical pictures of this case, but as mentioned earlier I was interested in adding some lighting to this case in a rather... unorthodox way as far as this case was concerned. There was no information on the front panel or front I/O plate. For starters, the front panel is held on by four screws and eight (iirc) tabs. The third screw going from top to bottom is inaccessible after you install the power supply.







The I/O panel is held in place by four screws. The middle two screws are just for the panel, and the two outer screws also hold the power and reset button assemblies in place. The LEDs in the clear button assemblies are 5mm LEDs and pop into place, and I would go on to eventually replacing the blue LEDs for Amber LEDs. One thing I have learned is that the wiring attaching the LEDs and especially the buttons are fairly fragile. With all the manipulation that I was imposing on these connections I did have to fix the power button and solder one of the wires back on.

 

It's Moddin' time~

In addition to the lighting mod that I wanted to do as well as the GPU cooling mod, I also wanted to do something about the perceived lack of ports on the Gigabyte Z170N. While I'm sure 4 USB A and 1 USB C would be enough, I like having a little extra breathing room, and I felt that the lack of eSATA was a travesty. That is where the ASUS PCI Bracket comes in. The plan is to harvest the ports from the bracket and put it elsewhere. Where you ask? Why on the I/O Plate of course. Unfortunately I do not have access to some of the more advanced or more precise tools/set ups that others do, so almost everything was done with the handy rotary tool.







I had to cut the molding to fit the tight space provided by the heat sink and heat pipe that Gigabyte included on the board. In addition to that, I cut the holes on the I/O plate with the rotary tool, and even cannibalized the PCI bracket for extra support for the ports against the plate's foam backside.





Finished product; it might not be the cleanest cuts but it does the job. Tried a half dozen USB cables and devices and they all clear properly.

Now onto the GPU cooling mod. I originally opted to use a template downloaded from here and even got it printed out for a 3x1 template:





I instead got lazy and used the filters themselves as guides, using a silver permanent marker to first mark the mounting holes. The drill bit I used was barely a millimeter larger than what was necessary, which would later help align the fans due to "poor workmanship."





Then I used the same permanent marker to mark out rough cutting lines for the fans. For the portion of the case by the venting, I simply used the vent to save time and cut through parts of the venting.





No action shot of cutting this panel; once I started I did not want to stop for pictures plus it was late at night and sort of forgot about it ha ha ha. With the cuts complete I test fitted with the fan filters. As you can see, it was not the best fit but with fans attached it aligned better. Speaking of which...





I sleeved the fan power cables and then covered the motor mount and wires with Gaffer's tape so that you could not see any of it from the outside.

Finally, time for the lighting mod. I noticed on the front panel that part of the panel is recessed, and I thought it would be cool to illuminate the recessed portion by bouncing light out into the space. Back to the trusty rotary tool.





This made quite a bit of a mess, and due to the heat caused by the cutting wheel the plastic would actually partially melt as I cut it. It was easy enough to scrape/knock out with a small flat head screwdriver and I would check for lighting with a flashlight. Again my workmanship was a bit lacking and had a hard time getting a straight line for the life of me, but it turned out okay.





The first picture is a test fit of one of the LED strips. I neglected to take intermediate pictures of this install as well, but it involved using hot glue to affix the LED strip to the back of the front panel at approximately a 45 degree angle. I connected the two LED strips with some short single pin extension wires that I had found in the DIY section of my local computer store. Then to prevent as much light leakage as possible I covered the backing of the LED strip and the hot glue with Gaffer's tape. The final location of the pins for the LED strips lucked out as there is a small hole on the case body right above the cutout for the front panel wires, as pictured below. Just above that spot is where I stuffed the inverter and IR receiver as well.



If you noticed, the tray cover is not black anymore. I asked a local body shop to paint the exterior panels with automotive quality paint and finish. I was going for a warm gunmetal color and ended up choosing Mercedes-Benz Indium Grey (paint code 953) in a matte finish. I was not there for the painting but I do have a couple aftermath pictures:

 

Getting it All Together





Here is the completed GPU Cooling mod from the outside and inside. Didn't feel like spending the money to replace the white fan connectors ha ha...



@phdpepper mentioned in his build that to put all three fans you had to forego having an optical drive due to the tool-less ODD tray. This is partly true as the tool-less bracket gets in the way of one of the 80mm fans. However, you can still use a couple M2 screws to more snugly install the optical drive as I did above, and have the clearance for the fans.



Part of the PCIe riser card screws onto the chassis which actually makes a great spot to route cables through, in this case for SATA power and the front panel audio header.



Very little space for straight SATA cables in this case if your SATA ports are on the edge of the board. The low profile cables I got for the Mushkin SSDs were great, but the eSATA and combo cable used for the optical disc were not going to give me that amenity. There still is space to use normal cables, but you have to be a little cautious.



Interior view of the I/O panel mod installed. I got lucky on the clearances and used the PCIe riser to help cover up the excess cabling.





Being that Nvidia's Pascal or AMD's Polaris are not available yet, I opted to put my old EVGA GeForce GTX 570 Superclocked into my case. Since the EVGA card is based on the reference design it easily fits the case. I did try to use a friend's old Sapphire Vapor-X 7970 GHz. It was a tight fit considering how tall it was, and being longer than the GTX 570 made the space for the LED inverter and cable bundle a lot smaller. The 7970 was also wider than two PCI slots by a little bit, but borrowing one of the rubber pads used on the interior or the side panel made getting the clearance for the GPU fans easier. Ultimately I did not use it since it sounded like a jet liner taking off at full load.



While I do not intend on using Wi-Fi for this computer, I found out that the Bluetooth relies on the antenna to get a proper signal. With that in mind I installed the antenna on the side of the case, tying down the extra cable length with wire ties instead of zip ties for the sake of being able to remove and reuse them easier if I have to.

Here are a few pictures the "completed" build, which also includes a clear shot of the motherboard cut out and general location that several Z170 ITX boards use for the M.2 slot. The M.2 SSD is a couple millimeters from being flush with the chassis, and the chassis again only has a few millimeters clearance from the side panel so there is almost no airflow to the M.2 SSD, but cursory evaluation of the drive has this not being much of an issue.









White is not true white since the Logysis RGB LED strip uses three LEDs for each cell instead of 4, so it makes white from using all three LEDs. Because of how large they are and the large separation between each cell and within the cell, it does not make true white.

 

Upgrades and Modifications

Finally got my GTX 1080! Also was unhappy with what temperatures I was experiencing at stock, so I made some modifications. Please see them here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1595110/build-log-hyperion-mk-iii-a-silverstone-ml08-build/20#post_25453043

Performance and Temperature Benchmarks

I still have yet to finalize processor clocking, but after the changes/upgraded mentioned above, I have some numbers relating temperatures. Please see them here: http://www.overclock.net/t/1595110/build-log-hyperion-mk-iii-a-silverstone-ml08-build/20#post_25446102

Final Thoughts

At this point I'm pretty much done at the hardware level, the only other idea I have for this case would possibly add a second lighting mod. The bottom of the carrying handle has a bit of a divot inside the handle, and between adding another LED strip and encasing the hollow sections of the handle with probably hot glue, I could get a pretty neat glow effect through the top and bottom of the handle. If the prospect of having to take out the LED for various reasons was not bouncing around in my head I'd probably just use epoxy instead. *shrug* If I do end up wiring up the handle, I'll update the modding post and completed build pictures.

To those that read through all my nonsense, I hope you have enjoyed my build and maybe learned something about the case or parts. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or critiques please feel free to post them here.

 

Nice work on the case
The result is excelent

 

 

Awesome build! Really great work and good pictures too. Good dremel work!

 

Thank you very much for your kind words.

 

Sorry for the double post, but I have some observations and not really testing in earnest:

The Samsung Pro 950 does get pretty warm in the ML08. It idles between 40-42c (ambient being 21-22c), and gaming tends to push it between 50-55c it seems. I wouldn't say toasty, but considering the Mushkin drives I have in there don't seem to push past 40c (usually a solid 38c at all times).

The 6700k STOCK seems to push to 60c-65c+ under stress test like conditions, and the GTX 570 being an older, less efficient blower style card with limited airflow will easily jump to 80c under stress as well...

I would like to try to undervolt the 6700k some like one user did in the owner's thread and possibly new thermal paste to try and get the CPU "under control." I used 7 year old Arctic Silver 5... the stuff should be fine but I will take suggestions for a different TIM. I'm not so concerned about the GPU temps because it is not indicative of the kind of card I'll be putting into this case, and the 950pro: there's not much I can do that I would consider safe. I have considered using a couple thermal pads (or a piece of metal sandwiched between two pads) to effectively turn part of the side panel into a heatsink, but I would worry about what an accidental impact would do to the side of the case and in turn the SSD.

 

Thanks for posting about the 950 Pro's heat performance. I was considering the same drive and specifically picked my mobo for m.2 NVME support.

In the end, I decided to skip the 950 Pro, chalking the heat reports up to Gen 1 issues, and especially considering the small space for it in the ML08. I'll buy the 2nd or 3rd gen when heat from the controller should be improved.

 

I'm not sure if continual iterations will have as substantial of a heat drop as you think it will, but the drive might be in a more comfortable situation with a thin heat spreader perhaps. I can't imagine how hot this thing could get with a second bank of memory chips on the other side (to increase the drive capacity).

I contacted Silverstone today regarding my PSU, and they'll take the RMA request without me having to rip out all my cabling. This of course makes me VERY relieved and will have to send it to them asap.

 

Great build! Thanks for sharing those photos.

Quick question, have you tried comparing GPU temps under load with the fan mod fans on vs off? I'm curious to see how much of an improvement it is and whether it's worth it to hack at the case. Would also love to see those temps for when you install a Pascal card (especially if it is an open fan card instead of stock blower).

 

Being that the cards I have in my position are not very efficient temperature wise. I do know the 7970, even though it was running at max speed was something like 10 degrees cooler than the stock blower style of the GTX 570. I want to say it's mostly due to being able to get air more freely from the side vent, but it's something I can look into when my PSU gets back from Being RMA'd.

 

My PSU is back from being RMA'd and well... it's a bit quieter than before, but the new PSU (confirmed with a different serial number) still exhibits the chirping sound from time to time rather than near constantly. Still significantly better than before, but I'll continue to observe it.

 

Nice job. I'm about to put together a build much like yours, but I'm going to throw caution to the wind on temps and boost the grade of components I throw in to the higher end. Probably will do the same mod for the fans, since my Gigabyte G1 980TI will need to breathe a bit more when it's installed, and this looks perfect to enhance it's exhaust through the top edge of the card.

I'm building for #1: a discrete streaming and encoding rig and #2: (when paired with my main rig's graphics) a powerful, portable VR machine. I did get a suggestion on the Owner's Club thread to get a Corsair SFX at 600w, rather than the Silverstone, for questions of reliability.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by madboyv1

My PSU is back from being RMA'd and well... it's a bit quieter than before, but the new PSU (confirmed with a different serial number) still exhibits the chirping sound from time to time rather than near constantly. Still significantly better than before, but I'll continue to observe it.

I went for the Corsair SFX series. Silent.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by sugarbear7

I went for the Corsair SFX series. Silent.

Glad you're enjoying it. I've gotten used to what noise my second copy makes, and even then most of the time it is drowned out by other sounds.

Time for a late update:

I still have temperature issues with the 950 Pro, which may stem from it's relative proximity to my GTX 570. The card idles at an unfortunate 45-50c, so you can only imagine how high both components go when under stress (hint, near thermal limits/throttling). Being a blower style shroud does not help the matter in regards to the GPU. With that in mind, I finally have ordered my Gigabyte GTX 1080 G1 Gaming, which should be in at the end of the week. As a double fan open shroud having better access to ambient air, and having a lower TDP than the GTX 570 (180w vs 220w), my GPU temperatures should improve. I will be reseating my CPU heatsink with better and newer thermal paste to see if that helps wrangle temperatures down. Lastly, to further address heat issues with the 950 pro, I am going to look into either bleed heat directly to the case panel via copper shims and thermal padding, or if space allows some low profile chip heatsinks. Pictures of the GPU and what I decide to do with the 950pro will follow.

If I absolutely must, I may consider creating a cutout with a mesh cover on the side panel to give some air to the 950pro.

edit: To save my next post to be something more of substance, I'll update this post.

The space from the m.2 ssd and the side panel is between 8-9mm at most, 10mm would most likely hit the side panel unless you warped out the panel by a tiny bit. Because of the sliding install of the side panel, I decided it was better not to try and directly dump heat to the panel. I have purchased five 20x20x6mm chipset heatsinks and a small thermal adhesive pad from ebay (less than$9 total). I'll be putting four of those heatsinks on the 950 pro.

degree.

 

Hi can you tell me how temps are with your new GTX 1080? I am personaly going to upgrade to the 1060 but I don't know if I should go with blowerstyle or open type GPU. I have not modded the case ^^

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by puriya

Hi can you tell me how temps are with your new GTX 1080? I am personaly going to upgrade to the 1060 but I don't know if I should go with blowerstyle or open type GPU. I have not modded the case ^^

I'll certainly let you know when I install it, but to answer your question, both the vendor rep [link] and the manual [page 26 or 29] say that they recommend open air coolers.

Being that my 570 is a blower style card and of a similar TDP (rated at 220w vs 180w), I can say that at present it tends to idle @ 50c with a single display attached to it, and I've seen it go into the 90s under load. Being that it is summer and my house is never all that cold, the ambient temperature has something to do with it, but I'm hoping the lower TDP and hopefully better cooling solution will mean that the 1080 will run cooler.

 

A quick update because I'm being lazy about pictures, The new card, TIM, and heatsinks came in, and there has been a drastic difference in my temperatures.

The Gigabyte G1 GTX 1080 idles at 38C-41C, which is 9-12c LOWER than my GTX 570 (usually at a solid 50c), and similarly the temperature under load has been reduced by the same amount, from the upper 80s/low 90s to upper 70s/low 80s..

The new Grizzly Kryonaut thermal paste reduced my idle temps from 37c-44c to upper 27c-32c. Under load temperatures have been reduced similarly, capping in the upper 60s/low 70s rather than hitting upper 80s and beyond. The ramp down from load temperatures to idle is even faster than before.

Finally the heatsinks I added to the 950pro has reduced my idle temperature from 49-51c to 42c-43c, and under load I've gone from upper 60s/low 70s to low 60s. More importantly I no longer experience thermal throttling, but I feel like since these heatsinks are completely passive with almost no airflow, it takes longer to ramp down from load temperatures.

Now we can start cooking with gas~

 

Pictures? I am curious on the heatsinks

I want to do this mod but its a little expensive (with the fans/the grills), does it have to be fans of 80x15 or could you use 80x25?

 

They have to be 80x15 or else they won't fit due to the L shaped case seperation. I just bought some very cheap fans on Ebay.co.uk for 3 pounds each. Have a look there. There is no need for your fans to be fancy as long as the dont sound like a hairdryer. The ones I bought make 26dB at @1800 RPM. I have a low noise adapter I might end up using.

 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fischer707

Pictures? I am curious on the heatsinks

I will get to the pictures tonight.
Quote:

Originally Posted by Fischer707

I want to do this mod but its a little expensive (with the fans/the grills), does it have to be fans of 80x15 or could you use 80x25?

Quote:

Originally Posted by puriya

They have to be 80x15 or else they won't fit due to the L shaped case seperation.

This is correct. the spacing between the case panel and the top of the partition is something like ~17mm if I remember correctly. So close that in order to install all three you must remove the ODD tool-less clip, and that dust will deposit itself on the partition even though I use all three fans as exhaust fans.
Quote:

Originally Posted by puriya

I just bought some very cheap fans on Ebay.co.uk for 3 pounds each. Have a look there. There is no need for your fans to be fancy as long as the dont sound like a hairdryer. The ones I bought make 26dB at @1800 RPM. I have a low noise adapter I might end up using.

Yeah my fans were about 5.35 pounds each (about $7 before any shipping) so if you look hard enough you can find cheaper. The grills were mostly an aesthetic choice, you could easily get away with cheap and simple wire grills if it's just for the sake of keeping fingers out, but since I had hand cut the slots I wanted it to look nice.

 

One of these days I'll make a new light box... But first delicious GTX 1080~







Okay so, here was the the process. I bought some 20x20x6mm heatsinks from ebay, they were something like $3.60 for a set of 5. I also bought a square (80x80x0.25mm) of thermal tape which actually cost more at $6.00 (don't judge ha ha). Didn't have a banana for scale so I had to use a ruler. I lined them up square on the SSD, being careful not to overlap the heatsink over the mounting screw. The last heatsink to the right overlaps the M.2 slot itself, so the thermal tape was cut in half (more like 60%) to avoid attaching the heatsink to the slot. If you can't get 6mm heatsinks you might be able to get away with 8mm heatsinks but definitely no more than that.





(Yes I recentered the SSD after I realized it was off.) Cleaned off the heatsink and put on the new Kryonaut thermal paste.




As I mentioned the difference was almost a ~10C degree drop in both idle and load temperatures for the CPU, GPU, and M.2 SSD, Feels good. I don't really have any before or after screenshots other than an ATTO benchmark showing how hard I was being hit by thermal throttling, and then a subsequent screenshot after:



Mission Accomplished.