New System - Cooling Question

[BrettT 63]

Hi,

 

I am looking at doing a new build.   9900K, 2080ti in a Fractal Design Meshify S2.

I really like EVGA Z390 Dark MB and I really like the Noctua NH-15DS CPU cooler.

The question/concern is that the EVGA board rotates the CPU socket 90 degrees which will effectively have the fan for the Noctua fan going from bottom to top as opposed to front to back to be in line with the case fans.  Also I believe the preferred slot for the GPU is the top one which basically has the non-fan side of the GPU facing the inlet for the Noctua.  Is this a concern?  I guess I could reverse the fan where the noctua is drawing air from the top of the case and blowing it across the backside of the GPU

 

[PapaCharlieKilo 1]

Hey Brett,

if you want to OC your 9900K you will have to watercool it anyway! I have a cusstom Loop with a 360 Rad on my 9700K@5GHz and see temps in the high 70's in demanding Scenarios.

Cheers,

Peter

[martin-w 3,234]

13 hours ago, BrettT said:

Hi,

 

I am looking at doing a new build.   9900K, 2080ti in a Fractal Design Meshify S2.

I really like EVGA Z390 Dark MB and I really like the Noctua NH-15DS CPU cooler.

The question/concern is that the EVGA board rotates the CPU socket 90 degrees which will effectively have the fan for the Noctua fan going from bottom to top as opposed to front to back to be in line with the case fans.  Also I believe the preferred slot for the GPU is the top one which basically has the non-fan side of the GPU facing the inlet for the Noctua.  Is this a concern?  I guess I could reverse the fan where the noctua is drawing air from the top of the case and blowing it across the backside of the GPU

 

 

 

I don't quite understand. The fact that the CPU socket orientation has changed shouldn't affect the cooler, as the holes for the brackets are equidistant. They form a square, so how is it that you feel that the D15 cant be oriented in the normal way? 

 

[martin-w 3,234]

1 hour ago, PapaCharlieKilo said:

Hey Brett,

if you want to OC your 9900K you will have to watercool it anyway! I have a cusstom Loop with a 360 Rad on my 9700K@5GHz and see temps in the high 70's in demanding Scenarios.

Cheers,

Peter

 

Not true, many people are running the 9700K with a D15. You may be unaware of just how effective the D15 is. 

[BrettT 63]

Martin,

 

I believe it has more to do were the ram is placed.  The EVGA Z390 Dark places the ram slots across the top of the board instead of the right side so the stepped fins of the D15 need to aligned with the ram modules.  The video below shows everything in place.  I felt a little better after seeing the video

 

[vortex681 806]

2 hours ago, BrettT said:

I believe it has more to do were the ram is placed.

That must play havoc with airflow through the case. Plus, you're either blowing warm air onto you graphics card or sucking warm air from it. Seems very badly designed unless they just assumed that everyone who bought it would use liquid cooling.

[vc10man 732]

3 hours ago, martin-w said:

 

Not true, many people are running the 9700K with a D15. You may be unaware of just how effective the D15 is. 

Great response, Martin, as I was awaiting your view as you know I 'm also Noctua-leaning.

Edited May 15, 2019 by vc10man

[martin-w 3,234]

Quote

 

Martin,

 

I believe it has more to do were the ram is placed.  The EVGA Z390 Dark places the ram slots across the top of the board instead of the right side so the stepped fins of the D15 need to aligned with the ram modules.  The video below shows everything in place.  I felt a little better after seeing the video

 

 

 

Oh right, I knew it was an awesome board but wasn't aware of the RAM slot placement. 

To be honest, I have seen the D15S orientated that way before, and the temps were good. 

My suggestion would be to configure your top mounted fans to blow in toward the D15 for optimum CPU temp and of course your D15 fans blowing the same direction, down toward the graphics card back plate. On the other hand, if you orientate the D15 so that it's exhausting, and the top mounted fans exhausting, thus the cooler ingesting warm air from your open shroud graphics card, CPU temp will rise by about 5 degrees. If it's a blower style graphics card CPU temp shouldn't be affected.

You may feel that the warm air direct at the Graphics card would be an issue but I suspect not. Rads mounted at the front of the case blow warm rad air directly at the graphics card too, and in practice its no issue at all. In fact some tests have determined that to be the best arrangement. 

It will be a very positive case pressure of course with front intake fans and top mounted intake fans and I presume only one exhaust fan, but as long as there are sufficient vents at the back of the case for air to escape freely I don't see that as an issue.

I suspect you will be pleasantly surprised and not experience much of a graphics card temp increase. 

 

Edited May 16, 2019 by martin-w

[BrettT 63]

Thanks Martin!

[TechguyMaxC 516]

On 5/15/2019 at 10:39 AM, vortex681 said:

That must play havoc with airflow through the case. Plus, you're either blowing warm air onto you graphics card or sucking warm air from it. Seems very badly designed unless they just assumed that everyone who bought it would use liquid cooling.

It's not poorly designed, the Z390 Dark is engineered for extreme overclocking.  Everything about it is very well thought out.  If I were buying a 9900k today I wouldn't even look at another motherboard.

[martin-w 3,234]

15 hours ago, TechguyMaxC said:

It's not poorly designed, the Z390 Dark is engineered for extreme overclocking.  Everything about it is very well thought out.  If I were buying a 9900k today I wouldn't even look at another motherboard.

 

Yep, the Dark is well known to be an exceptional motherboard. If I were building now it would be way up there at the top of my list. 

[BrettT 63]

Ended up placing the order for the following

9900K CPU

EVGA 2080ti Black

EVGA Z390 Dark MB

GSkill 32MB (2x16) 3200 @ CL 14

WD Blue 2TB SSD (also plan on using a Samsung 500GB SSD from my old system)

Fractal Design Define S2 Meshify Case

EVGA Supernova G2 850W Power Supply

Noctua NH-D15S Cooler

I will follow up when I get the chance once I get everything up and running

[martin-w 3,234]

Looks good Brett, will be very interested in your opinion once up and running. 

[BrettT 63]

I managed to get everything together.  I did have one "duh" moment where I thought the system was toast on the first boot when I didn't see anything on the screen and the board showed an A6 error.  Turns out the system was just hanging out in the bios screen waiting for the word not allowed to switch the monitor to the correct HDMI input 🙂

I was able to get the Noctua NH-D15S to face left to right and still have some clearance on the metal back plate of the GPU.  This allowed me to have air flowing from two fans in the front to the cooler and out the back on a single fan.

The case worked out mostly good except with the case cable pass thrus along the right side of the board were too close to mate up with the 90 degree connectors on the E-ATX  MB.  Wasn't a huge deal as I just removed the back section of the power supply shroud and routed up along the back while still maintain good air flow.

The memory accepted the XMP profile without any problems (3200 MHz CL14 with a voltage of 1.358)

I selected from the moderate OC selection in the bios (4.9 GHz across all 8 cores).  I disabled HT as I had no intention of using it.  

Ran the bios supplied stress test for 20 minutes.  Resulted in 68 deg temp with a voltage of 1.32.  The values leveled off after 5 minutes and remained steady throughout the test.  

Just wanted to pass along the results of the system for any who were interested.  Not sure if I intend to push the OC any more (not that I actually had to try to get it there).  There is some comfort in knowing that the system works solidly without spending time fiddling around. (and lets face it there are plenty to fiddle around with inside the sim!)

 

It will be a while before I get P3D set up and tuned (or possibly experiment with xplane).  Right now my focus will be getting DCS and iracing (which seems to be no problem) where I want it.

 

Overall happy with the system and the cooling solution

 

[martin-w 3,234]

Quote

Ran the bios supplied stress test for 20 minutes.  Resulted in 68 deg temp with a voltage of 1.32.  The values leveled off after 5 minutes and remained steady throughout the test.  

 

Great news Brett. 68 degrees is very good at 4.9 GHz. Don't forget to install the latest BIOS, lots of performance and stability tweaks arrive after the BIOS with the board.