Last November I built my very first small form factor gaming PC live here on YouTube. Since
then I’ve been using it to play plenty of games so I wanted to go over my time with it so far.
In this video I’ll talk about everything from cable management to gaming benchmarks, and how I
even threw an RTX 3080 inside to see just how hot it can get. Buckle up, this is going to be fun.
So right off the bat I’ll say that while the live build was sponsored by Avast - thank you
very much to them - this follow up video is not. Also, I have plenty to talk about with this one,
so I’ll be breaking the video up into chunks. First off I’ll do a quick summation of the live
build and how it went. Then I want to go over the modifications and cable management that I did to
the system afterwards. After that I’ll get into a few gaming and thermal performance benchmarks.
And I’ll wrap it up with a couple of thoughts on how I’m going to update it,
so be sure to subscribe to catch that next video when it hits.
In case you didn’t watch the whole 3 hour build live stream I did with Gordon,
you can catch it linked in the bubble and in the description below.
To quickly recap, I wanted to build a small form factor PC with its primary purpose being gaming
in the living room hooked up to a TV running at 4k 60. At the heart of the system is a Ryzen 5 5600X
slotted into a Gigabyte B550 mini ITX motherboard and cooled with a fancy Corsair 240mm AIO.
It features 16GBs of RAM, a 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD for the boot drive, and a 2TB 2.5 inch SATA SSD which
holds most of the games. The GPU I chose is the RTX 3070 as it can hit 1440p or 4k at 60 fps, but
like I mentioned I also did throw in an RTX 3080 to stress test things later on. All of this fit
into the Lian Li Q58, an awesome 14.5 liter mini ITX case with a unique look and plenty of space
to work in. For all of the exact details head to the PC Part Picker list in the description.
I really enjoyed building in this case, and even when I did cable management later I found
it pretty damn easy to navigate. Obviously this is my first small form factor case so I
don’t have anything to compare it to, but I’ve always been nervous to do so because it seemed
so much more complicated than a standard ATX case. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised.
As noted plenty of times during the build, I’m not a huge fan of AIO liquid coolers, I’ve always preferred air coolers.
I hate liquid cooling. Man I hate liquid cooling. I hate liquid cooling. This is why I don't like liquid cooling!
I was also skeptical about the fancy cooler Corsair provided us with an LCD
screen on the pump - even though Gordon kept telling me how cool it was during the stream.
Well, I’m here to say that this H100i Elite LCD might have turned me around on AIO’s.
I was playing with all the different readout options in the iCue software, which is cool,
but the minute I threw my cat BBs face full screen on that thing I was sold.
Now I’m not going to sit here and say this one is the best and that you should get it too,
but I found it way more enjoyable than I thought it would be.
Speaking of the AIO, let’s move into talking about the work I did to the system after the
live build was over, because I really struggled to close the doors when the cameras were rolling.
*lots of buzzing*
Within the next couple days I set up on my table at home and pretty much took out every wire to
figure out how it could all fit and look nice. The biggest offender that I had to deal with
was the AIO and it’s handful of different sized cables and large fan controller hub.
At some point that night I realized the best bet was to stuff the hub and as many of the cables as
I could into the chamber located between the power supply bracket and the middle panel.
Not only was there enough space to fit the hub and cables, I also routed the PCIe power cable
going to the graphics card through there as well. The rest of the cables going to the motherboard
were laid out and organized with the included velcro ties on the side of the PSU bracket.
I also realized that I could take some of the cables out that I wasn’t planning to
use. I disconnected the cables that were attached to the included fan hub on the back of the case.
I also ended up taking apart the front panel connector section in order to remove the USB-C
plug and cable as well as the front panel audio connection. This motherboard doesn’t have a USB
3.1 header and I never use front panel audio so those were an easy choice. I would have taken
out the other USB connection as well but that one wasn’t as simple, so I kept it in for now.
After many hours of routing, re-routing, and tying things down I ended up super happy with how
it turned out visually, and not a single buzzing has occurred after the live build! Unfortunately
all of the extra cable slack is shoved into the bottom of the case and it’s not pretty down there.
This SFX-L power supply provided by Silverstone has been awesome, but it’s larger than a standard
SFX unit and leaves no room to fit a bottom fan, which would have helped performance.
Speaking of performance, let's chat about how this thing handles some games, shall we?
I did benchmark runs in Hitman 3, Chernobylite, and Horizon Zero Dawn. These benchmarks are on the
longer side, so I felt it would be a good stress test, but of course if I would have let the games
run for hours the temps might be different. Now I will say that I did all of this testing
with the panels in the default configuration, so glass at the top and mesh at the bottom. I
took the FPS and thermal results after running the benchmark 3 times to let things heat up in there.
In between each set of runs I allowed the system to fall back down to ambient temps before moving
on. The CPU and GPU were set to stock performance, but I did enable the XMP 1 profile on the RAM,
and PBO was set to auto. In Corsair’s iCue software I had the pump set to
Balanced performance, and the two fans set to Quiet performance during all the testing.
With all of that out of the way let’s check out the numbers.
First up is the ambient temperature readings at the time I tested after the rig had been up
and running at the home screen for over half an hour. At idle the 5600X read 39 degrees celsius,
the RTX 3070 read 32 degrees, and the liquid was at 34 degrees.
The first game to look at is Hitman 3, and I ran all the settings maxed out at native
4k resolution on the Dubai loop, first with an uncapped frame rate, then with V-sync enabled.
After three runs with an uncapped frame rate the 5600X hovered around 54 degrees,
the RTX 3070 at 67 degrees, and the liquid at 39 degrees. The average frame rate was 80 fps,
which is more than enough to cap the game with vsync for my TV.
So then I did three runs doing just that, and as expected,
the temps dropped a bit. The CPU hovered around 48, the GPU around 56, and the liquid around 37.
That’s a 16% drop on the 3070, and an 11% decrease on the 5600X. Not a huge
drop from the liquid though, but a drop is a drop. Maybe more important is that I didn’t
hear the fans spin up as hard which is a pleasant result of capping the frame rate.
The next game is Chernobylite, probably my favorite game from last year, and it’s got a great
built in benchmark. I ran this at 4k with the Ultra preset. After the three runs with the frame
rate uncapped the CPU was around 61 degrees, the GPU at 68 degrees, and the liquid read 43 degrees.
Average frame rates during the first part of the loop were 69, so once again over
the 4k 60 my TV can handle, but during the benchmarks I did see a couple dips below 60.
Capping the framerate at 60 fps and doing another round of runs saw temperatures decrease once
again, just not as far. The CPU sat around 59 degrees, the GPU at 64 degrees, and the liquid at
41 degrees. Chernobylite definitely seems to hit the CPU harder than Hitman 3, and it was barely
crossing the 60 fps mark, so capping the frame rate of course didn’t result in a major decrease.
The biggest difference is that the fans once again didn’t spin up as hard when it was capped to 60.
Now let’s move over to Horizon Zero Dawn and see how well that performs. Here I ran it at
native 4k with the Ultimate preset. After three runs the CPU was hanging around 59 degrees,
the GPU around 67, and the liquid was at 42 degrees. The average frame rate didn’t quite hit
a nice 60 fps that I aim for, turning in an average 59 frames per second.
So instead of running another test just capping the frame rate, which wouldn’t help here, I was
curious to see how temps would change by enabling DLSS. Even in Quality mode that would get me well
over that 60fps threshold, and then by capping it might drop temps by bringing it back down.
I’m essentially seeing if DLSS can help things run cooler since the frame rate results will be
close to the same. Well after a couple of runs in this configuration the CPU hung around 55,
the GPU around 58, and the liquid around 40 degrees.
So yes, using DLSS helped cool things off, but of course it’s at the expense of resolution.
So while there are thermal snobs out there among you, I don’t consider most of these
temps to be wild or dangerous, even in a small form factor case like this.
Ok, then what if I threw in a piping hot RTX 3080 instead and really stressed the limits of this
setup? Well, I did just that… for science. The card I have on hand is an EVGA GeForce RTX 3080
FTW 3 Ultra Gaming part, and while I had to add another PCIe power cable,
it fit easily inside and added even more RGB to the mix.
Going back to Hitman 3 and doing the same round of testing saw temps - and frame rates - soar
over the 3070. Uncapped testing saw the CPU increase to 60 degrees, the GPU to 72 degrees,
and the liquid to 44. That's quite a jump over the 3070 testing,
in fact it’s a 11% increase on the CPU side and a 7% increase on the GPU side.
But the average frame rate jumped as well from 80 frames per second to 112, a 40% increase.
Well what about when I capped the frame rate at 60 fps, is the 3080 still hotter than the 3070?
Actually it was, but only by a couple degrees. Both the CPU and GPU got a bit hotter and the
liquid remained the same at 37 degrees. Either way, the capped results turned
in cooler numbers than when uncapped, and once again the fans didn’t spin up as hard as fast.
Checking out Chernobylite using the same testing methods, I saw another increase in
temps on the 3080 with an uncapped frame rate. The 5600X was 8 degrees hotter, the liquid got
5 degrees hotter, but surprisingly the 3080 was only 4 degrees hotter than the 3070 here.
Well, capping the frame rate at 60 and doing another round of tests
saw close to the same results as Hitman, with an interesting twist.
The liquid held at 41 degrees in both scenarios, but the 5600X was 4 degrees hotter with the 3080,
but the 3080 was 2 degrees cooler than the 3070. Now I’m not sure why this was,
but the readings were close enough, and either way the capped 3080 was cooler than the uncapped 3070.
Moving over to Horizon Zero Dawn, the results were actually much closer than the other titles.
The 3080 was only a couple degrees hotter than the 3070,
and the CPU and liquid results were very close as well. With a capped frame rate we saw a large
dip in temps again in both setups, and well under uncapped numbers for the CPU and GPU.
So looking over every result from the AIO, the hottest it got was during the uncapped RTX 3080
result in Chernobylite at 48 degrees. The lowest results were from the capped runs of Hitman 3
at 37 degrees, an almost 10 degree swing. Most of the results fell in the lower 40’s,
which doesn’t feel nuts in a small form factor case, let me know if you think I’m wrong.
My conclusions from all of this testing, as well as playing other games over the past couple
months, was that capping the frame rates to 60 is definitely the way to go as it’s wasted on my TV.
I’ve also had good results by enabling scalers like DLSS and FSR in the games where they are
supported. This keeps the temperatures down as well and the drop in resolution hasn’t
been noticeable since I’m gaming at a distance from my TV. Over longer gaming sessions things
still got toasty in this case, but it was never out of hand, and I’m pleased overall.
Ok, so now that we’ve seen how this rig looks and performs, what would I change about it?
Well first, I want to swap out that larger SFX-L power supply with a standard size SFX PSU in order
to fit an intake fan at the bottom. I’m curious to see how much that improves the temps in here,
even with just a single intake fan. Luckily I reached out to Silverstone and they are
sending over an SX750 Platinum PSU as well as an Air Slimmer 120 fan to do just that.
I’d also be curious to see how temps improve with all four side panels being mesh,
so I might have to track down a couple of those as well. But honestly it would have to make a
massive difference for me to consider it over the default configuration. I really like the look of
the tinted glass panels showing off a bit of RGB glow. Speaking of RGB, during the stream I talked
about how I didn’t really want that in a machine designed for the living room and would most likely
turn it off. Well I was wrong. I turned all the available RGB to glow a nice dark blue color
and it was actually quite pleasant. To tell you the truth, I even considered adding the optional
RGB strips to this case, but I don’t think I will, what’s in there should be enough - for now…
The only other major thing I want to experiment with is undervolting the CPU and GPU to get
an even better grip on thermals as fan noise can still get loud. Honestly, I’ve actually never done
either before so I’m once again nervous to try it out. Luckily Keith is working on how-to videos for
the channel and once those are up I’ll be using them myself to try out on this machine. Other than
that, there isn’t much I would change about this rig and I’m still so glad I decided to dive into
the small form factor world. Maybe I’ll even get back to building something in the NR200 one day.
Well that’s it, thanks for following me on this journey. Like I said I plan on doing a
follow up after I’ve made these changes to see how cool I can get it in here,
so look forward to that. If you have any suggestions on what I should do to this
setup please let me know in the comments below and while you are there be sure
to subscribe to see the next video once it posts. Until then I’ll catch everyone later.