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"ITXBOX" SFF Powerhouse

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First post, by ptr1ck

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This is my daily driver for the past 10 years that's gone through a few upgrades. I originally built it in 2012 as a portable machine. I wanted the smallest form factor I could get to house a real GPU. At the time, laptops didn't impress me much.

Just a few weeks ago, I finally did it's first fresh install of Windows since 2012. It had been using the same install from Windows 7 in 2012, upgraded to Windows 10 then to Windows 11. It's also been on about 3 different boot drives.

I initially built the machine with an air-cooled i5 2500K but that was getting too hot at load so I swapped out the optical drive to an external enclosure and threw a Corsair H60 on it with a Cougar fan. After a few years of the 2500K, I lucked into a free 8600K. I went with an ASRock Z370 board as they seem to do very well with the ITX format for a reasonable price. Just last year, I got the itch for some hyperthreading goodness, so I splurged on a 9900KF, which is running flawlessly at 5.0ghz all-core with a slight negative offset voltage in the BIOS. I do not let it hit 100% load, but when it does it still takes a little time before it will throttle in Prime95 with small FFT. In games, it floats around 55 degrees with little usage since my 3060 TI is the bottleneck.

Build as of 05-02-2022:
Case: Silverstone Sugo SG05
PSU: Seasonic Focus SGX-650
Mobo: ASRock Fatl1ty Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac
CPU: Intel i9 9900KF @ 4.9ghz all core (negative voltage offset)
Cooler: Corsair H60 w/ Cougar CF-V12HP
RAM: Team T-Force DARK Pro 16gb DDR4 3200 CAS14
Video: EVGA Geforce RTX 3060 Ti XC Gaming
Wireless: Intel AC 9260
SSD: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB
SSD: Samsung 850 EVO 500GB
DVD: Samsung SN-208BB – External USB
Monitor: LG 32QN650-B IPS Freesync (G-Sync works)
Keyb: Logitech G710+
Mouse: Razer Deathadder Elite
OS: Windows 11

Past components:

Intel i5 2500K
Intel i5 8600K
ASRock Z77E-ITX
Samsung DDR3 -3200 8GB
Crucial Ballistix DDR3-1600 16GB
Asus Geforce GTX 760 2GB
PNY Geforce GTX 1060 6GB
Seagate Momentus XT 500gb Hybrid SSHDD 7200
Intel AC 8265

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Last edited by ptr1ck on 2022-05-02, 16:33. Edited 2 times in total.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 1 of 9, by H3nrik V!

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Wow, that's a lot of power in a small box. Really awesome! However shorter cables might pay off in terms of temperatures, I would guess?

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 2 of 9, by ptr1ck

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Cable management could be a bit better for sure. The PSU is fully modular, I just haven't tried to shorten the cables any. There is a pretty clear path for airflow under the cables though. The AIO hoses are what's the major PITA in this small space. The i9 9900KF is also a monster to cool down when overclocked; dialing in the voltages to as low as possible is key.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 4 of 9, by ptr1ck

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It's been a while since I had afterburner running, but idle was around 27 degrees. Running games, it wouldn't go over 60 iirc.

The only time I would see it get real hot and throttle would be after running prime95 for a while during initial testing. I don't do any AVX offset. I feel I have a decent chip to get 5.0 with a negative voltage offset. It may had been destined for a KS bin but with the graphics not up to par, it got thrown in the KF bin.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 6 of 9, by ptr1ck

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chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-04-28, 16:05:

Wow those temps are great and for your chip to hit 5gigs with reduced voltage is awesome sounds like a Silicon lottery winner to me.

I'll get something more official up later.. BIOS settings, real temps.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 8 of 9, by H3nrik V!

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ptr1ck wrote on 2022-04-25, 15:15:

Cable management could be a bit better for sure. The PSU is fully modular, I just haven't tried to shorten the cables any. There is a pretty clear path for airflow under the cables though. The AIO hoses are what's the major PITA in this small space. The i9 9900KF is also a monster to cool down when overclocked; dialing in the voltages to as low as possible is key.

Great that there's adequate air flow, it wasn't visible at that angle 😀

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 9 of 9, by ptr1ck

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I did a little testing and I'm not 100% stable at 5.0/4.7 anymore for whatever reason in Prime95 (errors) so I backed it down to 4.9/4.6...

BIOS settings:
49 All Core
46 Cache Ratio
No AVX offset
Voltage is offset mode, -40mv
LLC is set to 4.
BIOS is 4.31 beta with "Clever Access Memory" which is what ASRock calls Resizable BAR.

Idle temp is sitting at 32 while browsing, 0.624v per HWiNFO64.
Loaded in Prime95 hits 90 quickly, about 3 minutes to 95, voltage showing at 1.280. I don't let it run long enough to really cook because of my 120mm AIO.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

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