How to passively equip a gaming HDPlex H5?

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decenator
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Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2015 8:05 am

How to passively equip a gaming HDPlex H5?

Post by decenator » Fri Dec 25, 2015 8:14 am

Hi silent experts :),

What my goal is for a late Christmas present - with a new build, is to get a system completely passively cooled and put as much GPU power in as I can get away with.

My reason to go with a dedicated graphics card is to push light gaming (like starcraft 2) and 1080p video editing to a 2560x1440 monitor or 4K if possible(?).

I expect the whole setup (w/o monitor) to cost up to 1500$

What i found on the forum is this build:
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=68842&p=597738#wrapheader
But what I'm missing there is more powerful graphics card and the orientation towards gaming.

I'm open to your suggestions for parts to put in. What I don't want to compromise on is on the form factor and passive cooling (as this pc will be in my bedroom. Thank you very much for your help!



so far, these are my thoughts:
Case: HDPlex H5 second-generation with heat pipe cooling. (also with GPU heatpipe cooling), where the cooling should be good for 95W each. I chose this case as it was the first I saw with an out of the box GPU heatpipe solution (342$).
CPU: thought of Intel i5, 6th gen, I'm open for suggestions
Graphics card: nVidia type for Adobe Premiere, I'm open for suggestions. Which one gives maximal performance with the 95W thermal limit? +any PCI riser recommendation?
SSD: m.2 512GB
Mainboard: mATX or ITX size with m.2 slot
Powersupply: How much power do i need also depends on the graphics card which is not fixed. maybe 160W from HDPlex (HDPLEX-160W-DC-ATX-Power-Supply-16V-24V nano ATX) or more? The case also has some limitations: with an ITX board, a standard ATX powersupply fits in, but with a mATX board only a SFX or such a nano ATX.
hd: WD green 2.5" 2TB if there's enough power left, but not essential

Thanks,
Denis

CA_Steve
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Re: How to passively equip a gaming HDPlex H5?

Post by CA_Steve » Fri Dec 25, 2015 9:00 am

Welcome to SPCR.

The best <95W gfx card is the GTX 950 @ 90W. You'd get decent 1080p gameplay with Starcraft II.

My concern is whether or not the GPU VRM circuitry will be adequately cooled.

decenator
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2015 8:05 am

Re: How to passively equip a gaming HDPlex H5?

Post by decenator » Mon Dec 28, 2015 1:37 am

CA_Steve wrote:
The best <95W gfx card is the GTX 950 @ 90W. You'd get decent 1080p gameplay with Starcraft II.

My concern is whether or not the GPU VRM circuitry will be adequately cooled.
Thanks Steve for the nice GPU recommendation. I think it fits the 95W limit well.


How about the other parts? I.e. Motherboard, CPU and power needs? with a i5 6600K, is the 160W powersupply enough?

CA_Steve
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Re: How to passively equip a gaming HDPlex H5?

Post by CA_Steve » Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:04 am

The i5-6600K is listed at 95W TDP...but at stock clocks it falls closer to 65W. Depending on how much RAM you throw in there, my guess is your stressed load power will be in the 180-200W range; a heavy load on CPU+GPU being closer to 160W. Don't think I'd use a 160W PSU. Maybe other members will pipe in with their thoughts..

This bridge connector looks interesting...allows for an external PSU. Would keep the PSU from baking inside the case. Need to make sure it has enough connectors for your build.

Mobo: Check with HDPlex for compatible motherboards. I like Asus for their fan control in the UEFI. Followed by MSI and Asrock.

Abula
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Re: How to passively equip a gaming HDPlex H5?

Post by Abula » Mon Dec 28, 2015 10:02 am

In my Cammi build i use a 4770K that has been driven with a picoPSU 150XT with 150W brick, and it does reach 150W consumption on prime95, but usually its around 60-90W depending on load the cameras are placing the server, but really steady for more than year now. The 6600K on stock clocks has a delta of 40W (aprox) over my 4770K, and im running a 3.5hdd give or take 10W, so you should be very close to 100W on load on the 6600K (but also depends on the efficiency of the mobo and psu, among other things). The GTX750Ti on load is close to 70W, so if you load both.... you should be around 170W, give or take.

If you don't have any other option for PSU but the 160W, i would suggest to drop the GTX950 for GTX750Ti and test it, check your consumption, specially on load to determine if you going to need to to underclock/undervolt the 6600K, you could test with windows power management (for limiting % of cpu usage) or Intel Extreme Utility (for undervolting on windows) to balance it out to your personal need/liking, then you can do in the bios more accurate way.

Since i see you want to try 4k, its worth mentioning that the only GTX750Ti that i remember has display port is the Asus GTX750Ti STRIX, there might be others, but when i bought mine, it was the only one, and displayport is the only way to get 60hz on 4k (at least until we see new HDMI revision being implemented on the GPUs, but we might have to wait for Pascal for this).

That said, i would suggest against a totally passive build for gaming and editing, even if you tweak everything to be within tolerances, it will run always hot on load. You can easily build an inaudible setup, specially now a days that PSU are semi passive, GPUs are also semi passive, and you can put big heatsinks on cpu to be able to cool it off with very low rpms, you can also get case fans that are very quiet and driven to inaudible levels, its really easy these days to build a very quiet setup, lots of options, and to me there is no need to go full passive, unless you are in for the experience.

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