I just purchased an ASUS ROG Strix H370-F. The fan controls are fine in that every header can be set for DC/PWM, can have a predefined or totally custom curve complete with multiple temp/speed points, rise/fall times, etc. The BIOS and software pretty much mirror each other in terms of what you can ...

My Define C should be here tomorrow so I'll get a better sense once I see it in the flesh. What I might do to try and spread the cost out a little is start by moving the included rear fan to the front (so 2x120mm Fractals there) and get an NF-S12A for the rear. Then down the road look at upgrading t...

For clarity, here is a quick photoshop job to illustrate what I am thinking. This is depicting 140mm fans: FDminiC_Front.jpg A 140mm in the top position is mostly unobstructed (but its not what I would call perfect). A second one under it definitely starts to have some metal in the way, especially t...

Thats a great shot of the front you found. It looks like a 140 in the topmost position would be all but unobstructed, but a second one under it would at very least have that 2nd horizontal "bar" plus the corners encroaching on its aperture a little bit. Nitpicking to be sure, but if using the filter...

3 x 120 or 2 x 140 on the front intake....opinions? Normally I'd think the 140s but the way the case's front steel has been stamped it looks like they wouldnt have total open-aperture awesomeness (unless you dig out the Dremmel and start pruning).

Thanks very very much for checking that! Sounds like either one will do. I currently have one 2.5" SSD and one 3.5" drive but I'd like to at least have the contingency for one more (without resorting to burring 2.5" drives of any kind to the back of the mainboard plate).

Looking at the pictures I would have thought that the inset cable management "channel" at the front might be show stopper but yakuman can tell us more later maybe?

ASRock H370M Pro4 has its 'prime' M.2 between PCIE-1 and the CPU. Probably better airflow than under the GPU, but less accessible (as it's easier to remove the GPU than the HSF). Thanks. I looked at that one but ASRock is not available to me. The MSI B360M Mortar has x4 M.2s both above and below th...

Putting m.2 drives right under a videocard is never a good idea. Do we think that moving it just one slot over would make all the difference? Almost all the boards I'm looking at ( example ) are positioning the "prime" (x4) M.2 socket there. That has to be better than RIGHT under a 2-slot GPU? It'd...

What I would do if you wish to do some fans being controlled by the videocard, get a new Asus strix, most come with two extra pwm standard fan headers. Yes, I used one for a customer a few months ago and it worked very very well for controlling an intake fan pointed at the video card (including ful...

Rather than start a new thread....

With the PS/drive shroud removed completely, is there enough room to mount a 3rd drive to the top of the drive cage, or does the motherboard panel interfere? What if it were a 2.5" drive?

Does MSI, through software, let you associate a motherboard fan header with GPU temp (assuming an MSI gpu of course)?

I checked our dealer costing on them today and saw a marked drop this week alone.

I may well have misinterpreted what I saw. Are you thinking BIOS or Software though?

I had a chance to play with a friend's MSI Z270 Pro board....wow the BIOS Fan control is nice! Separate custom 4-point curve for each fan plus DC/PWM selection of course. I just wish there was more than 2 sensors (CPU and "System"...which I suspect is really chipset temp). Conversely I looked at som...

Thank you for you thoughts. I actually very much like the NZXT S340. It is ATX but very sensibly sized, only slightly larger than most mATX cases. It has only one important flaw for me: the exhaust grills are quite restrictive (which is odd because all their other cases use the familiar and efficien...

I have a gargantuan Antec P280 with next to nothing in it (mobo, gpu, and two drives). For years I've been saying my next build will be a smaller mATX based one, but now that I'm actually looking at some builds, they seem awfully "cramped": The GPU is closer to the CPU on mATX boards, an M.2 between...

Dont I feel foolish now.

(sadly a google search for reviews doesn't bring up SPCR until the 5th page)

I had a chance in passing to see an S430 case and I have to say I was astounded at the physical quality, especially at under a C-note. Far less flimsy than Corsair or Fractal. Nice compact proportions (for an ATX case). Not sure how well it would work for a quiet build. The only air-inlet apertures ...

Just for conversation... From left to right (in terms of CPU vCore): 8 phase (2 fets per) / 4 phase (4 fets per) / 4 phase (2 fets per). There are all non -OC boards (H370/B360). VRMCompare.jpg Now the really interesting thing here is that the PWM chip, High fets, and Low fets of the first two are i...

Found this article which has some interesting information, but perhaps outdated? One thing he mentions is that a phase will always be made up of two mosfets, one-high one-low, with either a driver IC OR a third mosfet acting as the driver . I dont know if this holds true anymore because I see a lot ...

MSI Z370 Gaming M5 - Superb bios fan control, all headers are switchable on the bios (PWM/DC), 4 breakpoint graph to detail your fan curve, no limits per header you can go as low as your fans can and if they were capable of stopping the mobo will be aswell." Encouraged by this I looked at a couple ...

Not sure if this is a motherboard topic, or an SSD topic... How much concern do we as quiet PC buffs have with M.2 sockets which place the SSD right under the heatsink of a typical 2-slot GPU card? Thats a pretty big source of heat on top of it (perhaps the biggest generator of heat in the PC) but e...

I'm not quite as well versed with AMD as I am with Intel, but my understanding is that AMD never formally supported ECC on that platform. I've read some discussions about getting it to work, but seems sketchy. https://www.kingston.com/en/memory/search?DeviceType=2&Mfr=ASR&Line=Motherboard&Model=9608...

Decision time: A very generous soul ordered me an NH-U9S. From the pics it looks like the fan can be dropped 10mm or so? Guessing that would be enough to send air strait to the VRM bank opposite the fan, but what about the other bank ("next to" the air direction)? (I know you are thinking "just try ...

That's why you also look at the load power graph. Just so I understand, what we like to see is low consumption both at idle and under load because that would be a strong indication of an efficient design, yes? But is it still possible that a given mainboard exhibits a low consumption under load not...

How have your VRM temps been on this build? Clearly the absence of a downfiring CPU cooler has been an non-issue for them, eh?

Thank you both for the resources. I'll have to make time to sift through Buildzoid's channel (overwhelming amount of interesting material). There are still a few sites out there that collect lots of motherboards and compare them. So, you can at least get an inkling of idle power draw. Forgive the re...

I remember a looong time ago, back when Intel still made and sold their own branded boards (how I long for those), they had a white paper which basically talked about how a board with a pile of VRM phases was not necessarily a good thing. Some cheap boards they said, use an abundance of them to over...

smilingcrow wrote:I have all the parts except for the board and CPU cooler which I want to order this weekend.

So what did you go with in the end?