Modded NSK-3300

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 7:33 pm

Recently finished up a couple mods to my NSK-3300 and figured I'd post some pictures.

First off, have to give credit to krick and porkchop for the clever behind the tray cable routing and HDD suspension. My mods were based on theirs. Here are links to their gallery threads.

Krick's Antec NSK3480 - behind the tray cable management
nsk3400 rev3 (10 pics 953kb)

Specs:
NSK-3300 w/SS-300SFD (fan replaced with AF8025L)
2x AF12025PWM
Gigabyte GA-MA785GM-US2H
Thermalright HR-05
Phenom II X2 550 BE -> X4 @ 2.6GHz 1.075V
Scythe Ninja (original)
Gigabyte Radeon HD5750 1GB
Arctic Cooling Accelero S2
4x2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2-800
OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD
WD Green 1TB

And now the pics

For comparison, here's a pic of the internals before the mods.

Here are the holes for routing cables behind the motherboard tray. Same basic idea as krick's mod, except I put some edge molding around the holes instead of using grommets. The holes were made with a 1-1/4" hole saw.

Pic of the inside with everything installed. The cable routing really cleans up the interior and makes it a lot easier to work inside the case. An extension for the AUX12V had to be used, and a Y adapter was necessary for SATA power.

Here's the top compartment. Again, pretty clean thanks to the cable routing.

This is where it gets messy. There's also not a lot of room between the tray and side panel, so care had to be taken to not overlap cables and keep everything as low profile as possible.

Some pics of the clearance between the heatsinks and side panel.

Was kind of hard to get a pic of it, but clearance between the Ninja, Accelero S2, and side 120mm intake fan is very tight. The intake fan is actually right up against the plastic shroud thing on the Accelero S2, I don't think there's any gap between them.

Here's a full pic of the outside of the case. A handle was installed on the top panel. I don't move the case around a whole lot, but when I do, this makes it so much easier. I wish more cases came with handles, I find them very handy for moving stuff around. A pic of the handle mounting is also shown. The handle came with some washers for mounting, but I didn't trust them to handle the weight of the NSK-3300 with everything installed in it, so I used pieces of an aluminum bar I had lying around instead.

Stays pretty quiet at idle, the case fans are Fan 4 (both use the same PWM signal and run at the same speed, although I only have the mobo reading one). Both case fans and power supply fan don't ramp up much at load, case fans get up to 400-500RPM. Power supply fan probably gets up to 600RPM-ish (just a guess, don't have any way to monitor RPM). Running Furmark+Prime95, the CPU gets up to about 50*C (according to the on-chip sensor) and the GPU tops out in the 80s.

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 8:16 pm

I quite like your build and I agree that a having fan close to the motherboard is a good idea. Only thing I would have done differently is mounting the intake fan at the bottom instead for less noise and cleaner looks (if that`s important).

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Mon Oct 12, 2009 11:43 pm

I actually didn't even think of that, heh. Probably would be pretty good at cooling the motherboard components, although not as effective as having a fan blowing air straight onto them. Would be really good for VGA cooling, though.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Fri Feb 19, 2010 3:40 pm

Figured I'd bump this since I've made quite a few changes since my original post.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Thu Apr 22, 2010 12:23 pm

Bump with some more changes, decided to go passive on the CPU and GPU.

zodaex · Post by **zodaex** » Mon May 10, 2010 8:22 pm

Really classy build there. It looks whisper quiet. Super crazy front HDD suspension as well.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Tue May 18, 2010 11:13 pm

Thanks. And yeah, I've gotten it to the point that it's very quiet. But recently my LCD has started acting up and buzzes really bad at times. Kind of negates the quiet PC, gonna have to find a replacement sometime.

Anyway, added a very basic duct between the CPU heatsink and rear fan. Updated my original post to show this. Really helped a lot with CPU temps, seemed to reduce them about 8*C or so at load.

ntavlas · Post by **ntavlas** » Wed May 19, 2010 9:04 am

Very neat, I dig how you suspended the hard drive and ducted the ninja. You could remove the pci slot cover below the video card, that should improve airflow around the accelero a little bit. How are your temps at this stage?

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Wed May 19, 2010 10:41 am

Things get warm definitely, but are within acceptable limits for me. GPU temps are fine (even with a slight overclock, am running it at 790/910 compared to the stock 750/800), they get up into the 80s when running Furmark, but none of the games I play burn the GPU anywhere as much as Furmark. During actual gaming I think it tops out in the mid/high 60s. The duct helped quite a bit with CPU and NB temps, before some of the motherboard sensors (TMPIN1 and TMPIN2, which I think are for the CPU and northbridge, respectively) would get up to 64-65*C during Prime95 load. Now they stay in the 50s during load, which I can live with. I updated the OP with an HWMonitor screenshot under CPU and GPU load.