Using hdplex H5 / 300W AC-DC+400W HiFi DC-ATX / micro ATX asus maximus hero vii / kabylake i7 7700 / nvme samsung 960pro, with passive CPU cooling. 16GB ddr4 slighly overclocked (2933 Ghz)
No GPU yet (coming soon though). One 3.5" green WD HD (spins downs after 180secs of inactivity, it's sleeping most of the time)
When installing the copper heatsink base, I followed the H5 installation guide recommendation:
... so I didn't apply thermal paste on that surface. I did apply thermal paste on the heatpipe grooves, as indicated in the guide.You could apply a very thin layer of thermal paste to the copper base plate. Since the copper base is mirror polished, we actually recommend not applying thermal paste in this surface.
The build works great - stable, totally silent, looks awesome.
My software environment:
* Idle / light use: Fedora 27, firefox 57, nautlus, various terminals.
* Heavier use environment: darktable / raw photo editing (normally with OpenCL but I didn't install the GPU yet); software compilation (large: kernel / kodi / etc) or small. HD Audio playback via audacious to USB DAC.
* Extreme use / testing: all 8 threads @100% CPU using openssl test mode: openssl speed -multi $(nproc --all)
This is what I'm seeing:
Idle temps (light browsing, occassional youtube video): 45 - 48 degrees
Normal "heavy use" temps (darktable denoise batch filtering): 70-75 degrees
Extreme use temps: 98 to 100 degrees (the meter (lm-sensors) never goes above 100 degrees (wondering if this is because the CPU starts throttling - the system does remain very stable and the case gets a kind of warm (although not hot to the touch).
I do notice significant "quick variations" in temps (specially for the 'package-id-0' sensor) quickly going from 45 to 65-70 and coming back down when for example playing back a full screen youtube (html5) video in firefox.
Questions for silent PC builders
- can the temps I'm seeing be considered normal for this type of build, or are them too high?
- for people that have built using hdplex h5 - did you use thermal paste on the CPU / copper (mirror-polished) heatsink surface?
Before the H5, I had basically same hardware on an inexpensive cube case + Hyper 212 EVO + noctua fan. Idle/light use temps were typically in the 30-35 and 60-65 for heavy-use. I don't recall testing extreme CPU use on that build but I don't recall ever seeing temps in 80s range.