NCASE M1: a crowdfunded Mini-ITX case (updates in first post)

QuantumBraced said:
The question as, at what point is breathing room worth more than milimeters of radiator? I'd actually love an answer to that, but Necere's recommendation of 25mm is very reasonable. Of course, it's not that simple as there are other variables, e.g. radiator fin density, fan RPM, fan static pressure, flow rate, and ambient temperature.

And also, any radiator thicker than 45mm you will need a push-pull configuration for, unless you want to run your fans at >2500 RPM which isn't really tolerable, and of course push-pull is not possible in the M1. Unless the rad is very low fin-density, but even then 45mm is too much in my opinion, and I think 30mm rad of high fin density + 25mm fan + 30mm breathing space will cool better than 45mm rad of any fin density + 25mm fan + 15mm breathing space. It's a hard optimization problem, but think the sweet spot is a 30-35mm rad of around 20 FPI with good static pressure 25mm fans.

Regardless of any of that, a 60mm rad is an awful idea. Will it fit and will it cool? Yes. Anything close to optimally? Not even close. Your fans will be sitting against a wall for half the length of the radiator, for the other half they'll be sitting right up against the CPU, RAM and motherboard.

Even if you switched to a bigger case, a 60mm radiator is overkill. I honestly think in any case (no pun intended), you shouldn't go thicker than 45, then you're just hitting serious diminishing returns. A 360mm 30mm thick 20 FPI quality rad can pretty much handle any OC on the CPU and single GPU of a modern system I think.
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Thanks for the well thought out reply and putting things in perspective. I was also considering a radiator at the bottom of the case. The nemesis 240 gts with slim fans, but based on what you said about fans being pushed up against things, that would sound like a bad idea too. I guess just 1 nemesis gts on the side panel with 25mm fans it is.
 
Mark m said:
So is the asrock x99 the only mobo out right now that will support the upcoming new Intel chips?
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So far, yes and I havent seen any upcoming models either which I find somewhat odd. I figured by now someone would compete with Asrock's model. Maybe when the new chips come out?
 
The reason this all came up is I'm trying to figure out the best radiator that can fit in that side panel. So far it seems the gts is the one.

It's going to be cooling a gtx 1070 and 6700k oc'ed as high as possible.
 
Boil said:
That 85mm also includes room for the rad/fans to actually breath…

You place a 60mm rad & 25mm fans in there, you are gonna have half the assembly pressed up against the PSU…

That would definitely be asking for trouble…
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Many of us with the sfx-l have the fan facing in, that would then give some breathing space. Of course, PSU temps will be higher but if airflow is sufficiently strong, then temp rise wouldn't be much.
 
Hermit2001 said:
Many of us with the sfx-l have the fan facing in, that would then give some breathing space. Of course, PSU temps will be higher but if airflow is sufficiently strong, then temp rise wouldn't be much.
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The reversed PSU may help the blockage on that side of the chassis, but as already mentioned by another respondent, the MB side of the chassis would have the rad/fan assembly uncomfortably close; I am sure such tight quarters would DEFINITELY impact plumbing of the entire loop (virtually no room for fittings or tubing anywhere)…
 
Dizon248 said:
The reason this all came up is I'm trying to figure out the best radiator that can fit in that side panel. So far it seems the gts is the one.

It's going to be cooling a gtx 1070 and 6700k oc'ed as high as possible.
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I was just shopping the same thing a couple of months ago with rads. I went with the GTS as well and I'm quite happy. OC'd 4790k and GTX680 and I'm into the upper 60's with my temps while stress testing. The 6700K will run cooler than that so you should not have any problems
 
Dizon248 said:
Thanks for the well thought out reply and putting things in perspective. I was also considering a radiator at the bottom of the case. The nemesis 240 gts with slim fans, but based on what you said about fans being pushed up against things, that would sound like a bad idea too. I guess just 1 nemesis gts on the side panel with 25mm fans it is.
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You can certainly fit a bottom rad, it'll have to be a 25mm radiator + slim fans as there is around ̶3̶7̶-̶3̶8̶ 50 mm of space between the floor of the M1 and the bottom plugs of the average GPU block. You will see some benefit from this bottom rad, but it will not be efficient at all as there will be essentially ̶0̶-̶1̶ 10mm of clearance between it and the wall of graphics card, plus the slim fans are not nearly as good as 25mm fans. So it won't really be worth the clutter/additional routing/cost, but people have done it as a proof of concept -- there are quite a few dual rad M1 builds you can find, and even some bottom rad-only builds with windowed side panel mods to show off their system. Even a fanless radiator works, you can think of it as a water pipe with an integrated heatsink, so it'll help a little, but not much. I wish I could be more specific in terms of how much benefit you'll see from it -- I'm not sure but it'll be much less than if the radiator was unobstructed and had 25mm fans, my guess is anywhere from half to 20% the performance (totally my intuition though). I don't know, but if you can afford the fittings and the rad it's a cool project and it will give you the maximum amount of cooling you can do in the M1.

Edit: My memory on the clearance was faulty, after consulting past builds, it turns out there is around 50mm of total clearance depending on the GPU block. My point is still valid though.
 
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Mark m said:
Nice. What is your parts list?
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3570K @ 4.1GHz (1.2v IIRC)
Cryorig M9i
P8Z77I-Deluxe
2 x 8GB Ballistix Tactical Tracer with EK monarch heatspreaders for looks
Reference 980 (Asus)
SX500-LG
850EVO 500GB
960GB Sandisk Ultra II
 
Well just got done reading through the first 3000 posts in this thread and I have to say it was interesting and lengthy. Goes right past the final prototype testing up to the start of the second fund raiser. I highly recommend this to anyone who has recently purchased or is considering the m1. I plan on reading more because I am interested to see the first user builds.
It was cool seeing the case come from the first vertical design to what it is today, I have to say that Necere is something of a design genius. I couldn't see at first how he went from the first design to the m1, then all of a sudden he does a 180, redesigns the case and you can see the birth of the m1. It was also cool when you know what the finished product looks like seeing the different features being introduced to the case.
The many, many, many flame wars were both entertaining and irritating. These guys would argue about anything. Air cooling vs water cooling, positive pressure vs negative pressure, ATX vs SFX power supplies and ODD vs no ODD (major war there). Probably the most interesting one, and the one that caused the most controversy was after the release of the prototype there was talk of increasing the height of the case by 20mm. Initial reason was to allow modular ATX power supplies with longer graphics cards. This was eventually decided against, Necere was pretty firm on not increasing the size of the case. The reason I find this interesting is that there were no SFX-L power supplies available at this time and the extra 20mm would have addressed the issue with longer graphics cards. I only mention this because it seems that SFX-L is becoming much more popular, with higher wattage Platinum units coming from both Silverstone and Lian Li.
Oh well, sometimes timing is everything.

Have to say excellent job Necere and Wahaha360, I love my m1 and it would never happened without you guys and the entire [H] community.
 
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rfarmer said:
Well just got done reading through the first 3000 posts in this thread and I have to say it was interesting and lengthy. Goes right past the final prototype testing up to the start of the second fund raiser. I highly recommend this to anyone who has recently purchased or is considering the m1. I plan on reading more because I am interested to see the first user builds.
It was cool seeing the case come from the first vertical design to what it is today, I have to say that Necere is something of a design genius. I couldn't see at first how he went from the first design to the m1, then all of a sudden he does a 180, redesigns the case and you can see the birth of the m1. It was also cool when you know what the finished product looks like seeing the different features being introduced to the case.
The many, many, many flame wars were both entertaining and irritating. These guys would argue about anything. Air cooling vs water cooling, positive pressure vs negative pressure, ATX vs SFX power supplies and ODD vs no ODD (major war there). Probably the most interesting one, and the one that caused the most controversy was after the release of the prototype there was talk of increasing the height of the case by 20mm. Initial reason was to allow modular ATX power supplies with longer graphics cards. This was eventually decided against, Necere was pretty firm on not increasing the size of the case. The reason I find this interesting is that there were no SFX-L power supplies available at this time and the extra 20mm would have addressed the issue with longer graphics cards. I only mention this because it seems that SFX-L is becoming much more popular, with higher wattage Platinum units coming from both Silverstone and Lian Li.
Oh well, sometimes timing is everything.

Have to say excellent job Necere and Wahaha360, I love my m1 and it would never happened without you guys and the entire [H] community.
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Thanks for the summary! I've recently become obsessed with the M1 myself -- I actually think it's the best PC case every designed, period. I honestly don't see a reason for anyone who only wants a single graphics card (90% of people) to not use this case. Maybe cost, but I think it's well worth it. I've taken 2 weeks of staycation and I've spent the first planning my dream M1 build haha. It's amazing how much I've learned in the process. It's funny you should mention height. I don't think support for SFX-L is needed as you do not need more than 600W in this case, I hardly see a scenario where you'd need more than 450W.

But I think the bottom of the case is facing a bit of an existential crisis. As 3.5" drives are going away, the only thing the space is truly viable for is 2 intake fans, which don't really make that big a difference, especially with a long graphics cards which acts as a barrier. The thin rad + thin fans config is far from optimal, in fact I'd be curious if Necere intended for the space to be used in this way at all. Pumps/reservoirs also don't fit. So the space is kind of too little to do anything meaningful with, and too much to just have sitting there/dedicated to fan intakes. Considering how crazily space-optimized the rest of the case is, 25mm of extra height just for fans seems a bit wasteful. I'd be curious what the thought process for the bottom of the case was, and if Necere and others' opinions have changed on it. I honestly don't know if I'd get rid of it if I could do so magically though... How much do you get rid of? How thick a graphics card do you want to support? And at some point, you might as well just add a few more mm so you can add support for fans. But adding more for proper radiator/fan support clashes with the SFF and versatility themes of the case as very few people would use it for that. So it's a bit of a lose-lose dilemma. Sorry for the rambling, I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days haha.
 
QuantumBraced said:
Thanks for the summary! I've recently become obsessed with the M1 myself -- I actually think it's the best PC case every designed, period. I honestly don't see a reason for anyone who only wants a single graphics card (90% of people) to not use this case. Maybe cost, but I think it's well worth it. I've taken 2 weeks of staycation and I've spent the first planning my dream M1 build haha. It's amazing how much I've learned in the process. It's funny you should mention height. I don't think support for SFX-L is needed as you do not need more than 600W in this case, I hardly see a scenario where you'd need more than 450W.

But I think the bottom of the case is facing a bit of an existential crisis. As 3.5" drives are going away, the only thing the space is truly viable for is 2 intake fans, which don't really make that big a difference, especially with a long graphics cards which acts as a barrier. The thin rad + thin fans config is far from optimal, in fact I'd be curious if Necere intended for the space to be used in this way at all. Pumps/reservoirs also don't fit. So the space is kind of too little to do anything meaningful with, and too much to just have sitting there/dedicated to fan intakes. Considering how crazily space-optimized the rest of the case is, 25mm of extra height just for fans seems a bit wasteful. I'd be curious what the thought process for the bottom of the case was, and if Necere and others' opinions have changed on it. I honestly don't know if I'd get rid of it if I could do so magically though... How much do you get rid of? How thick a graphics card do you want to support? And at some point, you might as well just add a few more mm so you can add support for fans. But adding more for proper radiator/fan support clashes with the SFF and versatility themes of the case as very few people would use it for that. So it's a bit of a lose-lose dilemma. Sorry for the rambling, I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days haha.
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Actually there were a couple reasons for the extra room in the bottom, to support Mini-DTX which at the time of design looked like it might become a viable option. The other was for 3.5 HDD support if you are not using the 3.5 bracket. Mini-DTX bombed but it looked like a good idea at the time.
 
Search isn't being very helpful. Any Canadians that have purchased in the last year or so mind sending me a PM?
 
Speed-Driven said:
Well.. she's all painted and put back together. Now.. WHAT SHOULD I NAME HER?

Scarlet Witch? Red Dwarf?

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Hester Prynne... :)
 
Would you guys recommend a Blower style cooler or an open air? I will be populating the two bottom slots of the case with two SP120's, would this give enough airflow to warrant getting the board partner GTX 1080's?
 
D0T0T said:
Would you guys recommend a Blower style cooler or an open air? I will be populating the two bottom slots of the case with two SP120's, would this give enough airflow to warrant getting the board partner GTX 1080's?
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I haven't yet ordered my card for the v5 build but I have been leaning towards blower just to keep the hot air out of the case. That being said I would like to see some temps of the 3rd party cards to see if the extra heat dump is even that large considering we have very few blower style options.
 
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csd said:
I'm running Corsair LPX 3200s at their rated speed without any issues at all on my Asrock X99 ITX.
Ripjaw Vs work fine as do Corsair Dominators, neither of which are on the supported memory list :)

Narrow ILM is quite different to the stanard LGA2011-3 - you will need a separate adaptor. I don't think any AIO kits come bundled with one?

Theres a good summary of compatible coolers here:
http://www.overclock.net/t//lga-201...one-liquid-cooler-compatibility#post_25093300
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OC.net link is dead....
 
Bijiont said:
I haven't yet ordered my card for the v5 build but I have been leaning towards blower just to keep the hot air out of the case. That being said I would like to see some temps of the 3rd party cards to see if the extra heat dump is even that large considering we have very few blower style options.
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I am in the same boat right now. Thinking of ordering a founders but earlier iata posted about the g1 gaming getting good tempo so I am still unsure. I'd rather get 100 off and get an open air but if a blower is indeed better I will just pay the extra.
 
That should be better for keeping the case cold, but combined with the blower video card will be a lot of negative air pressure. I hope he is not in a dusty environment.
 
Hey Guys,

Tried to do a search on the thread but hit too many results and figured I'd just ask.

Anyone know if the Ncase M1 v1 motherboard cut out fits most m.2 SSDs?

Thanks!
 
Crispy517 said:
Hey Guys,

Tried to do a search on the thread but hit too many results and figured I'd just ask.

Anyone know if the Ncase M1 v1 motherboard cut out fits most m.2 SSDs?

Thanks!
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It does :) I only need to take of side-panel to.change m.2
 
I bought a EVGA SC 1080 last week before I found out that the blower style card was preferred.

Do you guys think I should try to find someone to do a local trade for a reference card?


Or it would be fine if I just put the EVGA SC into the Ncase M1? As it stands right now I'm not interested in OC'ing my card.
 
dzhang said:
I bought a EVGA SC 1080 last week before I found out that the blower style card was preferred.

Do you guys think I should try to find someone to do a local trade for a reference card?


Or it would be fine if I just put the EVGA SC into the Ncase M1? As it stands right now I'm not interested in OC'ing my card.
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Give it a try first, if you aren't happy with the temps see if you can trade it.
 
dzhang said:
I bought a EVGA SC 1080 last week before I found out that the blower style card was preferred.

Do you guys think I should try to find someone to do a local trade for a reference card?


Or it would be fine if I just put the EVGA SC into the Ncase M1? As it stands right now I'm not interested in OC'ing my card.
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i recommend returning it and getting the cheaper $609 EVGA Blower style 1080. I was running furmark and I hit the 81 degree throttling point at stock clocks and not only that but it dumped so much heat into the case that my cpu reached 80 degrees (it was maxing at 56 degrees during furmark when I was using a blower style r9 290). Avoid the open cooler for best performance, it'll be loud but the blower will perform much better.
 
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dzhang said:
I bought a EVGA SC 1080 last week before I found out that the blower style card was preferred.

Do you guys think I should try to find someone to do a local trade for a reference card?


Or it would be fine if I just put the EVGA SC into the Ncase M1? As it stands right now I'm not interested in OC'ing my card.
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Throw it in there and let us know how the temps are! I am kind of waiting for the cheaper blower cards to come out but also thinking about picking up an open air cooler.
 
rfarmer said:
Good job scoring a 1070, how are you liking it? I am waiting for some reference, non Founders Edition to come out. Great looking build are those EnSourced cables or did you do them yourself?
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It's great so far. I came from a gtx 670... so yeahh :)

http://i.imgur.com/bJ1elR5.jpg

Seems to max at around 78 degrees with my fan profile at 100% GPU load. I have it set to 80% @ 70C and 100% @ 80C.

I tried overclocking a bit and got to +190MHz GPU offset before it started artifacting in the heaven benchmark.

Then at idle from 0-60C I keep it at 35C which is barely audible.


Verdi said:
Looking really good. Could you talk a little bit about its performance in terms of noise?
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I mean.. any card at 80-100% fan speed will be noisy? It's really not too loud at idle.

GODenergy said:
Sexy build, is there a reason you put the fans exhausting thru the radiator instead of intaking thru the side panel?
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Honestly I'm not sure.

Mannymal said:
That should be better for keeping the case cold, but combined with the blower video card will be a lot of negative air pressure. I hope he is not in a dusty environment.
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What would be the proper way to set it up?
 
exzacklyright said:
It's great so far. I came from a gtx 670... so yeahh :)

http://i.imgur.com/bJ1elR5.jpg

Seems to max at around 78 degrees with my fan profile at 100% GPU load. I have it set to 80% @ 70C and 100% @ 80C.

I tried overclocking a bit and got to +190MHz GPU offset before it started artifacting in the heaven benchmark.

Then at idle from 0-60C I keep it at 35C which is barely audible.




I mean.. any card at 80-100% fan speed will be noisy? It's really not too loud at idle.



Honestly I'm not sure.



What would be the proper way to set it up?
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Set the radiator fans as intake, they exhaust out the top of the case. Your video card exhausts out the back. Plus with positive pressure you will get very little dust in your case. Just clean the dust filter.
 
Bijiont said:
Very cool, be interesting to see temps of the system in stress tests once you have all the panels back on. Congrats on the build.
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I posted about it a few posts up. The Superclocked 1080 hits 81 degrees after 4-5 minutes in furmark and starts throttling. It also raised cpu temps by 26 degrees in the stress test compared to the stress test temps from my reference 290.
 
[QUOTE="exzacklyright, post: 1042355207, member: 241111"

What would be the proper way to set it up?[/QUOTE]

Fans bringing cold air from outside through the radiator INTO the case. That way you have more air coming into the case than leaving it, which causes dust issues due to negative air pressure.
 
shinjinian said:
I posted about it a few posts up. The Superclocked 1080 hits 81 degrees after 4-5 minutes in furmark and starts throttling. It also raised cpu temps by 26 degrees in the stress test compared to the stress test temps from my reference 290.
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Is this with the stock fan profile or have you adjusted it? Also do you have any 120 mm fans below the card or any exhaust? Thanks!
 
AWartman said:
Is this with the stock fan profile or have you adjusted it? Also do you have any 120 mm fans below the card or any exhaust? Thanks!
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I haven't had time to mess with the fan profiles yet but I'm planning to do that tonight. I have two noctua industrials underneath it. Although one isn't hooked up because I don't have a second fan header, the splitter cable should've arrived yesterday so hopefully it'll be waiting for me when I get home. Once I hook up the second fan and tinker with the fan profiles I'll post how it went.

Unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that it raised my cpu temps by 26 degrees at load, that's quite an impressive amount of heat it's dumping in the case. I don't know how your Ncase is setup but if you have a 92mm tower cooler and a pair of 120mm fans mounted on your side bracket you should fair better than me when it comes to cpu temps.
 
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