Out of the box, the Ryzen 5900x will consume up to 142 watts of power. This amount power can be difficult supply and cool. It's also not the most efficient way to run the processor. AMD and motherboard manufacturers have given consumers several tools to pacify the processor so this article will look these tools and what tradeoffs they may entail
The Skyreach 4 Mini (S4M) is a mini-itx case with a CPU air cooler height restriction of 45mm. This is quite the constraint, as there are a limited number of CPU coolers that are less than 45mm. The goto cooler that fits is Noctua's L9i / L9a but at 37mm there is about 8mm of space one can optimize. I ordered J-Hack's 92mm fan shroud to see what effect it would have on temperature and fan speed.
A small shop out of Ukraine, CustomMOD is no stranger to the SFF scene; having manufactured over a dozen different cases. We'll look at the 4.5L FLEX (FX) case, a mini-itx sandwich style case that supports ITX GPUs and a flex ATX PSU. I'll demonstrate builds that replace the flex ATX PSU with HDPLEX / J-HACK plugin units.
Over the years, HDPLEX has been iterating on creating on their 19v plugin, distro board, and ac-dc converter. The latest iteration of their DC-ATX plugin, is both the biggest in terms of power output and size. Combined with the 200w AC-DC, they are almost perfect as HDPLEX is known for their small form factor expertise, customer support, and quality products.
J-HACK, the company behind an increasingly rich portfolio of small cases and 12v solutions, produces the ONE2 plugin (DC-ATX power) and ONE2 distro 400 (DC-DC distributor). I picked up these in a kit designed specifically for the Skyreach 4 Mini, and have been running them for a couple months, and believe these could be the future.
Undervolting your CPU can make your system run cooler, quieter, and more efficiently. Unfortunately, there are a myriad of different ways to undervolt. This guide will help make the best decision depending on what's available for each system. Along the way we'll record monitoring data and benchmark scores to quantity the effect of undervolting.
System running too hot? Power supply not powerful enough or dying? Pushing the power envelope? Undervolting your most power hungry component, which is more likely than not the GPU, can achieve power savings and reduce temperature all without sacrificing performance. And if you can tolerate single digit performance decreases, temperature and power savings can be tremendous
SFF PCs are often disregarded in favor of gaming laptops or full sized ATX cases, but those alternatives have downsides where small form factor finds its niche: powerful, silent, and portable. Full sized ATX cases are space inefficient, bulky, and harder to work with, while gaming laptops are louder, barely more portable, and significantly more expensive. If exposed to SFF PCs, I believe more people would opt for them