How hot does this thing run? I'm surprised that Noctua NH-L9i can keep a Haswell from throttling, considering the atrocious thermal readings we've seen from Intel's new architecture so far.
Although the K-series Haswells officially have a TDP of 84W, in practice they run much, *much* hotter than is expected for that rating. On a 4770K, a stock heatsink bumps up against the thermal limits and may overheat (>100 degrees) if case ventilation isn't perfect. In practice, Haswell puts off more heat than a 130W SB-E.
Actually it puts out exactly the right amount of heat you'd expect for an 84w TDP, however the chip gets a lot hotter, mostly due to the poor thermal transfer between the cpu and the lid on the chip.
"In practice, Haswell puts off more heat than a 130W SB-E."
You are confusing temperature and heat production. Haswell is similar to Ivy Bridge in terms of power consumption under load. It certainly does not output more heat than SNB-E, and likely is lower than mainstream SNB, even with the inclusion of the FIVR. It also does not run noticeably hotter, except
TDP is Thermal Design Power -- an 84W TDP would suggest that you need a cooler capable of cooling an 84W processor. It has nothing to do with temperature, and is correlated with power consumption.
Your assertion that Haswell has thermal issues is completely false. Haswell's temps and power consumption are fine.
From what I can see, you need better cooling to hit similar clocks to ivybridge and haswell seems to hit the 100c thermal limit at lower clocks. I think that was the point of JDG1880's post. If you hope to get the same clocks out of a 4770K as a 3770K or 3930k you may need improved cooling over what you had with Ivybridge/sandybridge. On the plus side, Haswell has more performance than Ivybridge so you dont need to go as high an overclock to get similar performance.
I'm surprised they're doing air cooling. Basic liquid cooling (like a $50 kit) does better than any cooler in a ITX case because there isn't enough airflow for a traditional cooler to work. It's just too cramped.
Consider the Silverstone FT03-Mini (ITX) which like many ITX cases doesn't focus a lot of air around the center of the motherboard let alone has a 3" height restriction where most tower coolers wont work. However, put a 120mm radiator at the bottom with a basic water block...problem solved. Same price as a good tower cooler without having to worry about airflow.
I couldn't agree more. The whole system (Corsair H80 in my case) is smaller than those megasinks. The amount of space it takes near the cpu is smaller than the stock heatsink. The radiator and push pull fans take up less room than a megasink. I have it set up to draw cool air from outside the case. I get excellent temps on IB. My case stays cool. My machine is cool and quiet while being O/C'd to 4.8GHz. Just amazing. I thank the salesperson at Microcenter who convinced me to get it.
I think they use air cooling precisely because there is no other source of air flow in an ITX case. Without the CPU cooler, I think the voltage regulators and other high-power components on the mainboard could overheat.
I wasn't referring to overclocking. Even at stock speeds, Legit Reviews found that the 4770K was running at up to 86 degrees C with the included heatsink/fan. It's not clear whether this site was using an engineering sample or a retail chip, but there have been multiple reports that the engineering samples were cherry-picked and run far cooler than what is being sold at retail. Some forum-goers have reported seeing their 4770K actually throttle (>100 C) at stock speed and voltage. The thermals on this chip are just way out of control.
Well, heat is measured in energy (J/W/etc). So an 84W CPU, regardless of lithography, is going to output 84W of heat. The problem is how fast that heat can be transferred from the die to the cooling device. A cooler capable of dissipating 100 or even 200 Watts is going to be limited by the thermal interface between the die and the shield. An 84W CPU can be stuck behind a thermal interface that can maybe yield 50W just because there is so little surface to transfer the heat. Plus, the surface of the die is so small that all active transistors are very close, so there are no heat dead-zones.
The only way to cool a Haswell, or even Ivy Bridge (in comparison to SB), is to invert the thermal balance by a large enough measure that it accelerates the heat dissipation (or increase the cooling potential of the interface) by basically increasing the difference in 'heat' between the interface and the die surface. This means 'dropping' the temperature (measured 'heat') as far down as possible, or chilling the surface.
The other limitation at that point is the specific heat of the thermal interface, or how much energy can be transferred to it per source Joule (or Watt).
Oddly enough, expect this to be true of Broadwell (higher temps for the same TDP). A smaller chip (all things being equal) will get hotter a higher temp. Haswell is noticeably larger than Ivy.
I agree. People constantly confuse the temperature of a component with the power it's dissipating. The two are related, but via the thermal resistance of source to ambient. You can't leave that out and expect to make any sense.
FWIW, I am very pleased with the power aspects of my mATX i5-4670K build. Even with a good graphics board (GTX 650i 2GB) the system idles at 39W! Overclocked from 3.4 to 3.8GHz it idles at 47W. Haswell / Panther Point really is efficient! The system it replaced idled at 175W and had half the performance. This makes a huge difference in my computer room.
Getting back to temperatures, Haswell does overheat more easily than its larger and better-packaged forebears. The stock cooler is well-chosen and can handle all four cores loaded without too much noise. But the 12% OC creates so much more heat in the die that the fan max'd out with temperatures still climbing towards 90C.
People who bad-mouth IVB and Haswell because they "don't overclock" are begging the question that a chip should overclock in the first place. Engineers design things to be adequate with margin. Intel sees (and hears!) just enough of a market to segment out unlocked processors, allowing us to drive into and (with more cooling etc) beyond the original margin. But none of that is guaranteed; nor should it be, because that would drive costs of the entire line up. It's fine to prefer Sandy Bridge because you can ultimately squeeze more out, but that's not a hit on Ivy/Haswell. They are great products and much better in performace per Watt, which was the goal.
I don't particularly care about overclocking, but I don't want my CPU to ever get above roughly 70 degrees during normal operation. It's a well-known fact that ICs break down faster when they run hot. Intel only has a three-year warranty on their CPUs; what is to say that Haswell won't start to die en masse of heat exhaustion four or five years from now? With x86 improvements coming slower and the point of "good enough" having been reached years ago for most users, a good workstation should be able to last 5 to 7 years. Haswell robs us of that certainty. I wouldn't be surprised if the bean-counters within Intel decided that Sandy Bridge was too good, and decided to switch from soldered heatspreaders to the gap-filled TIM so that people would have to buy a new CPU every few years when the old one burned up.
With stock clocks and the stock cooler, in a very poorly ventilated case, in a very hot room (32 degC), running Prime95, the four cores of my i5-4670K were all at or below 75 degC per Real Temp.
Your conditions are doubtless more benign. So even if you run it at 100% 24/7, you don't need to worry that your Haswell will die from heat exhaustion. And with "normal" use there would be far more margin.
Again - the basic design is very good. It could evidently be better technically, but Intel's choice of thermal interface would not have been motivated by anything as nefarious as you suggest. It might have been a mechanical issue but was probably just cost.
That data point for your i5-4670K is more encouraging than much of what I've heard so far. But I suspect one reason for your more reasonable temperatures might be the lack of Hyper Threading. Some of the reports on forums indicate that load temperatures are considerably higher with Hyper Threading turned on (which is the default on 4770K and the Xeon E3 v3 family).
You cant say it ROBS you of that. Thats like looking at crime reports, and figuring the black dude that just walked by you is likely to rob you, so calling the police and making a big scene about it before anything even happends. Youre a nut.
You can't say "nut." A nut is a hard shelled seed produced by a plant, which are unable to use computers. That's like looking at a bag of walnuts, and claiming a black dude robbed those nuts from you. Actually no, both our posts were gibberish.
I tend to just check out the case and components when they arrive, occasionally checking out the included manuals as necessary. So I usually don't get much out of these detailed builds. But I did enjoy this one. Probably because I'm really looking forward to Haswell. Mini ITX or not.
Good call. Also, it's a bit surprising that they didn't go with one of Noctua's larger coolers (especially with a K series part). One of the huge differentiators of Asus's Mini-ITX boards is the layout. From my extensive research It accommodates a wider array of HSF options.
This is coming from someone who has an ASrock z77e-itx and can't use anything from Noctua due to poor capacitor placement.
Also, someone has to say it -- that case is fugly.
I suspect it was a deliberate marketing choice. If the CPU runs close to TjMax, then it goes bad sooner. The Intel warranty for CPUs is only three years. They want people to be buying upgrades at least that often. The easiest way for them to do this is to ensure that the CPUs die soon after the warranty expires. I wouldn't be surprised if the gap between the TIM and heatspreader was calculated down to the nanometer to create temperatures that would be unlikely to kill the CPU during the warranty period, but very likely to make it break down in the few years thereafter.
Lian Li cases are very overrated! Very expensive and uninspiring. The casing they used here is freakishly ugly! Exposing the kludgy innards of a computer with a glass where you have limited headroom anyways for cable management. Too many valuable ITX space is wasted with this one amazingly fugly case. I wouldn't go ITX if these type of cases were the only choice.
The high end cases are great. They extended their reach downmarket for a lot of their cases and kind of lowered their reputation. But some the cases in their line up are just great.
They're not the only choice. There's plenty of choice.
Also, someone probably thinks it looks good. It's good at showing off the innards, because it's at an angle with a large window, which is probably why it was used in this demo.
Different people prefer different things, thus there are products that generally fit most people shocker.
When is the mITX board coming out? I can't find it for sale. Newegg only carries an Asrock board for mITX Z87. Also, I like how "first boot" goes directly into Windows :p
Probably they tested the setup before mounting it, including running the Windows install.
It common practice for those who do enough builds to have an external ATX button set you can run without a case. Also, lot of higher-end boards these days have power and reset buttons directly on the board, which is very convenient for testing, OC configurations, or just different case layouts. There isn't room for those on a mini-ITX board but the adapters I already mentioned are out there.
the case is nice for the sole purpose of filming the assembly of a mini-itx system (great look-in). but this is probably the last case i would buy for my mini-itx setup. incredible waste of space, unhandy and frickin ugly.
To clarify I was agreeing with the comment about the glass. IMO exposing too much of the internal PC is a bad idea and does show a lack of design discipline.
The cost/ugly portion of the post seem like buyer's personal decisions that hopefully are carefully weighed before the buy button is pressed. Unfortunately, on a build, sometimes the costs can escalated part way thru the build. When that happens you do have to roll with the punches as best you can.
It's a good concept and a pretty fair compromise in performance but I have a sneaking suspicion that system is going to run hotter then I would like. I may be in the minority but this is a desktop we are talking about. I don't know about you guys but I move my desktop maybe 4 times a year when im cleaning it out. So I really have no problems or sadness using a larger case I use the silverstone rv02 with the rotated motherboard so the IO is coming out the back. It's a really awesome design with 3 180mm fans blowing cold air from the bottom over everything to exhause hot out the top. Heat naturally rises so this helps immensely from keeping the heat of the components effecting each other and leads to a nice steady supply of cold air for the heatsink fans allowing you to run all the fans at low speed and still be under 75C under full load on the cpu and under 80 on the gpu which is a gtx titan and the cpu is an i7-980x. If I put the fans on high it is STILL stupidly quiet and I can extract quite an overclock while keeping temps very chilly. This is an awesome designed case and does just as good as the 70 dollar more ft02 version its just not all metal.
I Know the case weighs 27 pounds empty which unless you are pathetically weak is not that hard to move the few times you need to clean it. Probably 50 pounds fully loaded. I got alot of stuff. A 256GB Samsung 840 pro boot drive/program installation drive and 8x 3TB WD black in software RAID 5. When I can afford another 8 bay nas box Ill upgrade these to the 4TB WD blacks but funds wont allow that.
I'm a big movie buff and I store my movies that I encode myself and my movies end up being about 15-20GB each in size with an identical picture to the original blu ray. I already have a lot of nas's from upgrades over the years. A 3 bay raid 5 with 3x 1TB WD black RE that I use for all my business and personal non media backup. I have a 5 bay raid 5 with 5x 2TB WD green which has all music and movies all music stored in varying flac qualities depending on the source to preserve all the quality. I have a 8 bay i just filled with 8x 3tb wd red drives in raid 5 to expand my movie storage capabilities. And I have 8x WD black 3TB in my main desktop the is mainly storing copies of all my hardest to replace most important favorite things as a second copy to stuff already on the nas's as you can't trust just raid with your most important stuff 2 seperate raid systems is pretty good though.
I'm probably in the minority as I am a data junky because of movies and when 4k takes off it is going to be really tough i hope we have a major breaktrhough in hard drives by that time that gives us 10-15GB per drive as the norm so I can keep up with storing 4k movies.
Point taken on the case design. Really underlines the importance of doing your homework and touching base with other folks before starting your build.
That does sound like a lot of stuff. I used to keep everything. I now have a fairly streamlined system that meets my needs but doesn't have a lot of extra stuff that just makes it harder/more expensive to maintain. This has really made backup and recovery so much easier. The more stuff you have and the more complex the system you have the harder it is to back it up and recover it in the case of a failure.
Laststop311: Pleasure to see there is another data junkie with an extensive blu-ray ripped collection. That is one impressive list of NASs! I cannot compete - I am humbled
I have pretty much the same systems :), you are not alone. I just bought several IB CPUs on great sales, Celerons and i3, to have spares for future builds. Haswell is no good :):). That Lian Li is pointless case - too large and no functional.
Nothing wrong with liking the case. Not everyone has the same needs/desires. As long as the case fits the intended usage without having any truly problematic design flaws.
On that comment about inserting RAM correctly, one time my father-in-law bought some more RAM, and rather than waiting for me to help, he put it in himself. Surprise surprise, the machine didn't boot. When I checked it out, he had the RAM in backwards and he had pressed down so hard that he broke the DIMM slots. Never thought it was something so complex!
I would have liked to see the overclocking process. Nice fan in the back, but it's mostly blocked by the mainboard; I expect case cooling to be an issue. Of course the intent was for a mild OC to begin with, so even if no OC was possible, it wouldn't ruin the build.
Nice little video; everyone thinking about building their own for the first time should watch something like this just to see how easy it can be. Of course seasoned vets won't learn a lot from it. :)
From what I've seen, the best current Haswell board for a NAS would be the Supermicro X10SL7-F. In addition to the usual complement of SATA ports (two 6.0Gbps + four 3.0Gbps), this board has an onboard LSI 2308 controller that supports *eight* additional SAS ports (which are also compatible with SATA devices). That ought to be enough for almost any home or small business NAS. And since it's a server-grade board, it supports ECC RAM and the usual complement of server features like IPMI. It is built on a micro-ATX form factor.
I'm dissapointed this is a video review. I like to able to find the information at my own pace and study benchmarks, overclocking results, temperature and sound measurement. I always skip the video reviews.
Pro-tip: If the article has "[video]" in the title, then truly skip the review. Don't jump into the thread and immediately comment that that you "always skip video reviews."
There is this thing they measure called 'hits.' They know how many people are coming to the site and how many are viewing the video. They even have a good idea of how many are link directly to the video. A public declaration of your disinterest really isn't needed.
Love the small factor GPU. Love the motherboard but not the way the SATA sockets are set out. but other than that looks perfect as a reasonably powered gaming rig. Water cooling the GPU and CPU will be simple as that close together.
This was interesting because I did my first mini-ITX build just a few days ago. It started with an older Lian-Li case model on a blowout deal. (Not that much older, as it has front USB 3.0 ports.) At the same time I was offered a deal on an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K ($90). I got the Asrock Z77 mini-ITX board and a mini 450W PSU from FSP that includes an ATX mounting plate.
The case is designed to take an off the shelf ATX PSU but this struck me as very difficult to work with and severely lacking in air flow. So I picked up the much smaller PSU, even though it has greater capacity than what it replaced. (The first one was such a tight fit I had to take off the company logo stickers from the sides to get it in!)
So it's all together and is pretty nice. I'm planning to use it with the public beta of Windows 8,1 coming out in a few days, since it has no assigned purpose yet and won't be painful when it needs to be wiped and reinstalled with the final release. The only thing that is lacking is a GPU upgrade. The built-in HD4000 video is adequate for a lot of stuff but I'd like to get something more powerful in there. The card in the video won't work because it requires two slots and I've only the one. And that one is right up between the PSU and the hard drive. (An SSD lives under the HD. The mSATA slot on the underside of the Asrock board turned out to be useless because it's only SATA-2. WTF, Asrock?)
So I'm looking for a video card that is short and narrow, while having enough performance to be worth installing. Any suggestions? It may be something meets the need over the next year as existing GPUs get die shrinks and are offered in suitable packages for this machine.
So far, the only difference I've noticed between Pro and Deluxe is that Deluxe comes with Wifi-AC, but Pro comes with Wifi-N. I don't know if Deluxe supports Thunderbolt on top of that but I doubt it. Heck, I'm not even sure if Pro will come to the US...
I found the other difference between Z87I-Pro and Z87I-Deluxe. Pro does not have TPU, hence it's not advertising 4-Way optimization thing. Not a terrible loss but yet another way to differentiate the Deluxe line...
Actually, I started to think they may really have done away with Z87I-Deluxe in favor of the Impact ROG board. Z87I-Pro is now listed at ASUS.com but Deluxe is nowhere to be seen yet...
For the love of .... When will ASUS release this MB into the North American Market - I have tried to reach ASUS but no luck. Anyone hear of the release date?
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JDG1980 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
How hot does this thing run? I'm surprised that Noctua NH-L9i can keep a Haswell from throttling, considering the atrocious thermal readings we've seen from Intel's new architecture so far.mavere - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
SPCR tested with an OC'ed Sandy Bridge (likely 100-110W TDP), and the L9i can keep temps below 80C at 18 decibels, which qualifies as "quiet".JDG1980 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Although the K-series Haswells officially have a TDP of 84W, in practice they run much, *much* hotter than is expected for that rating. On a 4770K, a stock heatsink bumps up against the thermal limits and may overheat (>100 degrees) if case ventilation isn't perfect. In practice, Haswell puts off more heat than a 130W SB-E.extide - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Actually it puts out exactly the right amount of heat you'd expect for an 84w TDP, however the chip gets a lot hotter, mostly due to the poor thermal transfer between the cpu and the lid on the chip.MrCommunistGen - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
ROFL. +1Homeles - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
"In practice, Haswell puts off more heat than a 130W SB-E."You are confusing temperature and heat production. Haswell is similar to Ivy Bridge in terms of power consumption under load. It certainly does not output more heat than SNB-E, and likely is lower than mainstream SNB, even with the inclusion of the FIVR. It also does not run noticeably hotter, except
TDP is Thermal Design Power -- an 84W TDP would suggest that you need a cooler capable of cooling an 84W processor. It has nothing to do with temperature, and is correlated with power consumption.
Your assertion that Haswell has thermal issues is completely false. Haswell's temps and power consumption are fine.
apinkel - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Wish I would have posted that.dihartnell - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
From what I can see, you need better cooling to hit similar clocks to ivybridge and haswell seems to hit the 100c thermal limit at lower clocks. I think that was the point of JDG1880's post. If you hope to get the same clocks out of a 4770K as a 3770K or 3930k you may need improved cooling over what you had with Ivybridge/sandybridge. On the plus side, Haswell has more performance than Ivybridge so you dont need to go as high an overclock to get similar performance.Samus - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I'm surprised they're doing air cooling. Basic liquid cooling (like a $50 kit) does better than any cooler in a ITX case because there isn't enough airflow for a traditional cooler to work. It's just too cramped.Consider the Silverstone FT03-Mini (ITX) which like many ITX cases doesn't focus a lot of air around the center of the motherboard let alone has a 3" height restriction where most tower coolers wont work. However, put a 120mm radiator at the bottom with a basic water block...problem solved. Same price as a good tower cooler without having to worry about airflow.
sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I couldn't agree more. The whole system (Corsair H80 in my case) is smaller than those megasinks. The amount of space it takes near the cpu is smaller than the stock heatsink. The radiator and push pull fans take up less room than a megasink. I have it set up to draw cool air from outside the case. I get excellent temps on IB. My case stays cool. My machine is cool and quiet while being O/C'd to 4.8GHz. Just amazing. I thank the salesperson at Microcenter who convinced me to get it.UltraTech79 - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
"Cool and quiet". Nice quantitative measurements there, guy.ShieTar - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I think they use air cooling precisely because there is no other source of air flow in an ITX case. Without the CPU cooler, I think the voltage regulators and other high-power components on the mainboard could overheat.JDG1980 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I wasn't referring to overclocking. Even at stock speeds, Legit Reviews found that the 4770K was running at up to 86 degrees C with the included heatsink/fan. It's not clear whether this site was using an engineering sample or a retail chip, but there have been multiple reports that the engineering samples were cherry-picked and run far cooler than what is being sold at retail. Some forum-goers have reported seeing their 4770K actually throttle (>100 C) at stock speed and voltage. The thermals on this chip are just way out of control.ninjaquick - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Well, heat is measured in energy (J/W/etc). So an 84W CPU, regardless of lithography, is going to output 84W of heat. The problem is how fast that heat can be transferred from the die to the cooling device. A cooler capable of dissipating 100 or even 200 Watts is going to be limited by the thermal interface between the die and the shield. An 84W CPU can be stuck behind a thermal interface that can maybe yield 50W just because there is so little surface to transfer the heat. Plus, the surface of the die is so small that all active transistors are very close, so there are no heat dead-zones.The only way to cool a Haswell, or even Ivy Bridge (in comparison to SB), is to invert the thermal balance by a large enough measure that it accelerates the heat dissipation (or increase the cooling potential of the interface) by basically increasing the difference in 'heat' between the interface and the die surface. This means 'dropping' the temperature (measured 'heat') as far down as possible, or chilling the surface.
The other limitation at that point is the specific heat of the thermal interface, or how much energy can be transferred to it per source Joule (or Watt).
wumpus - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Oddly enough, expect this to be true of Broadwell (higher temps for the same TDP). A smaller chip (all things being equal) will get hotter a higher temp. Haswell is noticeably larger than Ivy.Arbie - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I agree. People constantly confuse the temperature of a component with the power it's dissipating. The two are related, but via the thermal resistance of source to ambient. You can't leave that out and expect to make any sense.FWIW, I am very pleased with the power aspects of my mATX i5-4670K build. Even with a good graphics board (GTX 650i 2GB) the system idles at 39W! Overclocked from 3.4 to 3.8GHz it idles at 47W. Haswell / Panther Point really is efficient! The system it replaced idled at 175W and had half the performance. This makes a huge difference in my computer room.
Getting back to temperatures, Haswell does overheat more easily than its larger and better-packaged forebears. The stock cooler is well-chosen and can handle all four cores loaded without too much noise. But the 12% OC creates so much more heat in the die that the fan max'd out with temperatures still climbing towards 90C.
People who bad-mouth IVB and Haswell because they "don't overclock" are begging the question that a chip should overclock in the first place. Engineers design things to be adequate with margin. Intel sees (and hears!) just enough of a market to segment out unlocked processors, allowing us to drive into and (with more cooling etc) beyond the original margin. But none of that is guaranteed; nor should it be, because that would drive costs of the entire line up. It's fine to prefer Sandy Bridge because you can ultimately squeeze more out, but that's not a hit on Ivy/Haswell. They are great products and much better in performace per Watt, which was the goal.
JDG1980 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I don't particularly care about overclocking, but I don't want my CPU to ever get above roughly 70 degrees during normal operation. It's a well-known fact that ICs break down faster when they run hot. Intel only has a three-year warranty on their CPUs; what is to say that Haswell won't start to die en masse of heat exhaustion four or five years from now? With x86 improvements coming slower and the point of "good enough" having been reached years ago for most users, a good workstation should be able to last 5 to 7 years. Haswell robs us of that certainty. I wouldn't be surprised if the bean-counters within Intel decided that Sandy Bridge was too good, and decided to switch from soldered heatspreaders to the gap-filled TIM so that people would have to buy a new CPU every few years when the old one burned up.Arbie - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
With stock clocks and the stock cooler, in a very poorly ventilated case, in a very hot room (32 degC), running Prime95, the four cores of my i5-4670K were all at or below 75 degC per Real Temp.Your conditions are doubtless more benign. So even if you run it at 100% 24/7, you don't need to worry that your Haswell will die from heat exhaustion. And with "normal" use there would be far more margin.
Again - the basic design is very good. It could evidently be better technically, but Intel's choice of thermal interface would not have been motivated by anything as nefarious as you suggest. It might have been a mechanical issue but was probably just cost.
JDG1980 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
That data point for your i5-4670K is more encouraging than much of what I've heard so far. But I suspect one reason for your more reasonable temperatures might be the lack of Hyper Threading. Some of the reports on forums indicate that load temperatures are considerably higher with Hyper Threading turned on (which is the default on 4770K and the Xeon E3 v3 family).UltraTech79 - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
You cant say it ROBS you of that. Thats like looking at crime reports, and figuring the black dude that just walked by you is likely to rob you, so calling the police and making a big scene about it before anything even happends. Youre a nut.BlueReason - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
You can't say "nut." A nut is a hard shelled seed produced by a plant, which are unable to use computers. That's like looking at a bag of walnuts, and claiming a black dude robbed those nuts from you. Actually no, both our posts were gibberish.UltraTech79 - Saturday, June 22, 2013 - link
"In practice". Look at you trying to sound like you know what you're talking about while spewing pseudo-intellectual bs.apinkel - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I tend to just check out the case and components when they arrive, occasionally checking out the included manuals as necessary. So I usually don't get much out of these detailed builds. But I did enjoy this one. Probably because I'm really looking forward to Haswell. Mini ITX or not.Uxi - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Is that a 21:9 monitor? What is the default resolution?sherlockwing - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
2560X1080.babgvant - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
It's worth mentioning that the Noctua HSF used in this build is actually not rated for the TDP of the "K" CPU selected. http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=nh_l9i_tdp_guid...Given the 120mm fan in the case it probably won't be an issue, but something that should have been noted to ensure reproducibility of the results.
Sm0kes - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Good call. Also, it's a bit surprising that they didn't go with one of Noctua's larger coolers (especially with a K series part). One of the huge differentiators of Asus's Mini-ITX boards is the layout. From my extensive research It accommodates a wider array of HSF options.This is coming from someone who has an ASrock z77e-itx and can't use anything from Noctua due to poor capacitor placement.
Also, someone has to say it -- that case is fugly.
JBVertexx - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
fugly +1Sabresiberian - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Personal taste is what it is. I don't like it well enough to buy one, but I like it.Marlin1975 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Seems that is more CPU problem than heatsink. The same heatsink can cool a 95w Sandy Bridge but can't cool a 84w Haswell.Intel really needs to work on the heat/lid issue. It was bad enough on Ivy but much worse now on haswell.
JDG1980 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I suspect it was a deliberate marketing choice. If the CPU runs close to TjMax, then it goes bad sooner. The Intel warranty for CPUs is only three years. They want people to be buying upgrades at least that often. The easiest way for them to do this is to ensure that the CPUs die soon after the warranty expires. I wouldn't be surprised if the gap between the TIM and heatspreader was calculated down to the nanometer to create temperatures that would be unlikely to kill the CPU during the warranty period, but very likely to make it break down in the few years thereafter.BlueReason - Sunday, June 23, 2013 - link
You can protect your cpu from Intel's nefarious plans by wrapping it in tinfoil.8steve8 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
When will the z87-i deluxe be available for sale in the USA?it seems to be the most interesting board, I like how the wifi doesn't need tiny cables to get to the antenna..
is the DVI dual or single link?
does asus have any 4770R products or any crystalwell products in the pipe?
michaelheath - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
"When will the z87-i deluxe be available for sale in the USA?"This.
Honestly, it's the only Z87 board I'm interested in.
Haswell1150 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Why not go with thin mini iTX?Minion4Hire - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Because it's completely pointless if you're going to insert a card that sticks out of the board by four inches?8steve8 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
because there is no thin mini itx lga 1150 board?if someone knows of one link it here?
Soulwager - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I was hoping for the RoG Impact. :(edmoncu - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Lian Li cases are very overrated! Very expensive and uninspiring. The casing they used here is freakishly ugly! Exposing the kludgy innards of a computer with a glass where you have limited headroom anyways for cable management. Too many valuable ITX space is wasted with this one amazingly fugly case. I wouldn't go ITX if these type of cases were the only choice.sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
The high end cases are great. They extended their reach downmarket for a lot of their cases and kind of lowered their reputation. But some the cases in their line up are just great.piroroadkill - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
They're not the only choice. There's plenty of choice.Also, someone probably thinks it looks good. It's good at showing off the innards, because it's at an angle with a large window, which is probably why it was used in this demo.
Different people prefer different things, thus there are products that generally fit most people shocker.
Subyman - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
When is the mITX board coming out? I can't find it for sale. Newegg only carries an Asrock board for mITX Z87. Also, I like how "first boot" goes directly into Windows :pepobirs - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
Probably they tested the setup before mounting it, including running the Windows install.It common practice for those who do enough builds to have an external ATX button set you can run without a case. Also, lot of higher-end boards these days have power and reset buttons directly on the board, which is very convenient for testing, OC configurations, or just different case layouts. There isn't room for those on a mini-ITX board but the adapters I already mentioned are out there.
GazonkFoo - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
the case is nice for the sole purpose of filming the assembly of a mini-itx system (great look-in). but this is probably the last case i would buy for my mini-itx setup. incredible waste of space, unhandy and frickin ugly.apinkel - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
@ edmoncu. I agree. Nothing is ever perfect. But the great thing is that there are almost always other options that might be a better fit.apinkel - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
To clarify I was agreeing with the comment about the glass. IMO exposing too much of the internal PC is a bad idea and does show a lack of design discipline.The cost/ugly portion of the post seem like buyer's personal decisions that hopefully are carefully weighed before the buy button is pressed. Unfortunately, on a build, sometimes the costs can escalated part way thru the build. When that happens you do have to roll with the punches as best you can.
Laststop311 - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
It's a good concept and a pretty fair compromise in performance but I have a sneaking suspicion that system is going to run hotter then I would like. I may be in the minority but this is a desktop we are talking about. I don't know about you guys but I move my desktop maybe 4 times a year when im cleaning it out. So I really have no problems or sadness using a larger case I use the silverstone rv02 with the rotated motherboard so the IO is coming out the back. It's a really awesome design with 3 180mm fans blowing cold air from the bottom over everything to exhause hot out the top. Heat naturally rises so this helps immensely from keeping the heat of the components effecting each other and leads to a nice steady supply of cold air for the heatsink fans allowing you to run all the fans at low speed and still be under 75C under full load on the cpu and under 80 on the gpu which is a gtx titan and the cpu is an i7-980x. If I put the fans on high it is STILL stupidly quiet and I can extract quite an overclock while keeping temps very chilly. This is an awesome designed case and does just as good as the 70 dollar more ft02 version its just not all metal.I Know the case weighs 27 pounds empty which unless you are pathetically weak is not that hard to move the few times you need to clean it. Probably 50 pounds fully loaded. I got alot of stuff. A 256GB Samsung 840 pro boot drive/program installation drive and 8x 3TB WD black in software RAID 5. When I can afford another 8 bay nas box Ill upgrade these to the 4TB WD blacks but funds wont allow that.
I'm a big movie buff and I store my movies that I encode myself and my movies end up being about 15-20GB each in size with an identical picture to the original blu ray. I already have a lot of nas's from upgrades over the years. A 3 bay raid 5 with 3x 1TB WD black RE that I use for all my business and personal non media backup. I have a 5 bay raid 5 with 5x 2TB WD green which has all music and movies all music stored in varying flac qualities depending on the source to preserve all the quality. I have a 8 bay i just filled with 8x 3tb wd red drives in raid 5 to expand my movie storage capabilities. And I have 8x WD black 3TB in my main desktop the is mainly storing copies of all my hardest to replace most important favorite things as a second copy to stuff already on the nas's as you can't trust just raid with your most important stuff 2 seperate raid systems is pretty good though.
I'm probably in the minority as I am a data junky because of movies and when 4k takes off it is going to be really tough i hope we have a major breaktrhough in hard drives by that time that gives us 10-15GB per drive as the norm so I can keep up with storing 4k movies.
apinkel - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Point taken on the case design. Really underlines the importance of doing your homework and touching base with other folks before starting your build.That does sound like a lot of stuff. I used to keep everything. I now have a fairly streamlined system that meets my needs but doesn't have a lot of extra stuff that just makes it harder/more expensive to maintain. This has really made backup and recovery so much easier. The more stuff you have and the more complex the system you have the harder it is to back it up and recover it in the case of a failure.
cjs150 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Laststop311: Pleasure to see there is another data junkie with an extensive blu-ray ripped collection. That is one impressive list of NASs! I cannot compete - I am humbledAnanke - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I have pretty much the same systems :), you are not alone. I just bought several IB CPUs on great sales, Celerons and i3, to have spares for future builds. Haswell is no good :):). That Lian Li is pointless case - too large and no functional.Dug - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I must be the only one that likes this case. I like that 670 too.hfm - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Probably, I find that case to be hideous.apinkel - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Nothing wrong with liking the case. Not everyone has the same needs/desires. As long as the case fits the intended usage without having any truly problematic design flaws.dtgoodwin - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
It's not a PicoPSU, which plug directly into the motherboard, it's an SFX. Otherwise, fun to see a build.KaosFaction - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I wish my SSD came preloaded with Windows 8 for first boot.JBVertexx - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Love the SFF GTX 670. Wish there were more ITX enclosures optimized for this.JBVertexx - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
Also would like to see thermal performance with this build. Noctua NH-L9i with an OC'd Haswell? Need to see the proof in the pudding on that one.MonkeyPaw - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
On that comment about inserting RAM correctly, one time my father-in-law bought some more RAM, and rather than waiting for me to help, he put it in himself. Surprise surprise, the machine didn't boot. When I checked it out, he had the RAM in backwards and he had pressed down so hard that he broke the DIMM slots. Never thought it was something so complex!Sabresiberian - Tuesday, June 18, 2013 - link
I would have liked to see the overclocking process. Nice fan in the back, but it's mostly blocked by the mainboard; I expect case cooling to be an issue. Of course the intent was for a mild OC to begin with, so even if no OC was possible, it wouldn't ruin the build.Nice little video; everyone thinking about building their own for the first time should watch something like this just to see how easy it can be. Of course seasoned vets won't learn a lot from it. :)
epobirs - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
I guess the question is, how much effect can you get from cooling the underside of a motherboard?sxr7171 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I like this machine for a NAS. I'd get a low power Haswell i3 and the board has quite a few SATA ports.rhangman - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Bad choice for a NAS. No ECC RAM support and you aren't going to be overclocking, so just a waste in that respect.Intel's server chipsets in the past (SB and IB) supported i3's with ECC, no idea about C22x boards though.
JDG1980 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
From what I've seen, the best current Haswell board for a NAS would be the Supermicro X10SL7-F. In addition to the usual complement of SATA ports (two 6.0Gbps + four 3.0Gbps), this board has an onboard LSI 2308 controller that supports *eight* additional SAS ports (which are also compatible with SATA devices). That ought to be enough for almost any home or small business NAS. And since it's a server-grade board, it supports ECC RAM and the usual complement of server features like IPMI. It is built on a micro-ATX form factor.Hixbot - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
I'm dissapointed this is a video review. I like to able to find the information at my own pace and study benchmarks, overclocking results, temperature and sound measurement.I always skip the video reviews.
Razorbak86 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Pro-tip: If the article has "[video]" in the title, then truly skip the review. Don't jump into the thread and immediately comment that that you "always skip video reviews."Hixbot - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
It's feedback. How else would the staff know that I always skip the video articles if I don't tell them?epobirs - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
There is this thing they measure called 'hits.' They know how many people are coming to the site and how many are viewing the video. They even have a good idea of how many are link directly to the video. A public declaration of your disinterest really isn't needed.Hixbot - Monday, June 24, 2013 - link
Hits, or lack there of, don't give an explanation. I'm very interested in the topic of this article but dislike the format. My feedback is valid.cjs150 - Wednesday, June 19, 2013 - link
Love the small factor GPU. Love the motherboard but not the way the SATA sockets are set out. but other than that looks perfect as a reasonably powered gaming rig. Water cooling the GPU and CPU will be simple as that close together.epobirs - Thursday, June 20, 2013 - link
This was interesting because I did my first mini-ITX build just a few days ago. It started with an older Lian-Li case model on a blowout deal. (Not that much older, as it has front USB 3.0 ports.) At the same time I was offered a deal on an Ivy Bridge Core i7-3770K ($90). I got the Asrock Z77 mini-ITX board and a mini 450W PSU from FSP that includes an ATX mounting plate.The case is designed to take an off the shelf ATX PSU but this struck me as very difficult to work with and severely lacking in air flow. So I picked up the much smaller PSU, even though it has greater capacity than what it replaced. (The first one was such a tight fit I had to take off the company logo stickers from the sides to get it in!)
So it's all together and is pretty nice. I'm planning to use it with the public beta of Windows 8,1 coming out in a few days, since it has no assigned purpose yet and won't be painful when it needs to be wiped and reinstalled with the final release. The only thing that is lacking is a GPU upgrade. The built-in HD4000 video is adequate for a lot of stuff but I'd like to get something more powerful in there. The card in the video won't work because it requires two slots and I've only the one. And that one is right up between the PSU and the hard drive. (An SSD lives under the HD. The mSATA slot on the underside of the Asrock board turned out to be useless because it's only SATA-2. WTF, Asrock?)
So I'm looking for a video card that is short and narrow, while having enough performance to be worth installing. Any suggestions? It may be something meets the need over the next year as existing GPUs get die shrinks and are offered in suitable packages for this machine.
coolhund - Friday, June 21, 2013 - link
10 USB ports plus internal ones. Wow, I wish more mainboards would have that many. :(theGryphon - Thursday, June 27, 2013 - link
Hey JJ, did Z87i-Deluxe just got renamed to Z87I-Pro? --> http://www.sweclockers.com/nyhet/17222-asus-lanser...I understand it may have been done for product placement vs the ROG mITX board, and I hope it means a more affordable price for the Z87I-Pro.
Finally, release the dang thing already!!! :)
Chad Shephard - Wednesday, July 10, 2013 - link
Can anyone suggest a case like the Mac mini. i'll be using an SSDtheGryphon - Thursday, July 11, 2013 - link
Hey guys, look at this "Pro" sticker on Z87I-Pro: https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-...I bet it says "Deluxe" under there ;)
So far, the only difference I've noticed between Pro and Deluxe is that Deluxe comes with Wifi-AC, but Pro comes with Wifi-N. I don't know if Deluxe supports Thunderbolt on top of that but I doubt it. Heck, I'm not even sure if Pro will come to the US...
theGryphon - Friday, July 12, 2013 - link
I found the other difference between Z87I-Pro and Z87I-Deluxe. Pro does not have TPU, hence it's not advertising 4-Way optimization thing. Not a terrible loss but yet another way to differentiate the Deluxe line...Actually, I started to think they may really have done away with Z87I-Deluxe in favor of the Impact ROG board. Z87I-Pro is now listed at ASUS.com but Deluxe is nowhere to be seen yet...
theGryphon - Saturday, July 13, 2013 - link
Alright, Z87I-Deluxe is here: http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87IDELUXE/That also confirms it: The only difference between Pro and Deluxe is wireless AC. Let's see how much of a price difference that makes...
PCBLDR - Friday, July 26, 2013 - link
For the love of .... When will ASUS release this MB into the North American Market - I have tried to reach ASUS but no luck. Anyone hear of the release date?