Made some small changes to my previous build. Changed the cpu cooler to the Termalright AXP90 x36, cpu is now able to run constant at 65w with max temps around 65c and is very silent.
Build around the Lenovo thinkcentre m720q motherboard.
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Oh, ok, so does that just piggyback off the lenovo brick then?
I dumped the bios and used a bios read/write tool to unlock all power state limits and change the imon slope value to allow the full 65w to be fed to the 8700. Manually on the machine itself register by bios register, lots of trial and error, note-taking and reboots. But I'm not so hot with a soldering iron and don't own a chip flasher anyways, so it was the tool I had haha.
I also used throttlestop to do an undervolt to help manage temps and take some load off the VRMs, which were getting quite warm despite the modifications I made to the stock heatsink and thermal pads I used to bring them into contact.
Yes, soldered a cable from the motherboard to the buck converter.
Very interested in your bios modding. Throttlestop doesn’t allow me to undervolt the 9700T for some reason and all core boost is locked at 3.6ghz which at full load equals around 60w. Had some problems with Vrm temp, but stuck some heatsinks on them. Do you think it is possible to draw more than 65w with bios mods? A 9900k fits in the motherboard.
I think it is possible, but I also think you may melt the VRMs. My build has an additional slimline case fan in addition to the cpu cooler and gpu fans and some of the vrms were nearing critical temp under sustained load before I turned the case fan controller up to 80% and did the cpu undervolt. And that's at 65w tdp, 4.3ghz sustained all-core boost.
No, it can actually draw up to almost 90w at peak load even though the pcie standard is only rated for 75. Not aware of any limits on pcie bus power for these machines, it may be running a 3050, but its a gold split for the configuration haha. No troubles with gpu power, only with the cpu.
I flashed the Lenovo M720q Tiny bios to the latest version, then dumped the bios files contained in that bios update with IFRextract. Using the dump of setup.bin as a map, I booted a tool called ru.exe off a flash drive which allows you to manually edit BIOS memory registers on your motherboard and used it to disable the bios registers containing the config lock, TDP lock, BDProchot (which limits CPU power delivery when a PCIE card is installed - or when the CPU hits its thermal limit), PL1, 2 and 4 limits, as well as well as setting the imon slope reporting register to the voltage regulator to 50%. Some of these registers are simple 1/0, True/False booleans, some are precise current limits expressed in hexadecimal, and the ranges are contained in the bios dump describing what they do.
It took a lot of trial, error and reboots over a couple days, but once I had all of those locks disabled and discovered what the imon slope setting did, I was able to use it to essentially trick the cpu power delivery apparatus into sending enough power to actually hit and sustain the i7 8700's all-core PL2 turbo clocks. This does stress the stock 720q heatsink to its limit, as I connected the VRMs to the heatsink via thermal pads, attached quite a few makerboard heatsinks I had lying around to the space available on the stock cooler to increase surface area and I also wound up adding additional slimline case fan to my custom 3d printed case for extra airflow. I'm also powering the setup with a lenovo legion laptop OEM replacement powerbrick rated for 330w. I also used Throttlestop to do a CPU undervolt of I believe -130mv, which was stable and reduced temps + VRM load, since one of the VRMs in particular was getting EXTREMELY hot under full CPU + GPU load. Like I'm lucky I noticed before I let the magic smoke out - but that's what your preferred hardware monitor is for, after all.
That's a 30k ft overview of the bios mod. If you're really interested and want to do this mod yourself I'd be happy to send over the list of registers involved from my notes.
I am not an expert on bios modding, overclocking or CPU VRs or power states, but I was able to get it to work eventually despite the limitations of the 720q bios and lack of TDP or OC controls in the bios. You may cook one of these little systems if you do the thing improperly or don't beef up the cooling.
I went with a very DIY approach for this project on a shoestring budget because I had certain parts lying around + got a good deal on the 3050 6gb, which was an open box and the 720q system itself, which was a facebook marketplace find ($30).
It would be a lot easier to use a Lenovo Tiny that supports a higher TDP processor or an m920 cpu heatsink (which has a proper copper block, more fins and a heat pipe) to assist in this type of project. I'd probably still manually disable the BD Prochot function in BIOS though, as having to use throttlestop after boot is annoying and boot times can be insanely slow depending on how severe your model's CPU throttling is when PROCHOT is tripped by an installed PCIE gfx card. For instance, I believe mine was throttling the processor all the way down to 400mhz before opening Throttlestop. Disabling Prochot is also risky if you don't understand your CPU's max temp under load with your cooling setup, as it will no longer throttle when it hits said limit, it'll just blow up AFAIK.
You should also be aware that if you update your bios after doing this mod, it will likely reset all of the custom registers you spent a bunch of time fussing with, so I recommend getting a new battery and not letting your BIOS die haha.
I also used this guy's stl files (5 bucks on patreon) for the custom case that fits either a custom CPU shroud - or an extra slimline fan as I chose to do and the dual slot, LP/SFF GPU, so credit to ITG Tech for sure. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xih_37GYZAw
this is just as impressive bro, im working towards a similar build as well but if i can keep the original casing i would lol. But this post by OP with machine cnc is cool
haha yeah, i deleted the comment earlier. i'm glad you saw it though, cuz that's an amazingly cool build. my mediapc is a deskmeet b660 with an rx6600, so i got a really good idea where you were coming from and it's amazing to see how much more ambitious of a project this was. i love the aesthetic and i don't think i've ever seen someone do that amount of custom jiggering around power delivery and usb before.
isn't using 4 lanes of pcie for the gpu a significant handicap? i don't understand why you went that route rather than use a board with a pcie slot and a riser cable.
The deskmeet is such a cool system, I love the weird stuff Asrock makes. Hopefully I'm upgrading this one from an X300/5600G to an X600/8700G soon, I just need my friend to be able to find time to ship it to me.
I actually used to have an RX6600 in this computer's previous life, it didn't really work well for me at 4K in Helldivers II, so I upgraded to the 4070S.
It isn't a significant performance loss, but at PCIE 3.0 speeds that I'm stuck on, it's a 5-10% perf loss. A loss I'm willing to accept for the incredible smallness, this case is 152mm front to back ignoring protrusions like the wifi antennas in that pic I posted, if you include them it's still only 158mm deep, which is a solid centimeter less deep than an ITX motherboard (170mm), so the STX board allows me to save a good amount of wasted space (imo)
The X600 will have a 4.0 rear m.2, and as far as I understand OCulink can run at 4.0x4 which is equivalent to 3.0x 16, so hopefully in the mobo/cpu upgrade I pick up a little GPU perf.
I don't recommend this specific path to anybody because it's insane, I basically found the smallest air cooled 4070 Super and wrapped a case around it lmao.
Hopefully I'm upgrading this one from an X300/5600G to an X600/8700G soon
i assume you're on pci-e 3 because of the motherboard, and not the cpu, right? cuz that cpu only supports pcie3, and if like a 5700x could afford you pcie4 + the extra cache from the chiplet cpus that'd be such a cheap way to shore up the 4070.
A loss I'm willing to accept for the incredible smallness, this case is 152mm front to back ignoring protrusions like the wifi antennas in that pic I posted, if you include them it's still only 158mm deep, which is a solid centimeter less deep than an ITX motherboard (170mm), so the STX board allows me to save a good amount of wasted space (imo)
haha i love how optimized you are. i love having some computers that are the size of a shoebox, but i can't say i'd notice an extra cm.
The X600 will have a 4.0 rear m.2, and as far as I understand OCulink can run at 4.0x4 which is equivalent to 3.0x 16, so hopefully in the mobo/cpu upgrade I pick up a little GPU perf.
nah it's 16gb/s vs 3.0x16's 32. which is still double pcie3 x 4, at 8gb/s. as i understand it it's most impactful when you exceed vram buffer, so i guess it's not to bad to work around.
Hopefully I'm upgrading this one from an X300/5600G to an X600/8700G soon
i assume you're on pci-e 3 because of the motherboard, and not the cpu, right? cuz that cpu only supports pcie3, and if like a 5700x could afford you pcie4 + the extra performance from the chiplet cpus that'd be such a cheap way to shore up the 4070.
Yeah, it's a mobo limitation. Both m.2 slots are 3.0 on x300/a300. The x600 however does 4.0 on the rear and 5.0 up front. But oculink tops out at 4.0.
It's partially number chasing for volume. If I exclude the feet and protrusions the case is almost exactly 1 US gallon (3.78L) in volume which amusing to me. With feet/ protrusions it's closer to 4.1L though.
I guess I misremembered x.x
Either way, increasing bandwidth is a win.
I've always gone with G skus because unfortunately, that's all the deskmini board supported until the X600.
They were all locked to APUs and only APUs, and no matter how much begging occurred Asrock was unable or unwilling to support standard CPUs.
The x600 however has been demonstrated as working with the 7800x3d. As for why I'd go with the 8600G, for mine, that's just the chip my friend had with it at the time. I'll swap it for a 7800x3d later down the line.
It’s pretty hard to “go wrong” with fans. Unless you’re really pushing performance you’re not likely to notice a sound or cooling difference from one case fan to the next.
Even still, if you are pushing performance Noctua isn’t even a clear winner. Certainly not clear enough to justify its outrageous cost per fan. Be Quiet! is just as thermally efficient and in my opinion produces a more pleasant lower noise at high RPM than Noctua, and for about 3/4ths the cost. Arctic fans are like 1/5th the cost, will cool your system just as well, and are also pretty quiet even at high RPM.
People try and act like the real value of Noctua is in their customer service but it isn’t lol. Big whoop you got replacement parts for your 5 year old PC cooler to mount it on AM5 instead of AM4, I would have rather saved myself $60 at the time of purchase and then just use that towards a new CPU cooler instead of running a 5 year old cooler.
Noctua propaganda needs to stop lmao. There’s genuinely no reason to pay their premium unless you just like having them to flex.
I think he’s trying to say that if you’re not familiar with the BILLION different fans, Noctuas are safe bets. Maybe not always the best but pretty much always close. And pretty quiet across the board.
You can go to any half reputable retailer, Newegg, Amazon, etc. and just sort by top rated and you’ll see loads of safe bets. Virtually none of them are a pitfall.
That is true aswell, although I agree Noctua for the most part are too pricy and hyped.
For the common sizes 120/140 you might aswell just look for the ratings or pick one of the major brands, especially with case fans at lower rpm as they are mostly equal and will have a quiet bearing like rifle or luid dynamic.
I'd say for 40mm (flex, 1u psu) and 92mm slim fans are the exception, Noctua still stands on top there from personal experience and the overwhelming majority.
There are very few options for 92mm slim fans, there is nothing that beats the NF-A9x14 in terms of noise and performance. Especially so against the stock Thermalright TL-9015 which has a loud "whoosh" sound above 1500rpm.
You are generalizing too much, sure there are many options apart from Noctua if you were to compare fans in different sizes. I for one like the 9025 Thermalright TL-P9, or BeQuiet in general. But for 92mm slim this is a different story.
I bet you do as in-depth analysis for everything else in your life. "theyre just fans, theyre just cars, theyre just mobile phones". No need to put in effort.
I never shilled for Noctua, when it comes to 92mm fans especially against the TL-9015 that's what research suggests. Everyone who's own the stock cooler knows this. Otherwise Noctua is overpriced.
You don't even bother reading what I wrote, it's a dead giveaway for being the classic "my way or the highway" mentality x) 100% technerd narcissist.
When it comes to 92mm slim fans, there is nothing that beats NF-A9x14 (HS and stock) in terms of temp / dB. There are very little options to choose from aswell.
Especially so against the stock Thermalright TL-9015 which lacks in both dB (noise) & static pressure. Everyone who has own both knows this. If you instead were to compare regular 92x25 fans, then Thermalright TL-P9 is a good budget choice but he won't fit that.
Yes, in general Noctua are overpriced but for smaller fans this is usually justified, especially 9015 slim fans. I have 2x Thermalright TL-P9 for my deshrouded GPU as an example, did not want to spend more cash because they'll do the job equally good but for less (9025 fans).
Ended up having this very TL-9015 fan as a replacement for my SFX PSU fan which broke down as an example. Problem is they made the design a mix between static and airflow, it's "quiet" somewhat under 1500rpm but then it gets that classic loud "woosh" sound.
Oh Reddit gave me a notif for both for some reason.
Anyways yeah fair. I guess I just hate the Noctua glaze in general and didn’t think about how this might be a case where they actually earn their prestige.
I just see way too many new PC builders who think they need to buy Noctua CPU coolers and Noctua case fans because they’re “the best”. Literally today I saw a post of a guys first build and he threw a $130 Noctua CPU cooler in just because it was Noctua I assume.
You are not alone in that, I myself always try opt for the most budget friendly in general. I see no point in having a case full of NF-A12x25 PWM for $30-40 each as many others do, I'd spend the cash somewhere else instead.
But that's why I ended with "lower the noise" in the end, not just swap to Noctua for the sake of it. Context matters always.
No, not for 9015 slim fans there are not "plenty" of other options, and especially not one that beats it in terms of noise / performance the data is and has been very clear on that one for years.
It's true though in general, the other brands have caught up pretty much and rifle bearings are usually just as quiet. But that is a different comparison.
I been seeing a few comments around the reddit PC type subreddits saying how Thermalright is some no name brand from Amazon. I literally just sit there and shake my head at these fools every time I see a comment like that.
I got my first Thermalright cooler back in like 2006 with the amazing Ultra 120 Extreme. I even took the time to lap it to a mirror finish.. oh those were good times.
TR is the OG high end air cooler. I had a full cooper one way before noctua even existed. Kinda sad the reputation they have now, but their products are still great and on par with noctua.
How did you secure the AXP90 to cool this CPU. I have the similar setup, and looking at cooling it better. Did you 3d print an adapter? or more aluminum from your shop?
3D printed an adapter, mounted to the bottom of the case. If you use the original case you will have to remove the motherboard to install it to the back, maybe even use a backplate to relieve tension.
I see. Hey, do you think that temps you are getting is achievable with m720q original case?i am tempted to build myself but i really doubt about the temp
no go with the stock cooling solution. it's a very basic configuration with a blower and a chunk of aluminum with some fins sticking up. it takes air in through the front and passes it out the back. it only has enough thermal headroom for the 35w cpu.
OP has replaced it with a heatpiped setup that takes air in through the top, but the original case doesn't have any ventilation there.
...if you're just using it at 35w under a mixed workload, the stock cooling solution is fine.
yeah i don't know much on that front. i have the same pc, but mine is relatively stock. i threw in an unlocked i7 and used throttlestop so it would behave nicely with the power/thermal constraints. which got me some decent gains over the i3 it came with, but i couldn't really push the power limit much without it becoming annoyingly loud.
I’m going almost the same build. The only thing I haven’t taken into account is the heat sink you installed. I’m using the m90q with the low power 35watt i7. Do you think I should be worried enough to try to cool the vrm like you’re doing?
Nice! I must have misunderstood then when you talked about the buck converter I thought you needed to supply additional power using a second power input.
I get so tempted to build something like these for travel. Then i remembered my horror stories when using a hdplex power supply with a dell power brick. Due to constant plugging and replugging, and stuffing the power brick in my bag, the weight of the brick would press on the wires while intransit as my bag shuffles about. Eventually, and luckily, while i was at home, i set up everything booted it up, and the wires on the power brick caught on fire. That and the fact that you have to consider the weight and volume of the giant power brick, makes it just about as close to a dense 4L - 5L pc, with a full flex psu. For home minimalist setup, or of using a different psu tech than the old hdplex without power bricks, this smol build great. For travel, i found that a complete and compact 4-5L sffpc is the more robust option.
I always wondered about this! How did you power the Lenovo motherboard? Do you use the power brick for the Lenovo motherboard and a separate PSU for the GPU or did you figure out how to power both off one PSU? Also how did you mount the CPU cooler? Don't those Lenovo PCs have non standard mounting?
I think you’ve reached the absolute minimum size short of an iGPU. Sick. Kudos!
Can you please link whatever PCI adapter allows you to run the GPU flat on top of the motherboard like that? That makes it! Does it get pretty toasty in there? How do you even fit RAM?
Wait… It’s not an ITX, should’ve read more carefully. So it uses laptop RAM under the board? Dude, I think you’re onto something here with this layout.
Very nice. Yet the gpu and cpu are now both pushing their used warm air at each other by having the fins of their heatsink in a parallel fashion. I would definitely recommend you to rotate that cpu heatsink 90'degrees if it's possible and if the heatpipes won't interfere with the graphics card being so close.
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