CHEAP PC build

[SrPx]

19 hours ago, Sanderguy777 said:

Ok, so is the $40 case I linked good for airflow etc? If not, what about the white one?

Dunno, but don't overthink it too much 

The main thing is about if u need a new computer or not. The USB ports reason seems weak to me, there are a ton of ways to provide you with a cheaper solution than a new computer there. Now if it's an excuse to get you a proper machine, anything will do    . But needing it for your CAD engineering studies is a VERY, VERY strong reason. 

Consider that, not now, but sooner or later you'll mount there a Zen 2 cpu (surely at least before it's impossible to get one, but that may take a very long time yet), and surely a Quadro or FireGL or any pro card that allows fluidly moving very dense 3D wireframe meshes in the viewport, as is more what is needed in CAD stuff. Anyway, for your studies, surely a mid range mainstream card would do, I'm mentioning pro cards only for high end PRO cad stuff. For now, that 2400G machine is the very right fit.

[Scungio]

I always cringe at some of the case designs that I see today. To me the best ones are those that provide real airflow. I don't see how having a solid piece of plastic or a slab of glass in the front, and only allowing the air to sneak in through these narrow edges on the side, provides any airflow.

Ideally you want as much mesh on the front so that your front case fans aren't obstructed and can get as much air as they can to cool your computer. There was a classic example the past year or so of Gamers Nexus (search for them on Youtube), were critiquing a CoolMasters case and they had glass/plastic on the front with only thin intakes on the side. GN did testing, thermals and the results were pretty bad, they went so far as to mod the case, putting in more mesh and showed how it greatly reduced temps. CoolMasters, to their credit, eventually did redesign this certain case a couple times and did come out with a front mesh version. This stuff isn't rocket science and yet some companies try and make it more complicated than it has to be.

Sanderguy777, does your old PC not have an expansion slots? $15-20 will get you a PCI card that could be installed to give you 4 USB 3 ports. 

I did want to point out a couple more things concerning the Ryzen 5 2400G, first Ryzen doesn't support Thunderbolt at the moment. There have been some people doing some hacks, complicated workarounds getting TB working on Ryzen with Linux as the OS. Maybe when Intel officially makes Thunderbolt part of the USB 4 spec, then it will be available for Ryzen.

The second point I wanted to make is that the Ryzen 5 2400 G has some PCI 3.0 limitations. For example it has only 8 lanes dedicated to the one slot if you want to install a graphics card. In the non APU Ryzens, the 1600, 1700, 2600, 2700 families, so to speak, you can have a PCI 3.0 x16 lane slot for your graphics card. Some might argue that there is little difference between the two but if you bought a real high end graphics card it may very well perform worse in that x8 slot then in a x16 slot. An RX 580 would be a perfect mid tier card that would give you a big upgrade over the Vega 11 graphics. It would also be a very good 1080 gaming card.

[Sanderguy777]

2 hours ago, Scungio said:

I always cringe at some of the case designs that I see today. To me the best ones are those that provide real airflow. I don't see how having a solid piece of plastic or a slab of glass in the front, and only allowing the air to sneak in through these narrow edges on the side, provides any airflow.

Ideally you want as much mesh on the front so that your front case fans aren't obstructed and can get as much air as they can to cool your computer. There was a classic example the past year or so of Gamers Nexus (search for them on Youtube), were critiquing a CoolMasters case and they had glass/plastic on the front with only thin intakes on the side. GN did testing, thermals and the results were pretty bad, they went so far as to mod the case, putting in more mesh and showed how it greatly reduced temps. CoolMasters, to their credit, eventually did redesign this certain case a couple times and did come out with a front mesh version. This stuff isn't rocket science and yet some companies try and make it more complicated than it has to be.

Sanderguy777, does your old PC not have an expansion slots? $15-20 will get you a PCI card that could be installed to give you 4 USB 3 ports. 

I did want to point out a couple more things concerning the Ryzen 5 2400G, first Ryzen doesn't support Thunderbolt at the moment. There have been some people doing some hacks, complicated workarounds getting TB working on Ryzen with Linux as the OS. Maybe when Intel officially makes Thunderbolt part of the USB 4 spec, then it will be available for Ryzen.

The second point I wanted to make is that the Ryzen 5 2400 G has some PCI 3.0 limitations. For example it has only 8 lanes dedicated to the one slot if you want to install a graphics card. In the non APU Ryzens, the 1600, 1700, 2600, 2700 families, so to speak, you can have a PCI 3.0 x16 lane slot for your graphics card. Some might argue that there is little difference between the two but if you bought a real high end graphics card it may very well perform worse in that x8 slot then in a x16 slot. An RX 580 would be a perfect mid tier card that would give you a big upgrade over the Vega 11 graphics. It would also be a very good 1080 gaming card.

I was looking for looks more than airflow originally, but now I think that getting a case at all is more important than the looks. And I have young nieces and nephews who stay in my room on vacations so glass is probably a bad idea to begin with lol.

My old computer is a laptop. It is one of the newer, really slim 2in1s, so no expansion...

I was thinking about getting a GPU enclosure that used the thunderbolt port and could just plug into a new machine, so thanks for letting me know that ain't happening.  (I love how my phone won't auto current dont, but instantly fixes ain't and won't. Lol)

Thanks for letting me know about the PCIe limitations.  I noticed that in the mobo specs but it didn't occur to me till you did it. Yeah, 580 is the MOST I will go for. I was thinking maybe when I need it, get two 560s or 570s for crossfire. But really, by the time I get any graphics card, I could spent 30 bucks more and get the 580.... As far as pro cards, I will probably not even be in a engineering class for another year. I'm still in the calculus and physics requirements for the time being. But, I want to have a machine that can handle some form of it so I can tinker. So my plan is to get the bare minimum for a running machine and then add parts as I need them so I end up with a good machine in the end. 

I'm not familiar at all with the new CPUs from AMD. Are the ones you mentioned APUs or not?

Thanks guys for all the help. I will probably start ordering parts soon, but I'm in a calculus class right now so the build will probably wait for a few weeks till I can breathe lol

[SrPx]

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

I was looking for looks more than airflow originally,

Ouchy.   

4 hours ago, Scungio said:

The second point I wanted to make is that the Ryzen 5 2400 G has some PCI 3.0 limitations. For example it has only 8 lanes dedicated to the one slot if you want to install a graphics card. In the non APU Ryzens, the 1600, 1700, 2600, 2700 families, so to speak, you can have a PCI 3.0 x16 lane slot for your graphics card. Some might argue that there is little difference between the two but if you bought a real high end graphics card

Yup, that is true (and all about the airflow).  But given the fact that not only his budget was 500 for the entire machine, it appears it is finally 300 & something, then, for now the 2400G is the only option with at least some performance (reducing the RAM for photo editing would be terrible, at least on Windows, and now is cheap, not like one year ago or more)... almost any other option including a cpu and discrete card, go way past his budget... I have a thousand recommendations I could give him to get a CAD station there, but... it's a bit past 300 bucks what he can use.... I mean, any decent medium gamer card is actually that money alone....

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

And I have young nieces and nephews who stay in my room on vacations so glass is probably a bad idea to begin with lol.

Indeedy. And totally unneeded, non useful, a waste of money, and I could go on...  You can ask your nieces and nephews to make some colored drawings. Cost is free, but also priceless. Put 'em on the walls. THAT would make the room prettier. 

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

My old computer is a laptop. It is one of the newer, really slim 2in1s, so no expansion...

I'm very disconnected for that type of thing, as my tower has a lot of usb ports and stuff, despite being old like heck. But... weren't there external USB hubs for that issue ? Typically the issue back in the day with many USB ports was the energy distributed in all sometimes ended up making some device fail. Like many things, that probably is not a prob anymore.

What speed do you need in your storage workflow?  (meaning, you can always have your working files in the HD, and move the the external disk whatever you don't use frequently)  I mean, the main issue on a solution like that could be speed, but if is only for storage, dunno you, but I go for lunch to the kitchen or dinning room and leave the thing making its backup to the external disks.... Time isn't that critical so.

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

Yeah, 580 is the MOST I will go for.

It's a great card, for games, but also for productivity, content creation. Quite a lot of VRAM for 3D renders (good to fit large scenes), very decent raw power. I mean, even my cr4ppy GTX 1050 really speeds up any Blender render (true that anything would do compared to a 1st gen i7 860 from 2009...and my memory I believe is DDR3-1333, lol). I dunno if these days in CAD courses make you also do final renders or not, but if so, GPU rendering can be a time saver.(tho a thing like a threadripper is amazing for the many cores)

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

As far as pro cards, I will probably not even be in a engineering class for another year. I'm still in the calculus and physics requirements for the time being.

Calculus! I went a first year to Maths uni career (then headed to Fine Arts)... brings back the memories. The only subject I really enjoyed.

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

But, I want to have a machine that can handle some form of it so I can tinker.

My guess is you'll be fine for now with the 2400G, maybe it gives time to the stuff to settle down, like driver issues, bios and memory issues, etc. Then u get a 3600 or 3700X.

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

So my plan is to get the bare minimum for a running machine and then add parts as I need them

What I'd totally do, too. Good thing is AMD is really good for that (upgrade path).

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

I'm not familiar at all with the new CPUs from AMD. Are the ones you mentioned APUs or not?

[ hehehe.... first thing for your studies : Improve reading....Don't get mad, am kidding... ] He said "In the non APU Ryzens" . So, nope, none of that is an APU. The 1600, 1700, 2600, 2700 cpus are great (the APUs I know of, of the recent ones at least : Athlon 200GE, 220GE, 240GE (geez, they used that name again (Athlon), like intel did with "pentium" (G5400, etc),  then the Ryzen 2200g, 2400G, all together in order of performance) but all need a discrete card, unlike the APUs. Thing is, even a 1600 (which IS more powerful than a 2400G, unless all the benchmarks I read and watched were wrong. But the 2400G has other advantages) + a discrete card,  makes the budget go higher. One fabulous combination on the cheap, yet very powerful, is a Ryzen 7  1700 (8 cores 16 threads!!) + Radeon RX 570 graphic card, both are now very cheap, but they're great pieces of hardware. That would be indeed quite more powerful (IMO) than a 2400G, and the RX 570 would be good to use if you get in some months a 3700x. Anyway, in some months as well, seems they are going to release newer Ryzen APUs in the Zen 2 series, so, might neither need a card then. Unless you'd have noticed some of your apps is heavily GPU dependent. The Ryzen 2700 (I mean the 2700, not the  2700x, tho that's an stellar cpu) has been tested in benchmarks to be an absolute miracle in low energy usage despite the high capability in processing, which is good for many reasons (environment, money in electicity, heat, noise...and well, price). But it depends on the needs of processing (is WAY more powerful than the 2400G) for each person.  For the money you have or that you can reasonably assign to it given the situation, I'd say the 2400G is the very right fit, for now. If you told me you can put like 200 or 250 bucks more than that, yeah, I'd then recommend (and anyone else here)  a different combo. Which is not a fixed one. Could be as many recommendations as the works you'd need to do (even inside a same field like CAD) , the complexity of them, the specific apps to use, etc, etc.

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

Thanks guys for all the help. I will probably start ordering parts soon, but I'm in a calculus

Then focus 100% on that. Waaay more important.

1 hour ago, Sanderguy777 said:

so the build will probably wait for a few weeks till I can breathe lol

Then all the exact pc parts prices list will have totally changed, specially as Zen 2 is a revolution, and will affect all the market from the bottom to the top, also in the other vendor, and is yet too soon to guess the reach of certain impacts (and reactions/domino effect after more benchmarking and reviews, etc). But that's no issue. By then, re-read the info here, in other places, and purchase as you see fit.

 

[Sanderguy777]

"You can ask your nieces and nephews to make some colored drawings. Cost is free, but also priceless. Put 'em on the walls. THAT would make the room prettier"

that made my day! I will do that!

 

[Sanderguy777]

"By then, re-read the info here, in other places, and purchase as you see fit."

Yep. If the 3xxxg cards are only a few bucks more, then I'll grab one of them, but otherwise I'll stick to the 2400g. From what I've heard, any b450 mobo that is cheap, works since I dont overclock. (I mean not "Chad's Budget Builds" brand, but Asus, Asrock, MSI, Gigabyte, etc) 

[Scungio]

One last thing on the 2400G, I promise!!

My old server was a Mac Pro, the original, first Intel Xeon based model from 2006. From 2012 to November of 2018 I used it as a media server. When I retired this old Mac Pro and replaced it with the 2400G, boy, did my electric bill drop!!!

It was an 8 core Xeon and if memory serves it drew 160 Watts when idle and would ramp up to 250 watts when on load. The 2400G is 65 watt TDP chip and that is variable and I find it manages power very well, even under load. This is another area where AMD is taking it to Intel, the latest 3000 series of Ryzen are even better at power management.

Anyway, the savings per month on my electric bill, switching from the Mac Pro to the 2400G, I figure that after 18 months it will have paid for that 2400G build.

I have one last item to replace to improve that electric bill, a 10 year old Plasma TV! It is still beautiful, but the power draw is unbelievable. I know when I replace it with a new modern 4K TV that my electric bill will drop even more. Isn't technology grand? It is incredible how tech improves so rapidly, gets better, cheaper, more efficient.

[Sanderguy777]

Wow! I've never really thought about how much power they use. Does your AMD system have a GPU?

[Sanderguy777]

So, this is what I have ended up with. The prices are a little off since I got the mobo AND CPU for $220 @ Newegg for their FantasTech sale. I also bought a 750w Antec PSU for $90, but I have a $30 off mail in rebate, so I should get that for $60...

I haven't ordered the HDD yet, since I have the SSD from the laptop. I also have its HDD, but am afraid it won't work because it is like 7 years old ( I want to store photos, so not interested in using half broken parts for irreplaceable stuff LOL).

What are your recommendations if I wanted a GPU? Again mainly photos, but also CAD. 

 

Thanks for all your help. I couldn't have done it without you guys!

[SrPx]

Nice!

Fast as am now a bit in a hurry : My  GTX 1050 2GB is good for a ton of tasks. CAD can require more. very high end would require a PRO gama card (not a pro gaming card) But your machine would be a bottle neck for it, anyway. So, stick with something efficient, cheap, better if in deal situation.

The sweet spot of a deal, at the moment, in cheap, is the Radeon RX 570. (way more powerful than my 1050)

Do NOT go below a 1050 2GB. If you do, you are wasting money. As the iGPU in the 2400G is a bit better than all those below the 1050 2gb (do NOT buy a 1030, nor an old  710, neither an RX 550) . So, you'd save the bucks there.
If u don't have money now, u can buy the card later. That's the advantage of the 2400G. u can use for anything office, light games, and anything graphic, balanced with its cpu power, so, no urge to get that.

I'd RATHER prefer if you'd get now a 40 $ 1 TB HD Seagate Barracuda at (important) 7200 rpm. Than rushing to get now a mediocre card not much better than theiGPU included in the 2400G. I work with 750 GB, TONS of projects. So, unless your work is already super heavy and super massive, 1TB is great for quite some time, as you already have external HDs to store finished projects not to touch in some time. Also, if the SSD gives probs, the HDD will provide you with a quite fine system. U need the HDD yes or yes.

I dunno what you expect to do with an old laptop HDD in a desktop, but those tend to be 5400rpm, specially from 7 years ago. Don't even touch it.

Also, there's a ton opf announcements and cards just launched. Cards scene is gonna move like crazy. This means prices of medium cards are gonna fall like heck. Wait to that. You might get a RX 570 dirty cheap in just some m,onths. or even a 1660, or a 1070 super cheap. (right now superseded fully by first 2060, 2070, an dthen 2060 , 2070 SUPER, and also, new AMD offerings, and others to come, from both. All happening at speed of light. Among this and the CPU launches area, tech reviewers are literally exhausted.

So, get the HDD, wait for the GPU. IMO.
 

[Sanderguy777]

58 minutes ago, SrPx said:

So, get the HDD, wait for the GPU. IMO

Ok. That is what is thought, but just curious about WHICH one to get when I do. I considered all 3 of the ones you said NOT to get, and reached the same conclusion (user benchmark gives the 560 or 570 with 8gb GRAM like 900% on everything compared to the 730!)

Good to know about the price drop for GPUs! I'm glad I got the computer at this point and not earlier as I got the newest CPU. 

I will probably touch the hdd, but just long enough to wipe it and put it on Ebay LOL.

[SrPx]

I would not get the 560 -in the future- but the 570. Large difference in performance. Obviously the 580 and 590 are quite mor epowerful, but the price changes quite. So, in price/performance, the 570 is kind of those rare super sweet deals that happens once or twice a year in the cards market.

In another way, 1660 had been till recently, is a great car as in some aspects is close or equal to the 1070, but was quite cheaper than the latter.Now... is very difficult to give advice. It is all moving... there's in the high end new cards, the benchmarks of the 5700 XT from AMD are pretty amazing. So, while I think those wont be your cards (they compare to the newest nVidia gen, called SUPER, which is an improvement of their latest 2060, 2070, 2080 (and ti, versions, etc), I believe these will affect pricing of the others, lower tiers. The lower tiers are already AMAZING for productivity. Meaning an "old" (lol, is like from yesterday) 1060 is amazing,  RX 570, 580 590, are and my point is that these are going to become pretty cheap, soon. I hope not to be wrong. They are really cheap already, but consider we now have the vega chips in one side (AMD's) , the Navi chips 5700, and the higher end 5700 XT, the 10xx platform, still very good (great also in watts consume and super good for low temps and low noise) , like 1050, 1060, 1070, 1080, 1080 ti, the RTX 2060, 2070, 2080, 2080 ti, etc, and that same naming for new cards just added the nick name of SUPER. ALL TOGETHER, at same time., Your shop can sell you ANY of those generations. And freaking older ones, as well, they're still in stock and catalog, as hardware has gone crazy in speed of release. This means, older, yet goodies, lower the price. and then u need to remember (or just check sources) which had exceptional performance results in its day.  Getting a 1060 6gb, a RX 570, 580, 590, a 1080ti (QUITE ANOTHER LEVEL of performance) in some kind of crazy offer (will take a while till these particular ones (1080 ti) get cheap...I call them Terminator Indeed, lol)  a 1070 (u can find some of these at good price, but is same performance than a GTX 1660, and the latter has some extra "modern" details) or... even a 1050 4GB ti (WAY lower in perfomance than all the others, but cheap), any of that would be now, and surely some months later, an amazing match for your 2400G. Well... NOPE, actually. There's a lot of power not to be used by the 1080ti, for example. Your CPU would be the bottle neck, here. These cards in some cases can proccess more than what a basic system can feed them. That's why mostly each proccessor has its sweet spot of cards. That said, is not like a 1080ti wouldn't work. Is that unless getting it as a gift or 1/3 of its price, you'd be not using power that you'd have paid for, as would not  be used by the cpu (it'd be the max performance ur cpu could do in graphics, tho, obviously).

So, a RX 570 is my golden advice.

In your CAD studies, sooner or later you might need a PRO card (Quadro, etc). But those usually are expensive for the performance given. Just that are more reliable, and mostly, they can redraw way more wireframes in the viewport, and more fluidly, compared to a standard card. BUT... with the cpu u got, don't go there. Also,modern game cards have been amazing for me for all my 3D, and tho is not CAD, I handle a lot of dense wireframes, too !

I'd move around mostly a Rx 570, 580, 590, the 1060 6GB. And if gotta go lower tiers, then IMO don't go AMD, stay in nVidia : the 1050 2gb that I have, or the 1050 4gb ti (much better, not just for the gb, has way more performance. Still, very far from a 1060. The nvidia 1050 4 gb ti was a sweet spot for budget gamers (and also productivity users with graphics needs), but IMO now is the AMD RX 570. Significant better performance than the 1050 4gb ti. And yet at a great price. It is particularly convenient the 8gb model (rather than the 4gb) because to go for a 8gb card in nVidia one had to go for quite pricey cards, in the high end. A 8gb card is a wonder for  doing renders, as can fit larger scenes in vram memory, and so, render with the super fast GPU rendering possible in many 3D solutions, today.)

So, as is for a later moment, in months, and this all moves too fast, don't even worry about it. Things will have changed in just 3 months...  Just get your new 7200 rpm HDD is quite more important, imo.

Edit: Actually all the RX "old" (again, its just yesterday) range (rx 570, 580, 590) are pretty cheap now : 150, 200 bucks, 240 $....  I mean, compare to modern offers in both nvidia and AMD (300, 350, 400, 500 $, etc)

If in a pair of months u can get a RX 570 8gb for that rig, at 140 / 150 $ , or less, you'd be SUPER (no pun intended)  happy, IMO.

I'm finding it (RX 570 ) at 100 euros refurbished, so, there's that ! I don't buy second hand video cards tho, have my reasons ( I know how much a card can get burnt by use... specially with people having done so many bitcoin farms in a 24/7 way.... If I'm finding at 150 - 160 EUROS  in my usual country's local places, the rx 570, that means u probably can get one for 150 $ or so, already. Don'r rush. There's gonna be ALWAYS a sweet spot dirty cheap super performing card. The HD disk is way more important to get, to be able to work. The integrated is good to go for a while. ( I mean, until you put together 150 -200 $, but get ur basic system together fist, disk included ! )

 

[Sanderguy777]

I just built this! Up and running! Just have to migrate photo editing stuff and photos over to the 2tb barracuda and then get to work!. As you can see... I did a little rgb. I don't like it when it's crazy on keyboards or spacing out and killing people with seizures, but a little tasteful light can't hurt lol

Snappy 20 ish second boot. I dont know what cpu temps I should be looking for, but i think i heard something about new builds being hotter initially than when they get older....mine is like 53.5C idle with just the exhaust fan and cpu cooler no side panel. I just got the other 4 fans working (only 3 are rgb) so that should make it much cooler

[SrPx]

It depends if it's idle but you've played some game or done some testing recently (minutes). Also the temp in your room, and definitely how is the ventilation (if you mounted the internals for good air flow, or cables and all are a mess avoiding good air circulation) in the box and the fans, of course.

I'm no nerd with that sort of thing (cooling, etc. I just have all pretty average and standard) and still I typically have around 41 - 42 º C. (but this is a 10 year old machine)
I believe your temps are a bit too high.

What I am seeing in reviews is they should be in perfect idle (unless you tweaked fan settings, voltage, overclock, etc) around  33 º C, for that CPU.    53.5 is too much warmer... (in idle. In super high load it can reach 74º C in very extreme cases. Normally 60 -67 in heavy load).

In a crazy video in YT, a tech reviewer realized that a badly mounted RGB could heat up crazily, be careful with that....

"As you can see" ? Did you attach a pic ? it doesn't show...

 

Review it all and try to make it go cooler (no need to invest more money. Just review anything in cabling, organization, install well those fans, check the RGB, if sth is running too hot, let the fan settings in auto, if you tweaked some stuff, try leaving it back to default. No need to use more money there. Indeed, if sth is done wrong, it'll arise even with super nice cooling. Also, be careful if you are not sure of what you are doing.  ) . Running at cooler temps will help the durability of the components. 

My worry is that with 54 ºC in idle, it might run crazy hot with just some load. So, it is indeed important. You don't wont it to melt or become super unstable. (also, if all runs cooler, that might end in better performance).

Other than that, you have a good rig there. 

 

EDIT: Ah, wait... Is it that you have booted it before putting the fans ? That's not good...

[Sanderguy777]

I had the fans connected, but they weren't powered (I just fixed the problem so they work now). It is at 59C now (idle) so I think I may take it in to my it friend to see his opinion. 

I did my best with the cable management, and there aren't any cables in the way of airflow so that shouldn't be the issue. I am going to get a fan splitter cable and run only 2 fans from each mobo pwm header in order to get the most control. As it is, 4 fans are running from a single pwm. I think the that the fans may be only working at a little of their intended speed. 

I did have a photo attached, but I wouldn't let me send it...not sure why. Tried again, but I get error

-200

whatever that is...

Edited July 28, 2019 by Sanderguy777
Adding photo

[Sanderguy777]

I got the photo up. I was using a gmail window to try and send it through.... guess what! Gmail is for email, not sending photos. 

Anyway, the photo doesn't show the tinted side panel, but DOES show some rgb, and the best cable management I can do. (The case says it is compatible with atx but I think it is better suited for micro atx or mini itx since half the holes are covered by the mobo....

The cpu is now 56.5C in bios. I have the fans at about 50% but they dont seem to change much. I think that the one exhaust fan (I have 4 intakes through filters and 1 exhaust so that lass dust gets in) is not working well I barely feel any airflow from it, so I think I will pick up a high pressure model to push the air out the back better. 

This is the current setup and where the case will live...

[firstdefence]

48 minutes ago, Sanderguy777 said:

1 exhaust so that lass dust gets in) is not working well I barely feel any airflow from it,

Are you sure you have it the right way round to expel air?

[Sanderguy777]

Yes...... I'm like 80% sure. I was VERY careful to make sure which way everything was pointed, but I may have gotten it wrong on that one... 

I will check sometime tomorrow, but I'm not sure when....

 

It is expensive, but I'm considering an aio because our house is usually  70-80F (21-26C) and somewhat humid (60-80%, usually towards 60). The thing about the aio is that it cools the cpu regardless of whether the pump is going. So I should end up with a quieter system....but the $140 corsair h100i is too much. And I can't fit the Noctua collars in the case probably. 

[Sanderguy777]

The exhaust fan is really cheap, so replacing it will probably help a lot. 

[SrPx]

I see it all way too near the walls. You should let space between the wall and the back and also the sides (well the side which has it) ventilation, otherwise you form there a warm bag of air that might be bouncing back. And it can raise the temp quite.  My tower has components that heat up a lot more, and I'm not passing 42 in idle (and because is way older and today all is more optimized).   Indeed, about temperature... I tend to have in the house 30 - 33  ºC (in summer/spring). In this time of the year with peaks of actually 38 - 40, lol. (so, kindda, my cpu would not really be able to be at lower than that, I only use fans.

I'm no expert in cooling and all that stuff, but there's certainly something going on, there. 2400G is not a cpu known for being warm or energy consuming, neither nosiy. So, yep, let your friend have a look. I'm 99% is not a matter of wasting more money (unless some component has gone the way of the dodo).

(and dunno if it's possible that something was wrongly installed with the RGB lighting. In case you test first to leave more space for ventilation with the walls ('cause that is a must) and it doesn't work, and also checking that the fan is well installed (what firstdefence suggested..."80% sure" doesn't sound like a confident answer )  and/or your friend reviews it and finds no issue, maybe try to deactivate all the RGB. I've watched a video were a bad installation or one of those leds gone bad, could heat up all).

[Sanderguy777]

7 minutes ago, SrPx said:

I see it all way too near the walls. You should let space between the wall and the back and also the sides (well the side which has it) ventilation, otherwise you form there a warm bag of air that might be bouncing back. And it can raise the temp quite.  My tower has components that heat up a lot more, and I'm not passing 42 in idle (and because is way older and today all is more optimized).   Indeed, about temperature... I tend to have in the house 30 - 33  ºC (in summer/spring). In this time of the year with peaks of actually 38 - 40, lol. (so, kindda, my cpu would not really be able to be at lower than that, I only use fans.

I'm no expert in cooling and all that stuff, but there's certainly something going on, there. 2400G is not a cpu known for being warm or energy consuming, neither nosiy. So, yep, let your friend have a look. I'm 99% is not a matter of wasting more money (unless some component has gone the way of the dodo).

(and dunno if it's possible that something was wrongly installed with the RGB lighting. In case you test first to leave more space for ventilation ('cause that is a must) and it doesn't work, and/or your friend reviews it and finds no issue, maybe try to deactivate all the RGB. I've watched a video were a bad installation or one of those leds gone bad, could heat up all).

I ran it without the rgb originally, but only with the cpu and exhaust fan. 

I DID run it without the side panels (the case has solid panels on both sides. It is only open on top front and back). Also, I had to out of its cubby and it was constantly 52 and above. With and without the panels. 

I looked at watercooling, but it is way too expensive and the maintenance is too much (not to mention the leak hazard). So IF I need to change the cooler, I'm going with Noctua or beQuiet air coolers. It may not be the cleanest, but I may just leave the tinted panel off so the air cooler can have room to fit.

[SrPx]

But the point is that this CPU is NOT 54º C idle. It's around 33. So, something is going on there, you definitely shouldn't need to purchase a noctua for it. Is not like you are mounting a 9900k and overclocking it... IMO, have your friend check it. Also, ask him about if you installed well the fans ( I have seen a bunch of times people mounting it in the wrong direction, or placing badly the PSU, etc).  BTW, how did you actually mounted the CPU? (thermal paste, etc) . Video here:  https://youtu.be/DF0SJNX7wWs?t=193

[SrPx]

Also, how are you measuring the temps ? which app ? HWiNFO64 ?  (be sure that you are not looking at distance to TjMAX, instead)

[Sanderguy777]

I will have him look at it. I used the thermal paste that was on the cooler from the factory and mounted it correctly, but it moved a bunch because the screws didn't line up right. That may be the issue. 

From what I've heard of the wraith spire (the kit cooler I'm using) it works fine as long as you aren't looking to get negative temps or overclock a 2200g to 5.7ghz lol

I'm using the bios to see the temp so I dont get to pick the cpu core or what kind of temp it shows. What app do you recommend? 

[SrPx]

This is not my field (not much into actually mounting hardware, beyond the basics I've needed for my work), so... Is just from what I use, but someone else might give you a better recommendation... I just use HWiNFO.  https://www.hwinfo.com