I have always wanted to do a build in the HUMBLE with a mini tower style CPU cooler after the success of the Grand Kama build.
Since the case accepts around 130mm total hight coolers if there is no SFX PSU present, I looked for something that goes by this height.
There are multiple options of course and this time I chose Noctua’s NH-U9B cooler becouse it is looking really awesome beeing so tiny yet bulky with having a push-pull configuration of fans.
The currently in use HTPC rig seemd a perfect patient for the modification. As I got rid of the SFX PSU I had to look for another way to power the PC. Since this build uses an i7 and a GTX 1060 I needed something stronger than the chinese PICO units.
That something stronger is obviously the HDPLEX 200W DC-ATX pico style PSU as there is really no alternative. Pairing it with Dell’s 200W external power adaptor is the perfect solution for this build.
But the modding doesn’t stop there. The cooling solution of my GTX 1060 is pretty loud under load and the fan is already strted to wear out. There is noticeable worn out bearing sound present so I decided to change that as well.
I wanted to show off the HUMBLE’s moddability in this re-build yet again so instead of getting a new GPU cooler I decided to attach a slim fan on the side panel and just get rid of the cooling shround on the GPU altogether.
This turned out to be an awesome idea as now even under max load the GPU is very silent and stays around 70 degrees Celsius.
To top the build something fancy and show off the awesome looking Noctua mini tower I went with a clear plexi top panel. But since there are no cut outs on it for air flow I decided to lift it off a bit from the case using 6mm brass standoffs.
The whole thing came out stunning in my opinion and showcases the HUMBLE’s mod possibilites in an excellent way.
Needless to say, the mini tower cools the i7 without problem on the lowest RPM possible and the whole machine is running virtually silent during both gaming and movie watching.
Parts List:
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-B85N Phoenix (rev. 1.1)
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-4770S Processor
Memory: SK Hynix 2x8GB DDR3 1600MHz HMT41GU7AFR8A
Power Supply: HDPLEX 200W DC-ATX, Dell 200W External Power Supply Unit
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U9B
Case Fan: –
System Drive: Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSD MZ-M5E250
Gaming Drive: Samsung 850 PRO 2.5 512GB MZ-7KE512BW
Storage Drive: Seagate Mobile HDD 2TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gbps 128MB Cache ST2000LM007
Graphipcs Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1060 SC GAMING 6GB 06G-P4-6163-KR
As always, below you can find the unedited photos of the build process.
