Fun times with the Silverstone ML-09B

[A Computer Guy]

Moving my captured my build experiences in ML-09B from other threads here so I can keep track of progressive changes and tests.

This case is quite outdated but still proves to be quite useful.

When installed with 4750G, Motherboard with 2 display outputs, and gigabyte 4060 (low profile) you can get a nice 6 display workstation with respectable thermals or even a decent 1080p gaming machine.

Modifications:

• Gigabyte 4060 (low profile) deshrounded
• Dual NH-A9, one modified to fit Gigabyte 4060 (low profile)
• Custom Airflow Gasket for Gigabyte 4060 (low profile)
• Custom intake vent holes for Gigabyte 4060 (low profile)
• Optional Noctua 20mm fans to assist in exhaust affixed to top panel

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November 17th, 2023
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Getting a little creative with the Dremel I was able to fit that gigabyte 4060 (low profile) with dual NF-A8 Noctua fans. In the picture below I haven't secured the fans yet because I'm trying to decide on the airflow path. Unfortunately the side panel doesn't provide any good overlap with the side exhaust for the card making airflow a PITA. Right now I have the fans oriented input toward the ports and output at the other end to make sure heat doesn't stay chambered in the GPU area.

I did a benchmark here "Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker GPU benchmark/Post Your Scores" and need to experiment a little to find the best fan orientation.

In the picture below you can see the area I had to notch out with the Dremel to clear the GPU display port. The GPU shroud was too long and would not fit in this case.
( In the case you have 175mm to the I/O. The 4060LP needs 182mm. The I/O takes up 15mm. Removing GPU shroud allows the GPU to fit. )

(That thing with the yellow sticky note is an SSD tray. I thought this might make a nice test bench and I could swap out SSD's.)

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November 19th, 2023
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Some more info regarding the ML-09B. I was testing the Noctua fan orientation and 4060LP GPU thermals today.

Silverstone really put this case at a disadvantage for GPU cooling by not having vents extend into the gpu area from the top and bottom of the case.

Running everything at stock with the case standing vertically and the fan positions starting with 1 from the front of the case, I ran GPUz render test for 10 minutes for each test allowing a cooldown periods in between. The dual 80mm fan speeds were controlled by a noctua NA-FC1 and I adjusted the speed to a comfortable noise setting. Sadly I had no way of measuring the fan speed.

Test 1
Fan1: exhaust
Fan2: intake
GPUTemp Avg: 48 Max: 83
HotSpot Avg: 56 Max: 96
Thermal Throttle was indicated 30 to 60 sec near the end of the test
Could feel some heat being put into case (rear).

Test 2
Fan1: intake
Fan2: intake
GPUTemp Avg: 50 Max: 79
HotSpot Avg: 58 Max: 90
Thermal Throttle was NOT indicated
Could feel maximum heat being put into case. Top panel fan exhaust is needed!

Test 3
Fan1: exhaust
Fan2: exhaust
GPUTemp Avg: 67 Max: 86
HotSpot Avg: 77 Max: 98
Thermal Throttle was indicated 2 to 3 min near the end of the test
Could feel no heat being put into case.

Test 4
Fan1: intake
Fan2: exhaust
GPUTemp Avg: 75 Max: 87
HotSpot Avg: 85 Max: 100
Thermal Throttle was indicated 5 min into the test
Could feel light heat being put into case (front).

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December 16th, 2023
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Update: I made a custom gasket out of cardboard and got some better results. The gasket is sandwiched between the fans and the GPU heatsink to guide concentrated airflow though the fins.

Test 5 (custom gasket)
Fan1: exhaust
Fan2: exhaust
GPUTemp Avg: 66c Max: 76c
HotSpot Avg: 75c Max: 87c
Thermal Throttle was NOT indicated

From Test #3 I shaved off about 10c on max temps!

Now I have to find a more non-flammable material to make a new gasket.

Not really having any better materials on hand I decided to wrap the cardboard in metal duct tape for now.
After some research online even though the fire point of cardboard is around 258c and ignition point 427c I feel a bit better with it wrapped in aluminium.
In this process I managed to compress the cardboard a bit unevenly by accident so I cut up an old plastic desk protector to get the thickness back to somewhere between 2-3mm.
The plastic side faces the noctua fans so not to face the brunt of the heat and melt.

Test 6 (custom gasket w/ case panel removed)
In this config the GPU gets one side with full access to fresh air.
Fan1: exhaust
Fan2: exhaust
GPUTemp Avg: 59c Max: 64c
HotSpot Avg: 70c Max: 74c
Thermal Throttle was NOT indicated

Next test going to try drilling some vent holes in the case for the GPU.


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December 28th, 2023
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Holes drilled on the case side using a portable drill. As you can see one hole is not like the others. It was my first drill test and the rpm wasn't correct. I managed to mangle it so badly I just had to make the hole bigger after fixing the drill speed. By the time I did the top row I changed up my technique a bit and switched to my Dremel to deburr the holes in a less extreme fashion where in the first row I just used the next drill size up.

I included my kids matchbox car for scale.

The gasket is right above the top holes forcing airflow to go though the heatsink.

On the plus side the bigger hole there allows me to get a small flathead screwdriver in there to allow me short the clear CMOS jumper from the back side of the motherboard when needed.

Test 7 still both fans as exhaust. The holes on the case side are just below the fan gasket forcing the air to go through the heatsink.
It seems my new results are just about on par with the test with the case panel removed.
My room is a bit cooler due to the winter so test 7 results look a little better than test 6.
Next time I need to make sure to record ambient room temperature.

Summary:

Test 3 (no gasket, case panel closed)
GPUTemp Max: 86c HotSpot Max: 98c
Test 5 (custom gasket, case panel closed)
GPUTemp Max: 76c HotSpot Max: 87c
Test 6 (custom gasket, case panel removed)
GPUTemp Max: 64c HotSpot Max: 74c
Test 7 (custom gasket, case panel closed & new vent holes on one side)
GPUTemp Max: 61c HotSpot Max: 70c

Ran other benchmark here: "Post your Cinebench 2024 score"

I think I'm done with mods for now. Time to take if for a spin with some games.

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Coming soon: Fun times with 5950x and NH-L9a...

 

[A Computer Guy]

Today I was testing my 5959x and a ram kit for memory issues and decided to stick it into this case because why not. This time I'm using a spare B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax since my original one was having a problem with the CPU and RAM being tested. UEFI/BIOS updated to the latest. And finally the NH-L9a-AM4 cooler so I could still fit my test bench SSD tray into the case.

Sometime ago I came across this video below and was also curious on how bad it would be in the Silverstone ML-09B that has really no options for good airflow without some modification.

After tinkering with PBO for awhile I landed at the following:
PBO Settings
PPT = 142, TDC = 95, EDC = 120 (default is 140)
Curve Optimizer = -20 per core
PBO Scaler = 1x (default is AUTO)
SMT = Enabled

RAM: DDR4-3200 ECC, A quirk in the UEFI/BIOS requires me to set the RAM speed and Infinity Fabric speed explicitly or it gets bugged and runs in decoupled mode with a slightly higher IF speed.

I haven't fully tested if my CO settings are 100% stable yet but here are some results in comparison to my water cooled 5950x in Taichi x570.

Yes the CPU runs warmer on average but I was quite shocked by the results for a cooler totally not equipped to handle stock 5950x.

( ...results coming soon... maybe later today )

 

[A Computer Guy]

For some of you waiting sorry it took so long. It seems when I closed the system up it overheated so much after 2 Cinebench runs I overheated my SATA SSD to the point it stopped working. At first I thought I had a bad curve optimizer setting so I backed the CO per core up to -18 then I realized my SSD wouldn't boot until after it cooled back down. The placement of the SSD is unfortunate as sits right above the fan and obstructs airflow and reflecting a good portion of it back into the airflow path of the cooler preventing heat from escaping.

So I had to open it back up again and let it vent freely. I flipped the Noctua fan around to draw heat out however it seems for some reason they did not make it a reversible mounting fan as it lacks the recess in the screw hole needed to be able to reach the screw threads. Not that it mattered much anyway as the 5950x outputs so much heat the fan orientation doesn't matter for this little cooler. At this point though what does matter is exhausting as much heat out of the enclosure as possible. In order for this to work in practice that SSD tray will have to go. Any blockage of the exhausting heat will cause the system to fail pretty quickly. Some of you will notice that Noctua fan on the right. On this case though there are no vent holes in that location so I will have to drill some out for this fan to work (at the moment it's not connected). In order to get that fan placement to work I had to flip the PSU upside down. Luckily there are some pretty tall rubber mounts on the bottom of the case so it's possible for the PSU to still get some proper air. I'm hoping after I do that mod it will give the case an opportunity to drive some air flow form that location to the CPU and out the top of the case. The last part that will be needed is either I reassemble the top bracket with the included slim fan to aid exhausting air out the top or I get a blower style slot cooler to exhaust air where I have to remove the SSD tray.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Here are my Cinebench scores.

• On the left are from my Water cooled Taichi 5950x (running stock everything)
• On the right from the 5950x with NH-L9a-AM4 cooler (running PBO and CO)
• After tinkering with PBO for awhile I landed at the following:
• PBO Settings
• PPT = 142, TDC = 95, EDC = 120 (default is 140)
• Curve Optimizer = -18 per core
• PBO Scaler = 1x (default is AUTO)
• SMT = Enabled

Note any Cinebench run will ramp the fan up to max speed.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Looking at temps

• On the top is from my Water cooled Taichi 5950x (running stock everything)
• On the bottom is from the 5950x with NH-L9a-AM4 cooler (running PBO and CO)

The CPU will idle in the high 40's which isn't too bad and the CPU fan will be fairly quiet at this temp but when Windows Defender kicks in it will jump to mid 70's quickly.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Setting an 80c temperature limit on top of PBO and running CB several times to hit the limit still nets a pretty good Cinebench score.

and the system settles down fairly quickly back in to the 50c range so much so it's difficult to capture a screenshot after the test completes that still shows the temp maxed at 80c.

 

[A Computer Guy]

So for my next trick I have to figure out how to keep the PC from overheating with the cover on. Luckily I just finished eating grits this morning and had some excellent material for creating a 33mm air duct to help prevent recirculating hot air inside the case. Here you can see the weakness in the top panel design not including enough vent coverage over the CPU area. If the holes on the top cover fully overlapped with the motherboard area that would have been ideal. It would have been even better if they extended fully to both sides of the case. For this experiment I decided to keep the fan orientation to exhausting air from the heatsink.

Even with the duct the temps were still quite warm in the case after a 10 minute Cinebench 23 run. The lack of injected cool air from somewhere makes it difficult to control temps further. You could defiantly feel the heat coming out over the duct so it was doing it's job pushing the hot air out of the case. In terms of fan orientation it struggles more pulling air though the heatsink and ramps to higher rpms but pushing would result in filling the case with hot air without a good escape route making in case temps much worse.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Clearly the NH-L9a-AM4 was completely overwhelmed with the 5950x and often running at high or full fan speed at default power.

Next up....Testing with the Noctua NH-L12S.

This was a challenge to install. It comes with offset mounting holes for AM4/AM5 but as finely printed as the instructions are they were a bit confusing when looking at AM4.
I had to go and refresh my memory where the chiplets were so I would know if I oriented the motherboard correctly before installing the mounting brackets for the cooler with the 7mm offset.

Dry mounting the cooler first to test how it fits with the motherboard and case.

The fan just barely fit against the i/o shield heatsink.

For the most part the entire heatsink lined up with the top cover vent. Only a very small part of the heatsink was totally obstructed.

Let's see how the GPU fits. The heat pipes just clear the card by millimeters. The 180 degree GPU power adapter however is a lost cause and will have to go.

A closer look with my magnifying glass. It turns out the PCIe power cable does just barely fit.

After seeing the new heatsink would fit I pasted it and reassembled the PC. It was a real PITA because of how close the heatsink was to the GPU I had to remove the GPU fans first, place the GPU into approximate position into the case with the PCIe cable attached so I could bend and route that successfully. Also that optical disk panel in the front of the case had to be removed until assembly was complete because it's tabs were in the way. After the GPU was in position I had to shimmy the motherboard into the case with the front panel connectors attached and screw it down. One of the screws was almost inaccessible which is why I had to remove the GPU fans so I could tilt the GPU in a way to access that one motherboard screw by the GPU power connector. Once the motherboard was screwed down I had to tilt the GPU toward the heatsink and squeeze the 80mm fans back into place and secure them. Then putting back in the custom gasket I made earlier before finally locking down the GPU into the slot. Last reinstalled was the PSU, first locking in the 8pin CPU power then 24pin power. Reconnected the fans and closed up the system. The sata and sata power were passed out the back open slot so I could connect my tray externally for the duration I'm testing things. I still plan to drill some holes in the PSU side of the case where that disconnected fan is so I can draw in some fresh air into the case later.

Did some quick tests with Cinebench R23 10 minute test run. The CPU idles in the mid 30's and peaked at 72c in CB R23. Not bad at all but I'm a bit sad now I can't use my SATA drive tray.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I finally got around to making that other vent this past weekend so the 80mm fan can bring in some fresh air.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Linking in benchmark

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