Upgrading my DIY Steam Machine
I built this DIY Steam Machine a few months ago now and I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. Steam OS is amazing, and having a good gaming PC in my living room is brilliant. The only thing is the Noctua L9a cooler I picked isn’t a great fit for the 7600X CPU I’ve got in here, so I’ve got an upgrade I want to try. Let me show you the problem, then let’s get this upgraded, then we’ll see how much of a difference it makes!
So this is the system with the L9a. Playing non-intensive games like Overcooked 2 (well non-intensive for the system, intense for everyone playing…) we’re nowhere near stressing the cooler here. At around five percent load we’re at 51°C or so. We’re at a locked 60 FPS. This plays well and the cooler is perfectly quiet. Happy days.
If you need to compile Vulkan shaders though, oh boy. 100 percent CPU usage, and 96°C. It’s throttling, peaking at 5.1GHz, and while SteamOS isn’t reporting the power consumption of the CPU directly, it’s clear this isn’t running at full speed. In BeamNG we’re only hitting 10-15 percent CPU usage so the temps aren’t crazy – 53°C or so – and we’re getting around 40-45 FPS. Again it isn’t noisy, in fact I think the GPU is the louder one there.
Anything CPU intensive though is rough. It’s impressively noisy, sits at 92°C even for fairly short renders in Blender, and is pinned to 5.1GHz under load. I’ve also recorded the samples per minute the benchmark took so we’ll come back to that in a second.
So time for an upgrade. I’m opting for the Thermalright AXP120-X67. This is a much larger overall package, and while it does take up a fair bit more vertical space, you get six heatpipes, a 120mm size heatsink, and a low profile 120mm fan. This even has a step in the heatsink so medium height RAM sticks will still clear. This has a higher TDP rating, so should pair better with the over-specced 7600X I’m using here. First though I’ve got to get the L9a off, and it turns out that’s more of a pain than I thought. While my 3D printed shroud/funnel is easy with just two philips screws, and another two for the fan from the heatsink, the heatsink itself is annoyingly bolted through the backplate, from the back. So either the motherboard is coming out, or the GPU and PCIe riser is coming off. That one sounds better to me. The L9a’s bolts are a tiny allen key that are so small they fit through the regular threads. This is an insane way to do it, but it does work. It’s just such a pain to get off again.
When I finally got them off, we of course have to clean the old paste off, then prep the AXP’s mounting hardware. This one is nice and simple. Two red standoffs hold the bracket up, with two long screws through each, and the curve of the bracket faces inwards towards the CPU, then you do the same on the bottom, put the paste on, then start screwing the cooler’s built-in, spring-loaded captive nuts. Once they’re tight, you realise you should have plugged the fan in first. That was fun. Then clip the fan in.
Once you then try and put the side panel on you realise you need to make use of the Fractal Terra’s adjustable side width, taking up some of the GPU’s free space to give the CPU some room to breathe. If you happen to have this combo a little secret, you’ll want to set it to ‘2’, not the ‘3’ I started with. 3 is too close to the side panel and buzzes a bit. I’m changing it to 2 for sure. Once you’ve adjusted it, that’s it, upgrade complete! I did also get a slim Arctic fan that can slot in under the power supply, but I decided against that for now.
Sticking the PC back under my TV and… wow! In Overcooked 2 we go from 51°C to 45°C. Amazing! I also beat my solo record – 521 to 607! Not bad for a solo run. Anyway, processing Vulkan shaders is also a decent bit better. A maximum of 91°C – down from 96°C – and closer to 5.2GHz instead of 5.1GHz. BeamNG is again 5°C down – 47°C with the same sort of performance. Lastly on CPU intensive tasks we see frankly the biggest improvement. A saturated peak of 87°C and a higher 5.2GHz clock speed. Brilliant. I did mention I recorded the samples – so for the classroom render I was getting 56.77 samples per minute, and with the new cooler it’s pretty much the same – 56.43 specifically. Junkshop is better with the new cooler though, 80.2 vs 81.29, and the Monster render is bigger again, 101.66 on the L9a versus 104.1 on the AXP120. That isn’t a massive difference, but it’s impressive that just a slightly larger cooler can offer even a bit more performance.
In short then, I should have opted for this thing over the L9a for sure. It’s much more effective for basically the same money, although even as an upgrade it’s pretty great. It’s generally quieter (when the mid section of the case is in the right place…), it helps the CPU run about 5°C cooler at all times, and helps run at least a tiny bit faster on CPU intensive tasks. For just £30 I’m more than happy with this, and I’m still plenty happy with my DIY Steam Machine.
