Well, built the second of four Haswell towers based on the SG-10B mini-tower using the ASRock Z97m OC Formula with the Noctua NH-L12 and the Scythe Rev B:
- Scythe Rev B. This is a low profile fan unit. The main problem is there is no clearance possible with the heat sinks on the regulator. Also the A.Data XPG v2 is pretty tall as well and this fan hits it
- Noctua NH-L12. The Silverstone SG-10B is tall but this is wide with a 120mm down blown fan. It fits, but blocks the second GPU so need to find a cooler that is relatively tall. It is 120x120m
Note that these are things that pcpartspicker.com can’t detect. Need to find something with a narrow footprint:
The NH-U9S is the latest in Noctua’s NH-U9 series of 9cm coolers. Along with the latest 90mm PWM fan, it has 5 heatpipes – presumably the latest revision that was introduced with the NH-U14S we liked so much. With its 95x95mm footprint, the NH-U9S clears the RAM and PCI-E slots on all Intel and “most” AMD motherboards, including uATX and ITX. 125mm height.
The SG10 cases have these restrictions:
- 337mm graphics card length. This fits the ASUS Strix GTX 970 easily
- 165mm cpu cooler height. So it can fit even the very tall NH-U12S at 158mm
- 180mm power supply length. The Corsait AX-760 (a full sized supply fits)
The main issue is that in SLI configuration, the cooler can’t be too low and the the Ram coolers. And it can’t be too wide and interfere with the nearest PCI Express slot. The 95mm wide ones won’t as that is the width of the CPU heat brackets. So the NH12U is an interesting candidate as it is rectangular: 125mm x 140mm.
