Have gone through quite a few attempts to get the thermal performance in check. Yeah, “desktop super computer,” I know, but I have everything in an enclosed, wall mounted rack and it just wasn’t working out. Figured I would share in case anyone else is looking to do the same, especially after asking Racknex if they were going to offer a fan array for their mount but never getting a response.
Removed the cases
Repasted with PTM7950
10mm standoffs to lift the units some
Negative pressure in rack with two exhaust fans and one inlet (Arctic S12038-8K)
Four fans across Sparks and PSUs (Arctic S8038-7K)
Separate PWM drives
Previous temps would hit mid to upper 80s on nvtop without cases, with repasting, rack door open and a single120mm fan. Now with the door closed and same workload seeing 70 for a quick moment. This is with relatively low CFM across both arrays to keep the noise down. Finally a significant reduction.
It used to be necessary before repasting. There’s another thermal thread around here talking about that. But what I like from what you linked is seeing nearly similar performance with less power draw.
Before repasting and with cases I was getting plenty of shutdowns. With repasting alone (SoC and CX7 driver - not memory), I was able to run with far fewer shutdowns. A fan was still necessary though. I’d say there was a better bump from taking the cases off, but since I repasted first, can’t definitively make that claim.
If you use the “underclocking” I describe on my post, make sure to report what performance did you get before/after, because performance hit varies per scenario but it’s negligible in most.
