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Raijintek Ophion Case Review: Mini-ITX Hotbox with Potential

2018-10-15
the rise in tech affion is quite a bit smaller in comparison to the sea 700m that we just worked at the moment ago so this is the opposite end of the scale as cooler masters $440 seat 700 M this is Rajan Tech's Mini ITX case the Oh fee on that we saw it copy tax earlier this year actually in a bit of a different state they've improved in some ways and they've not improved it in others before that this video is brought to you by it the NZXT e-series power supplies the e-series PS use our high end power supplies with real-time digital voltage and temperature monitoring per rail wattage measurements and data logging functionality for power usage the e series PSU is also come with a 10 year warranty all the way down to the 500 watt unit and they run fully modular and with silent fan operating modes learn more at the link below just looking at the case yes it's a bit of a hot box that is kind of what mini ITX cases do though but some of them do it less bad than others Silverstone's SG 13 for instance is one of the best cases we've worked with we can highly recommend it for ITX builds and it's small and it's still cools really well so it's absolutely possible to make a an ITF case that is still very good at cooling this case takes more of a traditional mid tower approach to closing off the front panel and adding glass to the sides and then they do have a bit of a gap here that was not present at Computex when we first saw it so originally this panel was flush against the side and to Rajan Tax Credit they have added in a plastic standoff in there to give some spacing for breathability and this will ultimately just follow whatever pressure system you create because it comes with no fans so you can solve fans on the top and kind of in the bottom though clearance is a bit of an issue in most cases we wouldn't have been able to fit one with our build but with a low profile 120 fan you can squeeze that into the bottom just barely just keep the cables out of it the case though so even though they've added standoff so it's not flush against the case there's also an optional foam included and we did leave that in the box for all the testing but if you wanted to incinerate the part in favor of noise you could do that the tools are given to you for that purpose so this small box is interesting because what happens is the way they've built it you end up routing a PCIe riser cable around the entire case and either you squeeze it behind the motherboard or you route it over a downdraft cooler so it would be sitting over the fan in that instance and obstructing everything so those are the two ways to route the cable the video card sits a bit at an angle as a result we have footage of it will talk about more how its installed later there's a built-in standoff in there as well and extender for PCIe so very interesting orientation which has interesting thermal implications as well for fans we ended up testing with one fan for all the baseline tests normally our baseline test we generally do however it ships and that's it but for this case we couldn't even make it through tests without it crashing just how it ships so you should absolutely be budgeting for a fan no matter what in this case and we'll show you why as we get through the thermal numbers and through Patrick's build notes and that's where we'll go to next nuisance coffee tax is a kit of adhesive foam filter strips to be packed around the edges of the new panels which entirely defeats the purpose of leaving a gap the strips are only useful in a negative pressure system anyway and in a negative pressure system every gap would need to be covered in order for dust to be filtered effectively at that point it would just be easier to remove the standoffs and install the glass panels flush which is possible the filter strips are optional so we left them in the box where they belong the GPO riser cable is the cases biggest weak point the card must be oriented pins down while the motherboard must be oriented slot up there's no good diagram showing how to actually install the cable so we'll do our best to show it on screen and describe it the cable connects to the GPU goes down through the slot underneath the motherboard bends 180 degrees and travels upwards through the gap between the motherboard and the motherboard tray and finally curls 270 degrees over the top of the motherboard and into the PCIe slot there isn't much slack and it has to make some unpleasantly sharp turns in addition since our cryo egg c7 cooler has a chunky bracket already using most of the gap behind the motherboard there was barely any space for the cable even with a normal backplate the arrangement means that the PCIe cable is tightly sandwiched between the hottest part of the GPU back blade and the hottest part of the CPU bracket since the front of the case is completely devoid of fans the empty real estate inside the front panel is used for a 2.5 inch drive mount it isn't the easiest drive mount to access but it is tucked neatly out of the way and it doesn't cover any vent holes which the other two do space for either one at 3.5 or 12.5 inch drive or three 2.5 inch drives is adequate for most users and there are only two USB ports but one is type see the OFI on is looks focused which is why it has two tempered glass panels with the GPU on one side and the motherboard on the other get into the thermal section as always check the link in the description below for the article where we have the testing methodology laid out if you want to read through this section or read how we did the testing we're planning to stick to the stock fan configuration for our baseline testing which is no fans at all that isn't how the case should be used and we found it resulted in instant thermal throttling and even thermal shutdowns under our normal non torture workloads like blender the cooling section on the opion product page suggests filling fan slots with one bottom intake fan which is tough to fit in there and to top exhaust but we try to test cases the way they ship given the reassuringly large air gaps along the side panels it's easy to imagine someone deciding that finding space for a case fan is more trouble than it's worth however our test bench was unable to complete the torture or the blender CPU test without additional cooling so we added a single NZXT RF AP 120 fan as top exhaust with the top filter removed for a new baseline that model is $13 minimum direct from NZXT east side so we are now considering the case cost to be an additional 13 dollars higher or more depending on the pen you buy we also tried top intake using the same fan with a filter installed and we didn't use the included adhesive foam strips in any tests see via torture testing as first the average peak CPU temperature and torture testing was seventy two point three degrees Celsius over ambiens but that's lowball in it since the crashed before full completion and reality the score is more of a DNF did not finish the test the CPU is at 97 degrees Celsius when going strictly by the readout and ignoring ambient and that was at the time of the crash when it was still climbing a filtered top intake fan reduced the average peak DT to a much more manageable and UNCHR a she's sixty seven point two degrees Celsius delta T but that's still one of the warmer results on the chart and with an extra fan the Oh Fionna ends up around the Taku and stock level 20 V T ultimately the unfiltered top exhaust fan brought temperatures down another huge step to fifty eight point nine degrees Celsius DT which is actually a good result and comparable to the in when a one with three K's fans the top fan slots are directly above the nightmare heat sandwich of the GPU and CPU coolers so an intake fan has to first fight the filter and then push air around both sides of the case in other words the top intake fan is pushing air from a small vent towards a smaller hotspot while the top exhaust fan is pulling air from many different gaps and vents towards the same hotspot the top exhaust test is also certainly benefited from removing the top filter moving on to GV torture testing the GPU is average peak temperature during the incomplete no fan torture test was fifty nine point one degrees Celsius delta T over ambient the non delta temperature if you prefer is 84 degrees which is where NVIDIA Pascal cards throttle hard and start dropping clocks to try and maintain that temperature so thermals were drifting out of control from here as well the cry rig talk you approached this temperature but we also managed to actually complete the benchmark in the Taku Top intake reduced temperatures several degrees to respectable 51 point four degrees and top exhausted pretty much the same at fifty one point seven around the 280 acts with no top filter the 3dmark stress test results are especially interesting here in contrast to the torture test with both the GPU and CPU under load they heated each other up to a point of crashing the system with just the GPU stress it successfully limited itself to 82 degrees Celsius non delta temperature so it's still throttled territory and our average peak was a 60 degree Celsius delta T over ambient that's almost the same as the crying Tokyo which also thermal throttled by the way but the Oh Fionna maintained a considerably lower average clock of 1709 megahertz to the Taku 1761 megahertz this impacts framerate not a ton but enough we can show that in this clock comparison chart versus time that with a top exhaust fan the average peak delta-t cooled to the level of the 280 acts at fifty three point three degrees Celsius resulted in a healthier clock average of 1776 megahertz we rarely see clock speed deviate from about 1775 megahertz so anything significantly above or below that indicates exceptionally bad or good cooling moving on to blender we did run the blender CPU benchmark without any fans but it crashed the system again and incomplete benchmarks are of limited use the OFI on is impressive in its propensity to crash we typically can pass a blender run even with exceptionally bad cooling but no such luck here the case is a hot box with a single exhaust fan average peak CPU temperature was forty four point five degrees delta T over ambiens Jeff slightly warmer than the stock age 200 i if it wasn't clear before now the OFI on requires purchasing at least one case ban passive cooling doesn't cut it here it does okay once adding more fans but we wanted to highlight the importance of buying at least one and something at least half-decent at that don't go too cheap on the fan the blender GPU test with no fans raised GPU temperature to an average peak of forty two point two degrees celsius over ambience above any of the other cases in the chart thermally although the Taku does come close with an exhaust fan this was lowered to thirty two point six degrees a significant drop of about ten degrees Celsius and it's one of our cooler results and on par with the SG thirteen a case that we heavily recommended so by a fan is the result here ultimately for the price on this case you have to add about maybe 13 bucks for a decent fan something like that so it's not really a $100 KS or 9d or whatever they end up selling it for its that plus 13 bucks for decent fan because this case without a fan it's no good but if you add a fan it does decently so that's the good news it's a bit on the high side for price rise and tax a smaller company they make fewer products overall they don't make as many a time so their costs are gonna be higher than their competitors so if you want like a smaller brands product that's a very specific look and kind of competes in the damn case category of looks but not in price rise in tax trying to fill that market they are very much targeting the Dan case style of many ITX case but at a significantly lower price there are reasons the price is lower of course but if you're willing to make those sacrifices it might be worth it to you still for cooling purposes we do favor the SG 13 it's kind of a leader right now in a lot of ways and the old thermaltake core v1 is another very good case that is a bit on the larger size it's just in terms of volume it's much bigger than most the other cases but it's still a small cube and does well for cooling if you don't care about cooling maybe you're gonna use a small CLC or something if you can manage to cram one in here or you're just okay with having a lot of fans and creating some noise as a result then it's okay this isn't our favorite case at all for ITX there are a lot of things that can be done better it does so sometimes it feels like we're just going after the performance angle constantly and although we are performance oriented there are times when we can look at a case and appreciate that's trying to do something else like maybe noise performance still performance but it's acoustics now or maybe just build quality and looks like some of the thousand plus dollar in wind cases for example that age tower that was never meant to be performing to anything it's just for looks so we can appreciate that this case though it gets even if you kind of watch our stuff and you go man these guys care way too much about their own performance the thing is with this case it is actually genuinely a problem and it is going to throttle clocks and it is going to make it an issue for longevity of components so it's okay just add fans and check your temperatures and be a bit more cautious about it than you might be otherwise and you can work with it the case is it just requires some more effort on your end to make it really work thermally and acoustically for everything that it wants to be so that's the rise in tech OFI on we are not a hundred percent sure what the the market is right now for this kind of case there's absolutely a market for cases like this but we're curious what kind of build you're putting in things like this so if you are looking at building in a case about this size let's know the parts you're picking because it'll help us know for future testing what we should be looking at so that's over this one subscribe for more as always go to stored on cameras axis net to pick up some of our products like our shirts or mod mats to helps out directly or go to patreon.com/scishow sexist helps out directly there as well thank you for watching I'll see you all next time
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