Redditor Chills A Ryzen 9 7950X Zen 4 CPU With A Huge, Blissfully Silent Copper Block

A computer programmer and PC enthusiast with a penchant for fanless builds has caused a stir with some home-made cooling modifications. The redditor found that their Streacom DB4 Fanless ITX Case wasn’t quite up to cooling and calming a powerful AMD Ryzen 9 7950X. So, taking things into their own hands, they added over 4.4kg (9.7lbs) of copper to increase the passive cooling capability of this attractive case.

Atop of this article, you can see an image of the inside of the redditor’s Streacom DB4. To the bottom left of the image, you can see an unmodified 1kg (2.2lbs) copper bar. Another of these cars can be glimpsed in the upper right portion of the inside of this case. Between them, spanning with the full width of the case, is another solid copper bar section that is 223mm long (and 2.4kg / 5.3lbs). This crossbar addition is hugely important as it connects to the CPU and motherboard chipset, too.

Normally, the Streacom DB4 comes ready for a CPU up to a maximum 65W TDP. This symmetrical chassis uses its outer thick aluminum finned shell as a heatsink for the internal heat producing components, but there is a kit to improve thermal dissipation to 105W. Obviously, this still falls short of the AMD Ryzen 9 7950X (170W TDP), inspiring this copper block modification.

As well as the powerful Zen 4 chip, the system was comprised of an MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi motherboard, 64GB of DDR5 memory, and an HDPlex GaN 250W fanless PSU.

AromaticImpress7778 provided some further insight into their Streacom DB4 modification in some answers on their reddit thread. Apparently, Arctic MX-6 thermal paste is used between the copper crossbar and case sides, and Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut liquid metal was used between the copper parts. Improved thermal transfer could have probably been achieved by fixing the parts with solder, although that could limit serviceability.

Another insight shone a light onto the massive weight of this modified case. It was already quite a chunky monkey for a Mini ITX design (fits up to a dual-slot 200mm GPU). However, the redditor's changes nearly doubled the case weight to 13kg (28.7lbs).