"Building was a lot of fun in this case. The DB4 is simply a work of art. As long as you follow along with the directions, it's pretty easy and quick to build. I've seen that others have had issues with bending heat pipes but I didn't have any issues. Instead of using the included thermal paste rated at 5W/mk, I decided to to use Thermal Grizzy Kryonaut which is much more conductive at 12.5W/mk. It's also a lot more expensive and I used about 20g worth on all the heat pipe assemblies!! That's about $50 worth of thermal paste. But since getting the heat from the CPU and GPU to the side panels of the case as efficiently as possible is goal #1 in this passive design, I splurged.
Temps depend greatly on ambient, more so that I've experienced with actively cooled systems. But in an average air-conditioned room here's what I've seen:
CPU idle: 48-55C
GPU idle: 38-42C
CPU load: 75-85C
GPU load: 70-80C
In actual use, with around 20-30% CPU and GPU usage, the GPU stays around 45C and the CPU around 60C. I have undervolted both the CPU and GPU slightly to keep temperatures in check and reduce the load on the PSU and VRMs. Performance impact has been negligible."
Source: reddit
