Framework 13 Pro Fedora 44 - Two Week Review, 10G Expansion Card, TuneD vs PPD

With Black Panther, my Framework 13 Pro, beneath my fingertips for two weeks now, I feel a lot more confident in my day one impressions. While I typically use my laptop a few days a week, I made an effort to use it every day, often in place of my main PC. There is a distinct difference between using something and daily driving it, so I wanted to cover as many bases as I could. ## Settling in on the senses I loved the look of the 13 Pro at first sight, and that appeal has only grown. The matte black aesthetic is more in line with my tastes than the silver, and the translucent black bezel pokes at my nostalgia button without leaning too far. While I had a tinge of regret going with the all black keyboard, I now think I would have grown tired of the other colorways. When I bought the 13 Pro, the screen upgrades were not on my radar. I did hear about them, and was happy to have them, but it did not drive my purchase decision. Two weeks in and it has become my favorite thing about the 13 Pro! It is a **fantastic** display. It is very bright, text is sharp, and the anti-glare coating is making me want to replace my desktop monitors. I run the display at 50-70% depending on where I am. With the 13 non-Pro, I ran it at 100% all the time. I have confidently edited photos with this display, only really checking against my iPhone screen for quick field validation. I won’t mislead you here and say it replaces my professional monitors, but if you’re working on something in the field and need to deliver content quickly, you’re not going to be upset when you see the results back home/at work. The 13 Pro's chassis has a smooth, but firm texture similar to a MacBook. It’s consistent and uniform from the palmrest to the lid. From day one, I was worried about fingerprints. The second I touched the 13 Pro, they made themselves known. Two weeks later, and I’m not bothered. They either fade or my eyes have grown accustomed to them. The only place fingerprints hang around is the keyboard. You can absolutely pull a complete set of prints from mine just from a photo of it. That said, it doesn’t take much to get rid of them, but the microfiber cloth is staying in my bag. I am not normally sensitive to the weight of laptops, but I tried to pay attention to it each time I brought the 13 Pro out of my bag. While dense, it never presented as difficult to remove from its top-loaded home. I place the laptop in my bag hinge-side up so that I can use the longer rubber foot rest to aid with grip. I was apathetic about the sound quality of the speakers on day one, but I did put in more effort while daily driving. The sound quality is solid for conference audio, listening to voicemails, or any media content where one must focus on a voice. For music and multimedia, as long as you don’t go past 70% volume, treble and mids are decent. For any other purposes, that 3.5mm jack is what you want. Speaking of things you hear, the fan will barely be one of them. I said on day one the Framework seems to prefer being warm to the touch over being loud and that is _very_ true. When compiling on the 13 non-Pro, you’d certainly hear it. It’s funny because I would use that as an opportunity to look away, then resume things when the fans spun back down. With the Pro, it’s harder to tell. The fans CAN ramp if you tweak the curve, but the only time I’ve heard it thus far is when shaders were compiling for GTA V Enhanced. As I covered in the impression piece, the surface gets warm under load. Am I ever uncomfortable? No. So I don’t mind the approach they’ve taken with the stock fan profile. ## Post-purchase perspectives One of my day one impressions about the keyboard was that it felt more tactile thanks to the stiffer chassis. That has held true over the past few weeks. I’m typing this on the Framework 13 Pro, and it has really allowed me to type at speeds similar to the QK Duos I use daily at home and work. The black chassis means less reflections from the screen, so that also aids in keeping focused while typing in large stretches. The short up and down arrows are still infuriating, but I can’t say any other sacrifices would have worked better. I felt the trackpad required more force to actuate on day one, but now I think it feels fundamentally different from the old one, so that’s what stuck out in my brain. After a Framework employee urged me to read the documentation, I gave adjusting the haptic sensitivity a shot. The levels are subtle, but you can feel a difference. It’s worth messing around with if you have the time. I am not a big user of touchscreen laptops. In the two weeks I’ve had the 13 Pro, I’ve tried to come up with reasons to use it so I can report back. One of the things that sticks out to me is how springy the experience is. I don’t have much to compare it to since I’m not a touchscreen enjoyer, but it’s better when your finger is constantly in contact with the screen. If you poke, the wobble is going to get annoying. I find supporting the lid with your fingers and scrolling with the thumb to be the most enjoyable use case. When pinching to zoom, put your fingers on the screen, then pinch. On my phone, that tends to be one motion. Breaking it into two keeps the wobble away. It’s also the most useful in the lower 70% of the screen. The top 30% is springy to the point of being unpleasant. I’ll probably still use the trackpad for scrolling and zooming. But it was worthwhile to at least try. ## Power, pace, and practical performance The marquee feature of the Framework 13 Pro for me was Intel’s Core Ultra X7 358H Panther Lake processor. I’ve seen what it could do for others in the last year, and I wanted that for myself. The balance of performance and efficiency it promised had my excitement levels near where they were for Apple’s M-series chips. Being able to use a laptop, shut the lid for a day or more, and coming back to a laptop with functional remaining battery life is a magical experience. Over the last few weeks **I have lived that magic in Linux.** Sleep/suspend and hibernate are fully operational with no caveats. I lost roughly 1% of battery every couple of hours in sleep, and no real observable loss leaving it in hibernation for a whole day. More importantly, I did not experience crashing when bringing it out of sleep or hibernation like I would get on the 13 non-Pro w/ the HX 370. Performance stability has been a theme of my 13 Pro experience. The Wi-Fi is no different. While the Intel BE211 isn’t the fastest I’ve measured on my Wi-Fi, the experience is consistently over 1Gbps. This matters to me because I often transfer large files to and from this laptop. I did experience weirdness with MLO, but MLO’s entire timeline is fraught with inconsistency, so I disabled it. Since I bought the WisdPi 10G Ethernet expansion card, I’ll go over the wired networking data later. Battery life over the last two weeks has been great. As I said earlier, I’ve experienced the true bliss of seamless sleep and 24-48 hour hibernations. My battery has 6 cycles on it now, and that is because I have been **using** this thing. 70% is rather high brightness and I still get 7-8 hours out of it in performance mode. I didn’t have many all-day sessions with it, but at 50% brightness on balanced, I was seeing at least 4-5 hours in broken up sessions on a single charge. This is fantastic. My MacBook Air used to come with me when I knew I was going to need something I could reliably use in my usual choppy cadence, knowing I would return to something with a decent charge. I can confidently say I won’t just be sticking my Framework 13 Pro in my bag when I need the power. It will be a true companion going forward. ## Phoronix finds a funky flaw First, I want to shout out the work Phoronix does. From my start in homelabbing, to my full-time switch to Linux, it’s a place I go to make the numbers make sense. A friend who also owns the Framework 13 Pro came across an article on Phoronix called Analyzing Fedora's Slow Performance On The Framework Laptop 13 Pro With Intel Panther Lake_._ The fact that my laptop could have left performance on the table was immediately intriguing. I won’t entirely rehash the extensive finding, but Michael Larabel benchmarked 6 distros on the FW13 Pro, with Fedora 44 being the slowest. The first oddity he discovers in the follow-up is Thermald. It was orphaned by a non-responsive maintainer. After swapping from 2.5.9 to 2.5.12, it helped with power draw, but the performance gap remained. It wasn’t the fix. Fedora moved from power-profiles-daemon to TuneD back in Fedora 41, with the rationale that it was a far more capable tool. As its name stated, you can have fine tuned power profiles, going as far as to hand-write CPU governors, disk, network, kernel parameters, and so on. Given it is a Red Hat owned project, including it in Fedora would unify things and seemed the natural fit. Whatever the root cause, Michael discovers that swapping daemons solves it. Read the article for a full picture, but after the swap he measured significant performance improvements that brought Fedora’s results more in line with the other distros tested. I decided to try it for myself and swapped TuneD for ppd with `sudo dnf swap tuned-ppd power-profiles-daemon`. Michael stated he only had his singular X9 388H unit, so testing my X7 358H seemed like a good idea to add to the sample size. I only tested kernel compile. I did two runs on TuneD under kernel 7.1.7. Then I updated to kernel 7.1.8 and swapped to ppd, testing twice more to catch the Thermald update. The set of testing was with the automatic fan profile, then I used the Framework Control project to max the fans out since I know the 13 Pro prefers to run warmer vs louder. This answers the question of whether or not the issue is related to thermals. My results saw an 8.5% uplift. The Phoronix article covers **_many_** more benchmarks, so I again encourage you to read it and donate if it helps you (I did). As for whether or not you should try it? Go ahead. Swapping back is trivial and you only have the performance you already paid for to gain. ## Real talk on the Realtek 10 gig Do I need 10 gig networking on a laptop? Shhh. We do not ask such questions here. I’m a homelabber through and through, as I suspect quite a few of you reading this far along are. I have the standalone WisdPi 10 gig USB 3.2 adapter, so it was a no-brainer when I saw the Framework expansion module on the horizon. The RTL8159 promises 10 gig at a lower cost with lower heat and power. Given I use hot Aquantia USB and Thunderbolt NICs in my SFF PCs, I was skeptical, but it’s been impressive. It’s a lot of power in a small package, though not _that_ small compared to other modules. Physically, it sticks out 25mm from the laptop’s chassis (about 9mm further than the 2.5G card) and runs 1mm taller. Measured with calipers. It’s nowhere near a deal breaker since I’ll only be using it at home or the office, but I don’t think I’ll be leaving it installed in my bag like I do with the 2.5G sometimes. It’s important to note that you will not get full download performance on current kernel drivers as of this writing in mid-August 2026. When I tested, I was getting anywhere from 5 to 6.5Gbps down, but nearly 9 up, which is line rate. After downloading and building a DKMS version of the vendor driver, I got near line-speed performance in both directions. With iperf3 running on one of my Proxmox nodes, I connected the 10G and 2.5G expansion cards to the same UniFi switch. Only one card was active/installed per run, Wi-Fi disabled. Power profile set to performance via ppd. The test suite was the same for every config: 4x thirty second iperf3 runs (single stream and 8 parallel streams, each in both directions), 30 pings at idle and again during a saturated 8-stream transfer, and a 10-minute sustained soak at 4 streams while link speed and every thermal sensor were sampled every 20 seconds to catch renegotiation or heat falloff. CPU impact was recorded two ways: iperf3's metrics and full system utilization from `/proc/stat`. The 10G WisdPi module was tested twice. Once with the generic `cdc_ncm` driver and again on Realtek's v2.22.1 driver installed via DKMS. The 2.5G card was re-run on the Realtek vendor driver as well, but left off the chart since there were no measurable differences in the run to demonstrate. All tests were run on Fedora 44, kernel 7.1.8. I’m hosting the script on my repo if you’re interested in reproducing it. Given automation is its strong suit, I used Claude to come up with the script and test methodology. I do not take any credit for its design, though I think you’ll understand that when you see the repo’s domain name. ## Computing consistency amid perilous pricing The Framework 13 Pro has been great. Linux has been great. My mobile tech life now fully matches up with desktop experience. The timing is perfect, because the ethos of “the last laptop you’ll ever own” rings truer than ever in our RAM-starved future. Many who did not understand Framework’s mission are starting to come around to the idea of keeping what you have. I know that sounds silly coming from me, only having my 13 non-Pro for a little over a year, but I uhhh like ~~shiny~~ matte things. I must admit, writing solely on the Framework 13 Pro made me realize something. The single-screen experience is nice every once in a while. I guess there’s a reason the trope of writing on a laptop in a coffee shop exists. I’ll skip the coffee shop, but sitting down at a single screen to focus and reflect is something I’ll do more of now that I have my ideal portable **_personal_** computer.

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Onyx - NFC x NCASE Skyreach 5 Mini (S5M) - Ryzen 9 7945HX3D/Radeon 9070 XT

Yup, I’m back THIS soon. After building in the silver S5M, I got the itch sooner than expected. This is Onyx. A Fedora Linux KDE workhorse named for its black exterior and black internals. The vision formed before Pegasus was even finished, when Josh from NFC said he was cooking up a special custom bezel. I was looking to refresh my serious work desk, and here we are. Onyx is another system shuffle. I swapped the motherboards in HT5 and Goldimox, so this effectively replaces HT5. The focus of this build IS focus. With two LG DualUp (28BQ780-B) 16:18 monitors, this thing is all documents and data workflows, all the time. This will be more of an overview build log, since Pegasus has all the detail one should need. ## The hardware Case - NFC Systems x NCASE Skyreach 5 Mini (S5M) Black CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D Mobo - Minisforum BD790i X3D MoDT (Soldered CPU) RAM - Crucial 96GB (2x 48GB) DDR5 SODIMM Storage - 2TB Crucial T700 Gen5 NVMe + 2TB Crucial T500 Gen4 NVMe SSD GPU - PowerColor Reaper Radeon RX 9070 XT GPU Mod: Custom NFC Shroud Kit Cooler - Integrated Heatsink + NF-A12x25 PWM chromax.Black PSU - Corsair SF1000 (2024) Custom Cables - ZCooi Mod - Teflon Copper Custom Bezel - NFC Ebony Magnetic Kit Monitors - 2x LG DualUp 28BQ780-B, Prechen 12.3” Touchscreen (running NADA64) Keyboard - Custom 43studios 4398 This BD790i X3D has a long and storied history. It started as a regular BD790i. I used it to escape VMWare, where it became my first production Proxmox server. That then got side-graded to an MS-A1, and the BD790i got jealous and died. Like a phoenix, it was reborn into the BD790i X3D because I guess they ran out of non-X3D when I RMA’d. The luck was strong that day. I threw it right into Goldimox when Josh at NFC came out with his 3DLP case. There I used it to do passthrough shenanigans with my Intel ARC Pro B50. HT5 had the Minisforum AR900i packing a 13950HX. Either would have been fine for Onyx, but it was a good opportunity to test Goldimox on all-Intel hardware, so I made the swap. MoDT has been such an interesting form factor. Minisforum does a lot of the work for you by including a cooler, but I did re-paste it with a Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet. The 7945HX3D is quite the powerhouse despite its mobile designation. Like its desktop counterpart, the 7950X3D, it has an extra 64MB of L3 cache on one CCD. While I don’t expect that to come into play with most of what I’ll be doing here, I have no problem pretending it feels faster. Both systems had 96GB of DDR5 5600 SODIMM, because RAM used to be this weird thing called _accessible._ The two 2TB NVMe drives are from umm somewhere. I seem to just collect those, but they’ve been getting major shuffles into more fitting systems as they become more scarce. The 2nd drive will likely move to something else, like my new Framework 13 Pro, when I’m done testing Steel Nomad. The PowerColor Radeon 9070 XT was purchased new, as it was on sale again when I was contemplating GPUs. It also means I’ll get to compare it against the Pegasus Reaper in Steel Nomad. I won’t be covering the full gamut of tests I usually do, as this PC will be used as a workstation. Since the HT5 used a 500W HDPlex, I purchased a new Corsair SF1000. It was on sale for cheaper than the SF850 in Pegasus. After being VERY pleased with the ZCooi custom cables, I went with another set. This time in copper. That paid off massively. The cables look amazing in shimmery copper and remind me of my speaker escapades growing up. Matching the black S5M and ebony bezel to the keyboard seemed like a good idea. I consulted my custom keeb shelf and chose my 43studios 4398. I owe another Keeb Story entry for my last few builds, but I’ll give some quick details. It uses Gateron Oil King switches, a Green Door Geeks custom cut POM plate, GemKeyCaps artisans, and a CableMod Pro Straight cable. ## The _hbny_ heart of darkness Ebony wood has a history as rich and deep as its color. Ebony has carried its name for five thousand years– _hbny_ , the Egyptians called it–and pieces of it have outlasted the civilizations that carved them. These beautiful and intricate pieces have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs, like Tutankhamun. The juxtaposition of having this organic, long enduring heirloom-like piece on such a comparatively short-lived piece of tech is something that speaks to me. I want what I create with this PC to pass the test of time, leaving something behind that survives just as long. The bezel’s copper-like streaks matched perfectly with my custom copper cables. After deciding I would use Onyx in a horizontal orientation, I ordered copper-colored cutting board feet and red copper M3 screws. Its presence on the desk is the exact subtle, yet dignified aura I was going for. I went for the magnetic bezel mount since I don’t use power buttons. I use either an IP KVM, or a smart plug. With the power on after power loss setting enabled, it’s just a quick verbal shortcut or tap to power on the PC. With the magnetic mount, NFC provides two metal plates that screw into the modular front panel. The bezel itself has two very strong magnets. This results in a clean, uninterrupted front panel. Josh is now offering a custom rear bezel, so mounting a power button back there like in the S4T will be an option soon. ## Power that parallels its poise Since Onyx will never be judged in frames per second, I wanted a number that speaks workhorse. There are few things more "Linux" than compiling the kernel for “reasons.” It goes right to work on all 32 threads, and it's the same tool Phoronix has used for decades, so it's a number people can actually relate to. Onyx turned in 82.33 seconds (defconfig, average of three runs). Pegasus, with its 8 desktop cores clocking far higher, needed 127.97. Same case, same footprint. Sixteen mobile cores at two-thirds the clocks beat eight desktop cores by 55%. That's the MoDT bargain in one benchmark: you trade clocks for cores, and for the work this desk exists to do, that trade is worth it. Being a mobile chip, the 7945HX3D’s thermals mirror the ethos of many power hungry laptop chips: _hot and unbothered_. It regularly operates in the low-to-high 60s, while a few cores burst to 5.4GHz. When hit with an all-core workload, touching 89C and then backing down to the mid-to-low 80s is not uncommon. Overall, it’s performing in-line with other mobile chips, and I’ve had enough of these MoDT boards to not be freaked out by it anymore. For the sake of completeness, the GPU needed some relatable metrics. I felt running Steel Nomad to create two data points for the NFC shroud kit was worthwhile. This time, my RX 9070 XT behaved quite well, with a stock score of 7157 vs Pegasus at 6987. When increasing memory clocks, it did not crash until the upper 2600s. Something I could not do with Pegasus’ Reaper in stock form. Installing the NFC shroud kit was quite a bit more refined this time around. I don’t have photos of the process, since I wanted to time it, but Josh now has the additional screws pre-installed, so there’s no guess work. I chose to keep the Noctua pads on the fans, so the install was a bit tight. The new install process took 28 minutes and 45 seconds from disassembly of the stock Reaper to a fully built shroud mod. A good chunk of time was spent tapping the holes on the second plate with the Reaper’s plastic screw, but Josh has now added holes to the second plate to make this unnecessary. You can print the kit yourself by joining his patreon, or order the complete kit from the NFC store. Performance-wise, the shroud kit is as impressive as it was the first time. As of right now, I own all 5 of the top results for my hardware config in the top 100. It’s quite a niche set of hardware, but I’m not above taking the W where I can. The results top out at 7986, beating Pegasus by 10 points. While that’s no landslide, Onyx consistently achieves higher average core and memory clocks. Memory clocks peaked at 2760 in synthetic testing and held a 2706 average through Steel Nomad. This time around, I did not connect the Noctua NF-A9s to the Reaper’s fan header. I connected them to the CPU header and created a small, lightweight program to manage its fan curves. There are a few fan management programs out there, but I wanted something with an extremely narrow focus and footprint. ## Future fortification When I think of Onyx’s future, I see it remaining unchanged for a good 5 years. I was fortunate enough to snag a bunch of 96GB kits when they were “cheap.” This is the one time where my over-speccing habit will finally pay for itself. Who knows if we’ll even see a consumer hardware cadence that warrants upgrades. In the NFC realm, I do want to explore more custom items like a rear bezel. A “just in case” power button would be nice. I’ve also considered 3D printing a button mount that sits right behind the bezel. In the _case_ of an emergency, I can just pop the bezel off. This has happened when I do a BIOS update and forget to re-enable the power loss power cycle. For now, Onyx has work to do.

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Black Panther - Framework 13 Pro - Intel 358H + 32GB LPCAMM2 First Impressions

Got my Framework 13 Pro bright and early at 9:48AM yesterday. I was expecting the patented FedEx uncertainty, but to my surprise, it was with the Early AM driver! I had my LPCAMM2 and SSD in my bag, so I built it quickly at work, loaded Fedora 44 KDE, and restored my home folder. Installing the LPCAMM2 module was about as nerve wracking as my first Threadripper build. The way it very lightly mounts, waiting eagerly for you to smush it under a metal plate is slightly unsettling. That said, it was quick and the little retention pegs help a ton. Shout out to Wendell from Level1 for mentioning the plastic over the SSD thermal pad. I admit to never reading instructions, so I almost missed it. Other than that, the install was very similar to my original Framework 13, so this took maybe 10 minutes to assemble. I like the new toggle retention for the expansion cards. It brings a little more certainty to the process and allows me to change cards with one hand. I wish the pogo pins made it to the 13 Pro, but the ribbon cable’s design makes it one of the most forgiving of its kind. I’m never afraid that I’m going to rip it apart when handling the input cover. The bezel is as seamless an install as I remember. In fact it might even be easier because I remember the wifi cables needing to be pushed down last time. ## First boot: Hardware The helpful memory training message on the Framework 13 Pro is something I would like to see spread throughout the industry. It really helps with the DIY version especially. Once booted, I was greeted with a bright and crisp screen. Notably, the light overhead did not have me tilting the screen to reduce glare. I wrote about my FW13 (non-Pro) hardware gripes as part of my first-year daily driving Linux experience, and am happy to say that the majority of them are solved with the 13 Pro. The chassis rigidity of the Pro benefits the keyboard immensely. There’s an extra tactility that isn’t filtered out by deck flex. The black finish is certainly more fingerprint prone than the silver of the 13, but it isn’t something that would have me tethered to a microfiber cloth during use. The haptic trackpad is interesting. It took some getting used to, but I have to press harder than I would with the traditional 13 trackpad, and my Mac’s haptic one. I’m not sure if there’s a way to tune that, but it would be nice. That said, it’s a lot more consistent than the diving board one. I have a lot more confidence in my clicks. Sound is an improvement. I’m not going to say it’s great, but I can do just about any normal task and not be actively offended by the speakers like I was with the regular 13. The webcam and microphone are standard-issue and get a passing grade as well. Heat seems to be managed very well in the chassis, though it skews towards being a little warmer for the sake of silence, much like a MacBook Pro. Of course in this case, it’s much easier to tune the fan curves to your liking, which I may do on a warm day. I’ve provided a FLIR image sample, but it was just the potato-y FLIR One Pro. Don’t be fooled by the intense color scheme they use, the temp are on the warm side, but nothing alarming. While under my more moderate level workloads (remote photography work) the CPU bounces around between 55-60C. Owing to the Framework’s modularity, restoring my data was quick over 2.5GbE (though it might have been faster if my 10 gig expansion card had shipped…). I don’t have much performance data given it’s been less than 24 hours, but it’s a good enough bit snappier than the HX 370 to feel like I accomplished something with my purchase. As the purchase was chiefly for battery life, I was just happy that I could spend most of the day in low power mode and not feel like I was losing anything doing so. ## First boot: Software The Fedora 44 KDE install flew by and once booted and updated, my first wave of package installs went well. I hadn’t noticed I was on battery at all. Being an Intel card, Wi-Fi just worked. A welcome change given how inconsistent the MediaTek card was in the 13. I use Netbird for connections back home, and that was also more consistent on Wi-Fi. I still use the Adobe suite for my photography, so I remotely access my Mac Studio back home often. I do this via Parsec. It’s a bit rough around the edges, but it works consistently. For now, it seems CPU bound in Linux, at about 40W total CPU usage with it running. Again, fan noise is barely noticeable over ambient, but the trackpad area is warm. I use Waterfox, and am known to be a heavy tab user. I do a lot of project research and use the self-hosted Firefox sync to pull over all my tabs from my work PC. I do miss having 96GB of RAM, but have not run into memory issues with my typical 40-tab mobile load. Setting up hibernation is where I thought I would lose my mind. In the last few months, it has been alright on my Framework 13, but for a while there, it seemed like it was regressing every few update cycles. Setting it up on the 13 Pro worked right away, and consistently. I’m at around 12 hours of uptime with at least 8 hibernation cycles. No freezes or kernel crashes. No returning to a bag that's a lot warmer than expected.. That said, it’s been under 24 hours, so we’ll see. I am excited to continue using the 13 Pro, and will continue gathering data for a long term review. In the meantime, if you have any questions about it that I haven’t covered, feel free to ask. My 13 already found a new home, but I won’t be sending it off for a few weeks. If you need any comparisons with the HX 370, let me know and I will try to address them.

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Pegasus - NFC x NCASE Skyreach 5 Mini (S5M) - Ryzen 7 7800X3D/Radeon 9070 XT

This is Pegasus, a small form factor system born from my former media room gaming PC. I’d love to tell you why I named it Pegasus, but I’ve honestly completely forgotten. I was probably feeling inspired by the Skyreach naming and thought this magnificent silver case shone like a Pegasus in the sky. So I’m sticking to that explanation. The arrival of the NFC Systems x NCASE Skyreach 5 Mini was perfect timing. Following my migration to Linux, I committed to the platform across the board. This led to a complete overhaul of my personal and professional PCs. For my office PC, this involved transplanting an Intel Arc Pro B50 into the A24v5 build and running Fedora 43. It was smooth sailing for a time, but a subsequent software regression sent the Intel drivers into a daily tailspin. That lack of reliability was a no-go for my productivity. I wanted to grab an AMD GPU, but finding one small enough proved difficult outside of the entry-level RX 6400. Higher-end half-height options for Team Red remain frustratingly rare. For a while I took a bunch of panels off of the A24v5 and shoved a 9060 XT into it. It looked exactly as goofy as it sounds, but it did the job for a bit. Once I heard the S5M was about to become a reality, I knew that was this build’s next form. I signed up for S5M notifications and sat ready for that email. I don’t think I’ve ever gone from a notification email to checkout faster in my life. Fast-forward a week later, and the S5M arrived… somewhere a few blocks from my doorstep (thanks UniUni lol). ## The Hardware Case - NFC Systems x NCASE Skyreach 5 Mini (S5M) Silver CPU/Mobo - AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D Mobo - Gigabyte B650I AORUS ULTRA RAM - G.SKILL Flare X5 Series DDR5 RAM 64GB (2x32GB) 6000MT/s Storage - 2x 2TB WD SN850X NVMe SSDs GPU - PowerColor Reaper Radeon RX 9070 XT w/ Custom NFC Shroud Cooler - Thermalright AXP90 X47 FC + NF-A12x25 G2 PWM chromax.Black PSU - Corsair SF750 (2024) Custom Cables - ZCooi Mod The PC building hobby has taken a morale hit; for some reason, we’ve kickstarted our own obsolescence, and now we can’t have nice things. Usually I’d sell off parts and start fresh for a new build, but this time I shuffled and re-purposed things. The 9070 XT, Thermalright cooler, Noctua fan, and power supply are new for this build. The 7800X3D I’ve found to be a great performer for my needs, even if that makes this build a gaming PC in a business suit. It does very well in small form factor systems since it doesn’t like running hot in the first place. For cooling, I originally planned to use the Noctua NH-L12 Ghost S1 Edition. I had it in the system for a few weeks, but I didn’t like the sound profile of the cooler with the 92mm fan. Thermals were fine, but I saw people in the NFC Systems Discord server trying all kinds of interesting things. After browsing there, I decided to pick up the full copper X47 and had an adapter printed to mount a Noctua NF-A12x25 G2. I stuck with my trusty Thermal Grizzly PhaseSheet PTM, as it’s served me well in many builds now. The combination of X47 and 120mm G2 isn’t the all-around best for pure CPU cooling, but it did better than the L12GE while also keeping the rest of the motherboard components cool. The sound profile with the Noctua fan is silent, and even if I make the fan curve more aggressive, the low pitch hum is barely detectable until over 80% fan speed from where I sit. The CPU side of the case faces me. For my day to day work, I see CPU temps between 60-63C for light tasks and 67C at the highest end. As for BIOS tweaks, I opted to leave the 7800X3D to its own devices outside of setting memory speed and timings. The singular benchmark run I did with 70C PBO mode enabled didn’t net any gains. The fan profile I manage inside Linux with CoolerControl. I’ll go over gaming temps in a bit. When it comes to power supplies, I am a creature of habit. When I build something that uses SFX, I just grab a Corsair SF power supply. I know what to expect and I know I can get custom cables easily. The SF750 (2024) does its job well. The fan doesn’t run unless it needs to, and it delivers clean power. The cables that come with it are a perfectly reasonable length and work very well inside the S5M. Over the years, though, I’ve found that custom cables really do make that last 10% difference when the build is done. A friend of mine mentioned Zcooi Mod was getting his hands on an S5M and is developing cables, so I ordered a set. The pricing was excellent, and delivery times were reasonable. I grappled with the decision of black vs. gray cables but went with gray to contrast the rest of the black parts and complement the silver. They came out great with not a millimeter wasted. ## Don’t fear the Reaper For my graphics card, I did some trading and eventually ended up with a PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT Reaper. This is one of the smallest 9070 XTs, so it was an excellent fit for the S5M. During one of my conversations with Josh from NFC, he mentioned he was developing a shroud kit for the Reaper, and wanted to know if I was interested in helping. Once the kit arrived, I pulled apart the card and began to see how everything fit. Josh prepared me for the option of tapping the existing holes to M3 and mounting the card from the top. Instead, we eventually figured that reducing the diameter of the holes on the mounting plate would allow the existing screws to be reused in the exact positions they were in before. Additionally, matching holes were added to the final fan mounting plate to allow the slightly long stock screws to pass through. In doing so, anyone can install this kit without needing additional hardware. I used Noctua NF-A9 fans with my shroud. In this revision of the shroud kit, the dampening pads make installation a little tight. I would recommend leaving them off, but it is possible that Josh will address this with an update to the design. Once everything is joined together, this card takes on a more industrial and purposeful look. One of the more striking things about it is how seamless it is. A lot of shrouds like this are two pieces due to small print beds. If you’ve seen Josh’s 3D printing content, you know he has some big printers. Installation of the card into the case is best done with both panels off since the shroud side of the card obscures the view a bit. With the shroud attached, the GPU now completely fills its chamber, giving the system a completed look even before putting the side panel back on. Given my office is temperature and particulate controlled, I am strongly considering leaving the GPU side panel off (I left it on for all the testing I did). ## Reaping the benefits The performance of this card post growth-spurt has me pretty excited. I’ve been lucky with a few CPUs over the years. I had a great overclocking 8700K and 7980XE, but my GPUs have always been average. This 9070 XT Reaper though? It performs better than the Hellhound variant in my larger NCASE M2 Grater build. The proper way to test this would be to shove the modded Reaper into my M2 build and test that, but I do not have time to take down both PCs to do it. Maybe one day. That said, a score of 7976 places my Reaper in the top 1% of the 7800X3D/9070 XT testing pool in Steel Nomad DX12. I’m pretty happy with that result considering it’s a 10L build. In stock form, I couldn’t touch memory clocks for synthetic benchmarks. Anything I did would cause freezing. With the shroud mod, I was able to set the memory clock to 2760, and actually see those numbers at peak in Steel Nomad. For the core clock, I had good results at +105MHz. Any more than that, and I would start to see either no change at all or score regression. 3157MHz is the highest clock I saw with my own eyes in synthetics. For the undervolt, -90 seemed to give me the best results. I should make it clear that I don’t push the core or memory clocks when gaming, that was just for synthetic testing. I simply undervolt it and leave everything else stock. Doing so meant I have some excellent temps of around 60C in both Crimson Desert and Grand Theft Auto V Enhanced with settings cranked. CPU temperatures were in the mid to high 60s during gaming. All testing was done in my temperature-controlled office at a constant 75F (24C). For now the fans are stuck around 1400RPM any time there’s a decent load while attached to the GPU header. I may attach a Noctua LNA down the line, but from my desk, I don’t hear the fans. If I put my ear to that side of the case, it is a low pitch hum. The case itself distributes heat very well. I did all of my testing with the panels on. As with my previous builds, I used a Flir One Pro to take thermal images. The Crimson Desert images are in my lab, which sits at a warm 79F (26C) during the summer, though the bench it was on is next to a rack, so I assume it was closer to 84F (29C). The 3D Mark looping runs were taken in my office, which is temperature controlled to 75F (24C). Note: The first two set of images is before the custom shroud, the next two are with the custom shroud. ## Building in this classy silver chassis The case is stellar. Like my other NFC cases, it has a sophistication that defies its simplicity. The silver catches the light wonderfully, and the mesh side panels look rather dapper. Perfect for my office setting. Fit and finish remind me of my M2 Grater. There isn’t a single flaw in the metal or the black powder coating. Once the panels are removed, inside the case are two central braces. The silver cross brace holds the GPU riser and the black has two points for mounting the motherboard. The basement of the case has the other two mount points, a power supply mounting bracket, and a short cable to route power out the back. The top and bottom of the case sport iconic SkySlots, with the front and back panels being removable for the endless mods to come. This is my first console style PC build, but installation was relatively straightforward. I know full well from previous SFF builds that preparation is key. I first connected the 8-pin EPS and 24-pin power to the motherboard to save my fingers from impossible to reach spaces. Next came installing the motherboard. The standoffs arrive a bit loose, so be sure to tighten them. After removing the PSU bracket and attaching it, I plugged in the power extension and did some managing to make sure as much of it was hidden under the bracket as possible. There are mounting holes here for a 2.5” SSD, which is nice since you may have to use one in this flash-starved economy. I purchased the S5M with the PCIe 5.0 GPU riser. The one it comes with is rather stiff, but it holds its shape well once you finagle it in place. Since there was wiggle room, I loosely mounted the riser in the GPU “chamber” and slid it back and forth with the 9070 XT until I found the perfect spot. After marking that spot, I took the card out and did a final tightening. The rear retention piece sports the only bit of branding, which is a subtle NFC logo. Since my card is only a two-slot, I bought some pretty slick mesh PCIe brackets. For final installation of the GPU, I routed the PCIe power cables, and then tied them to make hiding easier. NCASE included a matching stand with the S5M. It comes with plastic risers, but I didn’t use them. Sure, they allow more airflow, but my 9070 XT, especially with its shroud, doesn’t need it. All in all, if I subtract the obsessive photo taking, the build took 45 minutes. ## Custom tailored touches for this tiny tower A few weeks after I did my provisional build, some NFC mainstays showed up. I ordered NFC’s classic custom machined, ultra tactile switch. I opted for two custom bezels. One maple, one carbon fiber. The maple bezel mounts with the traditional hardware. The carbon fiber bezel mounts with a spacer kit and achieves its screwless look by relying on the machined switch’s retention nut. It also allows a slightly longer GPU clearance. This is the look. The stock black bezel is nice enough, but these custom bits are why you buy NFC cases. With everything I’ve done to tie this build together, it looks like a completely different system. ## Case and Effect: A community-driven core The broader SFF community is filled with strong personalities and stronger opinions. I’ve come to understand more about the community surrounding the NFC cases in particular in the time since I built in the S4T. The NFC community is as much a part of the case as the panels that enclose it. There are lots in the SFF community that look for the most optimized case layouts and will scrutinize every liter, but it’s a bit different here. The very active imaginations of the NFC community see the case, and they figure out what to cram into it as they build and rebuild. Together with Josh, Erick, and Dru, many mods are born. Many of the 3D print friendly designs NFC comes up with are provided to the community at no cost. There’s always someone around to answer a question, take a measurement, or share an idea. The community effort around cooler testing and fan configurations has been fun to watch. Members like Mike Venture and TK Labs have pitted all the cooler and fan options against each other and continue to work to find the best pairing. The 66mm clearance is seen as more of a challenge than it is a limitation. When all the data is compiled, they will release a companion spreadsheet. I’ll link to it here when it happens. The future of the Skyreach 5 Mini is exciting, and this community is why. The person who pushed me the most into the community goes by Damascus. He’s an enthusiast’s enthusiast. He went off the deep end with water cooling, then with SFF, and finally combined the two. The build started as an Intel Core i7 6700K with an MXM (laptop) GTX 1070. In true enthusiast fashion, he couldn’t stop there, eventually frying that sentient sand in pursuit of running mutant 10th Gen processors. Its loss was not in vain, though, as its final form saw it become an Intel QQLT, an AliExpress creation that rivals a Core i5 10400. The GPU was also upgraded to a Quadro P5000 16GB, making this one powerful Frankenstein of an S4T. Barely hours after unboxing his S5M, Damascus is already deep into his next crazy creation. I’ve seen a few mockups, and if it works out, it will be quite the impressive use of space. I’ll be keeping tabs on his build log thread as he attempts to water cool a 7800X3D and 3080 Ti. Another community member who goes by Passchen has quite a bit of passion for his NFC builds. While he initially went with an NCASE M1 back in the GTX 1080 days, he soon wanted a smaller footprint and went with a Skyreach 4 Mini. The build that stuck out to me the most is his S4T-L. It houses a watercooled and shunt-modded A4000 along with a 13600K. An Alphacool DC-LT 2 and ST30 140mm cools this svelte beast. The bezel is a masterpiece by Erick of NFC. The same person responsible for my purpleheart meteorite bezel. In Passchen’s own words > I wanted to get a really custom bezel made by Erick since it's such a special case. So, after I bought it I reached out to NFC with a sketch I had made, literally in crayon because that's what the kids left out, of a bezel that incorporated elements normally found in a boutique guitar. Heavily figured wood, pearl inlays, and the traditional F-hole were all elements I incorporated into the design. For the inlay I took inspiration from several different designs including a dove, an olive branch, and a Baroque monstrance. Erick did the rest and I think the result is incredible. Not only does it showcase Erick's talent but it also turns the S4T-L into a true heirloom piece which I believe is irreplaceable. Unique and special builds like this are plentiful among the NFC community. ## Future fortification of this workstation Since this is my work PC, I don’t plan to mess with its seamlessly functional formula too much. From a software standpoint, much of my Fedora KDE Plasma interactions are covered in my Linux migration and one-year follow up pieces. For hardware, I will likely change bezels a few times. Josh is always finding new types of wood and composites to work with, and Erick is always ready to tackle a masterpiece from even the smallest idea. Cooling may be something I continue to explore. I recently picked up a ZCooi Mod CNC 4070 fan, which uses the same Nidec fan found in the Founder’s Edition Nvidia 4070. The fan is then mounted to a custom CNC metal housing. Cooling potential is immense since the fan allows high RPM while remaining stable. I’ll see how it does when the community tests it. Noctua also announced its next generation NH-L12. While they tend to take their time perfecting designs, they did indicate to me that the interest in this cooler is going to make them work a bit faster. For now, tinkering will take a backseat to actually _using_ Pegasus to fly through my workflow. Given the results of this build, I may toy with the idea of de-shrouding the 9070 XT Hellhound in Togami next.

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