[baseethrowaway]

Blender might throttle. Does it come with benchmarks/tests that I could use to gauge thermal performance?

The CPU is delidded! I've got another i3 4300 delidded as well running under a NoFan CR-80EH. Delid + Conductonaut + Kryonaut made the difference between throttling vs hovering around 90 C in FurMark + Prime 95. When integrated graphics aren't used, the CPU runs cooler, of course, and didn't throttle with MX4 thermal paste and no delid.

I do fear that VRMs are running too hot. When selecting components, I picked those that come with some heatsinks on VRMs at least. The motherboard is an AsRock Fatal1ty Z370 Gaming-ITX/ac (non ITX motherboard wouldn't fit in the case anyway with an ATX power supply). The graphics card is Gigabyte's cheapest offering and has a small sink across the VRMs. I'm hoping that undervolting will help keep the VRMs in check.

[xxs]

> Blender might throttle. Does it come with benchmarks/tests that I could use to gauge thermal performance?

There are multiple scenes to render as benchmark (I guess BMW one is the shortest/most popular). https://www.blender.org/download/demo-files/