Building quiet PC from scratch, what to get?

[LeonvB]

If you are trying to build a really quiet pc, I would avoid smaller cases. The cramped spaces tend to cause things to get hot inside, and thus your fans will have to blow more air to keep things cool (making things noisier). A bigger case has more room for the heat to radiate.

You'd be surprised. In this case, the cooling is designed to match and surpass (as in lower) noise levels of normal mATX and ATX enclosures. The term to look for is "Intel Mt. Jade Reference Design", there are multiple case manufacturers that offer enclosures that include this technology. Fi. All BK and BL (low profile cards only) series of Inwin use this technology, as do some Enlight designs and I know there are already some others. The real beauty is that it's using the Intel box cooler (i.e. cheap), which is then driven at lower rpms than I've ever seen before. It's the first cooling solution of Intel that actually works, and looking at the whole package it is REALLY cheap: for the price of just an Antec enclosure you can get a SFF enclosure, with better acoustics and a pretty good 80+ power supply. Plus you don't need an expensive after market cooler for your CPU. But please beware your board needs to fit within the Intel mATX guidelines for it's layout. The Intel mITX like the D945GCLF doesn't fit, even though it's smaller than mATX. And you can't fit big videocards in such a small enclosure of course (though a passive 8500GT is no problem).

[vvs_75]

Originally Posted by FasterThanEver

> Ok so far I ended up with these two cases: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel
> or COOLER MASTER RC-690.

These cases have several fans. One fan running off 5 volts will be quieter than 3 fans running off 5 volts. You might need 3 fans if you build a PC for gaming with a quad core CPU, overclock it, slap on a huge CPU cooler and add a high performance PCIe graphics card. All in a case with fans and vents front, side and rear.

if your PC is just for audio playback and it will be in your listening room, you don't need all that stuff and you may be unhappy with the noise level you get.

> Please feel free to help me make my mind

You need to make some decisions about what kind of PC you want.

Bill Hunt

I understand that three fans make more noise than one. But I don’t know how will run everything with soundcard in max. upsampling mode. If one fan will be pushed to run at high speed than probably three low speed fans make less noise.

As I mentioned before I don't want/need everything best and latest just good enough to work with my soundcard but with priority on reducing noise as much as I can.

Thanks Bill.

[vvs_75]

I have a great idea! Sorry if it's sound too boldly, no such intention, just want to achieve my goal

Let's everybody, who want, to show how he/her would build the most silent system from their prospective around AES16 card and then we could discus chooses.

Thanks

[Ross1]

I would go for something like:

Mini P180

seasonic SII 380W PSU

Samsung F1 or WD green power hard drives, however much space you want

probably something like a Abit A-N78HD with a X2 5000+ black edition.

noctua nh-U12P

generic ram

optical drives all seem to make lots of noise.... ive found it hard to find a quiet one.

what else have i missed?

[cerbie]

Originally Posted by vvs_75

Thanks for the comments. Sorry if its sound like I want something crazy, I am sure that whatever I buid in the end with your help here, make and keep me very happy for long time.

Ok so far I ended up with these two cases: Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel or COOLER MASTER RC-690. Please feel free to help me make my mind . If there is something better from your point of view in this price range please feel free.

I also like Lian LI LIAN LI PC-7B and Lian Li PC-K7B but some people mentioned that aluminum very thin in those cases.

Not the 900. Not the 900. P182, Solo, Sonata III, NSK-series towers are from OK to great. The 900 looks nice, but that's about it.

Fan control: not only can it be a wire mess, but with the coolers available, 5V is good. I've stuck my CPU and case fan each at 5V out of laziness. They run about 430RPM each (Scythe Slipstream 800 RPM). Solves controller wiring issues, and I can't get the thing to overheat at 3.6GHz (it gets into the toasty low 70s C, but is rock stable). I also haven't found anything I do regularly that needs more than stock...

Also, I didn't mention that I went with Scythe for a heatsink that worked better with slow or no fans...and I would not do it again. Thermalright heatsinks have that little bit of extra thought going into the design that makes them much easier to use.

Don't forget to add Windows to your costs...and skip Vista, of course.

[vvs_75]

Originally Posted by Ross1

I would go for something like:

Mini P180

seasonic SII 380W PSU

Samsung F1 or WD green power hard drives, however much space you want

probably something like a Abit A-N78HD with a X2 5000+ black edition.

noctua nh-U12P

generic ram

optical drives all seem to make lots of noise.... ive found it hard to find a quiet one.

what else have i missed?

HD Video card?

I checked and every component you mentioned was designed for silent operation. Looks good!
Thanks.

[cerbie]

Originally Posted by vvs_75

I understand that three fans make more noise than one. But I don’t know how will run everything with soundcard in max. upsampling mode. If one fan will be pushed to run at high speed than probably three low speed fans make less noise.

As I mentioned before I don't want/need everything best and latest just good enough to work with my soundcard but with priority on reducing noise as much as I can.

Thanks Bill.

With big ol' heatsinks around, you won't need to. Undervolted CPU fan, undervolted exhaust, optional an intake...and you're good to go. You might even go as far as making a duct, and having a single exhaust+cpu fan.

Did I mention you need to get the Slipstream 800 RPM as fans, yet?

I don't have time to price it all up, but after a cursory Newegg browsing spree:
Scythe Slipstream 120mm 800 RPM fan(s)
Corsair 550W PSU
Gigabyte's 740G or 780G mobo
Athlon X2 2.1GHz (you'd be silly not to get dual-core, even if you don't take full advantage of it)
4GB (2x2) PC6400 (I've been using A-Data for the last few years)
Antec Solo case (not the best, but a nice case)
Samsung SH-S203N...cheap, and it's what I just got. Nothing to do with quietness.
Western Digital GP 500GB (not a speed-demon!)
Windows XP
Thermalright HR-01 (in stock at FrozenCPU and a couple other places)
Thermalright AM2 bracket

If it's well below the $700, spring for a nicer case, faster CPU, bigger HDD, or extra HDD for internal backup....if it's really close to $700, maybe drop to 2GB RAM.

[cerbie]

Originally Posted by vvs_75

HD Video card?

That mobo has HDMI integrated (looks like a nice board, in general, too). For saving a few bucks, the great onboard video, both from ATI/AMD and nVidia, are part of what give them a value advantage over Intel. You get good quality VGA from the mobo, a DVI, and a HDMI, for $70-90, and the video processor is powerful enough for the vast majority of non-gaming uses.

Also, and I just thought about this when I decided to Google that mobo: Gigabyte, Abit, and MSI have been using sleeved/potted toroids for awhile now, which effectively eliminates whine from the board. Check pictures to see about that before you get whatever board you go with.

[billbillw]

I'm a big fan of the Zalman cooling products. Even with Antecs quiets case, I didn't realize true silence until I added Zalmans to my video card and CPU.

[Hookem]

Can we assume that total, soup to nuts that 1k is your budget ???