Building my own computer, a couple of questions
May 10, 2006 at 8:26 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 16

ScubaSteve87

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Alright so I am planning on building a computer over the next few months and I have a couple of questions I thought people here might be able to answer:

Cooling: I don't want this thing to get hot, and I want it to be quiet! I have thought about doing liquid cooling, but is this only really necessary for overclocking? Can I get a decently quiiet computer just off of air cooling?

http://site.petrastechshop.com/promomail/em1.html this site has some good deals on fans that i have seen many people rec

Storage: I am planning on getting several harddrives, one for music, one for programs, one for booting, and maybe one for documents, movies etc. Does it make any sense to run a RAID setup like RAID 5? At least for the 3 storage drives and not the boot drive. I would like a little security in case somethiing fails, but i'm not all that concerned about it. Has anyone else made a similar choice between RAID and just independant disks.
 
May 10, 2006 at 8:31 PM Post #2 of 16
Quote:

Originally Posted by ScubaSteve87
Alright so I am planning on building a computer over the next few months and I have a couple of questions I thought people here might be able to answer:

Cooling: I don't want this thing to get hot, and I want it to be quiet! I have thought about doing liquid cooling, but is this only really necessary for overclocking? Can I get a decently quiiet computer just off of air cooling?

http://site.petrastechshop.com/promomail/em1.html this site has some good deals on fans that i have seen many people rec

Storage: I am planning on getting several harddrives, one for music, one for programs, one for booting, and maybe one for documents, movies etc. Does it make any sense to run a RAID setup like RAID 5? At least for the 3 storage drives and not the boot drive. I would like a little security in case somethiing fails, but i'm not all that concerned about it. Has anyone else made a similar choice between RAID and just independant disks.



Cooling: Go for a case with 120mm fan slots (not 80mm). Throw in some decent fans (I reccomend Antec) and tone them down from full blast with a Fan Controller/Rheobus. Great airflow and near-silence.

Storage: For a home machine, there's no sense in RAID. Have 2 hard drives and back up important files on both of them for extra security, but a RAID is useless in a desktop. I use RAID5 in my Terabyte File Server, but I store that in a Closet so I don't have to hear the noise.
 
May 10, 2006 at 8:33 PM Post #3 of 16
You can overclock to fairly high clockspeeds with a good fan-heatsink. Search for "Zalman" for more info. They make very good heatsinks. Liquid-cooling is only really needed for optimum system stability for highly overclocked systems. It also has it's own "cool factor", but I doubt you actually need it.

I have little idea about RAID. I run my computer at RAID 0 on two 300gb Maxtor 7200rpm 16MB NCQ drives. It's plently fast, but offers no insurance against drive failure. I'm not too sure about RAID 5, but it sounds like a very good idea. How many hard drives can you put into RAID 5 configuration?
 
May 10, 2006 at 8:34 PM Post #4 of 16
H2O cooling is totally not worth it unless you are a major enthusiast, overclocker etc. Even with H2O, you still need a radiator fan. I suggest you get the gnarliest heat sink you can fit in your case (I have an SL-120) and put Nexus 120mm fan on it with speed contol. This will be silent. Silent is good enough. I have this and 1 120mm case fan blowing on my HDDs, and my PSU exhaust fan.

My PSU is the noisiest thing right now. Actually, my network adaptor is. If I hear my computer, it's when the antivirus does an auto-update.
 
May 10, 2006 at 8:35 PM Post #5 of 16
Quote:

Originally Posted by Arainach
Cooling: Go for a case with 120mm fan slots (not 80mm). Throw in some decent fans (I reccomend Antec) and tone them down from full blast with a Fan Controller/Rheobus. Great airflow and near-silence.


I have the Coolermaster Praetorian and it is very quite indeed. I believe it has one 120mm fan and two 80mm fans. The 120mm fan runs at a low speed. The case is very quite and also extremely well designed and built. I highly recommend it.
 
May 10, 2006 at 8:53 PM Post #6 of 16
...yes you can get a decently quiet system with a good case and a good cooler . i use tthe zalman 7700cu and it is quiet and very efficient...highly recommended. About water cooling...that is good for overclocking, extreme overclocking actually..i overclock with my zalman no problem.

raid. yes, good idea...do a raid-1 (mirroring) with just 2 drives so if one drive fails you still have all data ...just imagine loosing all your music files
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... drives are cheap anyway, and most mobos have raid controllers (not sure if all include raid-5)..

good luck.
 
May 10, 2006 at 9:04 PM Post #7 of 16
If you can easily afford liquid cooling, go for it. Just make sure you have a decently large case so you can fix all the tubes and what not in there. Liquid cooling will allow your computer to run A LOT cooler with significantly less noise (even than some of the quietest fans). The cooler your PC stays, the longer your parts will last. Also liquid cooling allows your computer to stay at a near constant temp with not very much fluctuation even under load. With fans your components heat up and cool down a lot more and this can eventually cause wear and tear on your system. Just my .02 cents.
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May 10, 2006 at 9:57 PM Post #8 of 16
re: cool and quiet solutions, you need to go to SPCR - http://www.silentpcreview.com

In general, if you can get some good airflow into and out of your case, in combination with fanless heatsinks or larger (quieter) fans, you don't need to go with liquid cooling, unless that's what you want to do.

There are passive heatsinks from Zalman, or even the large Scythe Ninja (i've got one) for your CPU. You can get some Antec (3-speed) or Panaflow 120mm fans, which are supposed to be quiet -- 120mm fans push/pull air with fewer rotations, and thus less noise, than 80mm fans.

You can get cases specifically designed for being quiet, like those by Coolermaster or the Antec P180 (i've got one, its dead quiet except for when my 7800GT kicks into overdrive for gaming)

btw, ditto what James says below about the Seasonic S12...I don't even know mine is there. Just make sure it's compatible with whatever mobo you use.

Sadly, I know little about storage, but in my rig i have a Raptor for the OS and games, and 1 SATA drive for media and 1 for backup.
 
May 10, 2006 at 9:58 PM Post #9 of 16
I just recently finished my water cooling setup.


After all is said and done water cooling is really only for overclocking enthusiasts that are hell bent on keeping their system quiet. If I wanted to, as quiet as I have my system running now, I could acheive the same results on air cooling if I had an Nvidia GPU and and I didn't overclock. If you're not looking to overclock then there is no need for water cooling. Relative slience can be obtained by simply selecting the right components.

If you're starting a build from scratch, first and foremost I would recommend getting a Seasonic S12 series power supply. I recently replaced a PC Power and Cooling 510 SLI with one and I couldn't be happier. I hear the OCZ Powerstream series is also good, but the Seasonics are known for their silence. Second, if you're going for a high performance gaming system do not get an ATI X1xxx series card. The high end cards run extremely hot and require annoyingly loud stock cooling solutions. The after-market heatsinks are quieter but don't cool the card quite as well unless you have great air flow in your case. If your desire is a quiet system, you're not likely to have the necessary air flow to keep the cards cool anyways. So basically, at this time I would go with Nvidia if you care about silence at all.

As far as processor cooling, there are a number of great heatsinks out there that can keep your processor cool. If you're looking for a cheap solution, the Zalman 7000CU can be purchased for $30 and offers excellent performance/noise ratio.
 
May 10, 2006 at 10:23 PM Post #10 of 16
Don't do water. It's a monstrous pain in the ass.

For air, I wrote a guide on silently air cooling:

http://www.seanmulholland.com/arc/04...ir-cooling.php

Should answer pretty much all your questions.

As for storage, you're going WAY overboard. Hard drives are the bane of silent PCs. Once you turn those fans down, which is easy and cheap, pretty much the only source of noise is hard drives! If you have four you're just making it worse. Plus it's a screechy high pitched whine that penetrates everything, not like a fan which will be mentally tuned out since it's more of a white noise.

Just get a single big drive, like 250GB+, and an external drive for backup...you can unplug it afterward for 100% silence
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If you have enormous amounts of music that you need constant access to, then get a second drive, but you could throw 150GB of music on a 250 and still have more than enough room for everything else. There's no real-world benefit to a dedicated OS drive, program drive, etc. You might save a second here and there but it's not going to make a big difference.

--Illah
 
May 11, 2006 at 2:08 AM Post #13 of 16
Not really. Take parts, put them in the only slots they fit in, turn on computer. All you need is a screwdriver - none of this soldering iron crap.

Also, avoid water cooling. It's overpriced, painful to implement, risky, and not any quieter than a proper air setup. Often-times louder than one.
 
May 11, 2006 at 4:05 AM Post #14 of 16
Thanks for all the great advice. I guess I'll update a little more now on what I am thinking:

RAID is out. After what I have read I am just going with disks. The problem is that I will need quite a bit of storage and I'm looking to buy some 250's on the cheap. Maybe I won't need 4 but well see how things turn out

As for liquid cooling. I would say no way except for one thing. I have thought of picking up that pentium D that is killer for OCing and then running it at 4ghz or whatever they do it at. Idk, just a though, but if I can find a decent deal on a AMD processor then I'll do that.

Also for GPU I am going Nvidia. I have a x700 in my current comp and a old nvidia in my desktop. I just seem to like the Nvidia better.

Thanks again for all your advice

EDIT: Probably won't be going SLI. Maybe, but I want dual screens and just don't want to deal with all that crap of turning SLI on off, idk whatever they have to do.
 
May 11, 2006 at 4:20 AM Post #15 of 16
Quote:

Originally Posted by Arainach
Cooling: Go for a case with 120mm fan slots (not 80mm). Throw in some decent fans (I reccomend Antec) and tone them down from full blast with a Fan Controller/Rheobus. Great airflow and near-silence.

Storage: For a home machine, there's no sense in RAID. Have 2 hard drives and back up important files on both of them for extra security, but a RAID is useless in a desktop. I use RAID5 in my Terabyte File Server, but I store that in a Closet so I don't have to hear the noise.



Good recommendations, get a case with 120mm fans (probably about 3) and get a fan controller. Raid for a home machine is definitley stupid, and anything with a preformance gain like raid 0 is far too risky. I have 3 hard drives atm (plan to add more), and I would say just have a good 120mm fan behind them, and for backups keep an external drive with some media laying around for images (use acronis trueimage / schedule it nightly for maxmium safety, and backup your music on a spare drive.)
 

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