[alex_cs]

Hey all, I think Ive cobbled together a near silent PC. Ive figured you really need fans if you live in a climate that can get hot but anyway this is what Im thinking so far:

- Antec P180 Black Case
- Seasonic S12 550w (cant seem to find a 430w version, but the dBa are the same - 20dB)
- Scythe Ninja fanless heatsink (Either the 1000/1100/Infinity)
- Western Digital WD5000KS 500gig (23dba max, normal 20db - for music storage)
- Intel Core2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz (apparently very overclockable, but not that interested if it will significantly increase heat)
- Asus P5W DH (Conroe) Motherboard (This has wireless, lots of sata options, and is heatpiped and thus silent!)
- Nexus Real Silent 120mm Fans (x3 - 22.8dB peak)
- Asus EN7300LE 128meg (dont play games and this thing was cheap and well regarded, but most importantly fanless

)
- Logitech diNovo KB / MX1000 Mouse combo (I love these things, been using them for a while now, all bluetooth mean you cna sync PDA's/phones etc)
- Samsung 215TW Black 21" Wide LCD (For a touch of class hehe. My Sony G420 CRT is going fuzzy at the edges, so sad

)
- 1gig Corsair 667mhz DDR2 Ram (already have)
- Western Digital 2x74gig Raptors in RAID0 (already have, debating whether to keep them. Fastest system hdd setup, just brilliant)
- ESI Juli@ (already have, great card)
- Pioneer DL-DVD-r (already have)

I think its about the best compromise I can come up with, and hopefully even though a lot of you will already be aware of most of the products, it will help some out there looking at going near-silent like I am

Ill take some pics and let you know how it goes in a couple of weeks, some parts are on the way, others are who knows where, its all fun

 

[caramelsoul]

I have the Antec P180 Silver case. You can still hear the noise of the fans....though only just, and if you are looking for it.

The biggest problem i had was cable management. Its a big beast of a case. Couldnt get the PSU cables run the way i wanted because of the length.

One thing you can help me with though. When i put the optical drives in, they do not seem to fit flush with the case. Stick out about 20mm from the black removable panels. It doesnt matter where i attach the runners they still stick out. The door still closes fine though. Any ideas?

 

[alex_cs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by caramelsoul I have the Antec P180 Silver case. You can still hear the noise of the fans....though only just, and if you are looking for it. The biggest problem i had was cable management. Its a big beast of a case. Couldnt get the PSU cables run the way i wanted because of the length. I used a silent 550W PSU though. One thing you can help me with though. When i put the optical drives in, they do not seem to fit flush with the case. Stick out about 20mm from the black removable panels. It doesnt matter where i attach the runners they still stick out. The door still closes fine though. Any ideas?

Not sure about your last point. 20mm? 2 cm? Im sure the P180's Ive seen are pretty flush. A common fault is that youve either used the wrong brackets for the drive, or put them on the wrong way / backwards. Simple chop and changing often will help you. If you mean 2mm, then thats probably acceptable.

Which fans have you used, and which PSU? If i go on the dB figures, 20-23dB is pretty much silent. This will be under my desk like my last many pc's

I am coming from a full tower ST06 silverstone, so the p180 is a bit smaller than that.

I still havent considered HDD suspension, which seems very beneficial. The P180 seems to offer this in the bottom hdd drawer anyway, but ill wait until ive got all the components.

Im not looking for complete silence, but by my reckoning 20-23dB is pretty much silent to my ears under a desk. The fanless video card has already markedly reduced the sound in my current pc, which is an early 775 based system.

Anyway, quite predictably the thing Im most looking forward to is the LCD hehe. Form over function is the prescription of the day

 

[caramelsoul]

I will need to wait until i get home before i can check this out. But it is a nice case and my system overall is not dissimalar to yours tho i went dual core AMD and have 2GB RAM.

I have got the three fans that came with it installed, no fan on the graphics card. Its not a top of the range card anyway but it is ok. I dont game, so it doesnt matter. I bought a silent fan for the CPU and i cant hear it at all even when the case is open.

I did fit all my hard drives to the bottom chamber (870GB) so the extra fan down there does help. Thats where the cable management is a nightmare.

 

[alex_cs]

ah i see. well i suppose the difference will be between the supplied fans and the nexus fans, which ive been told are basicallly silent unless you have your ear to the case.

the case i love, in terms of design, all it needs is fanless and near silent fans to be perfect. i cant wait!

 

[radz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_cs ah i see. well i suppose the difference will be between the supplied fans and the nexus fans, which ive been told are basicallly silent unless you have your ear to the case.

The nexus fans have a pretty good reputaion for silence. You could always undervolt them to 7v or use a fan controller to make them even more quite.

I have a seasonic 600 watt and find it very quite. The model you are getting is a latter model than mine but I find the Seasonic PSUs very good.

If your main priority is noise I can't figure why you have chosen to use 2 raptors in a raid array. sure they will be slightly faster but alot noisier.

I have a water cooled rig and its pretty quite. The only thing I need to address is the HD noise so i am always checking out HD silencing methods.

I want a balance between performance and funtionality. I have many hard drives and like to have easy access to them which limits my choice of many methods. I am also pretty much out of room in my case so see the hard drive silencing as something I want sorted for my next rig.

You seem to have some really nice gear for your rig though and I look forward to hearing how it all comes together.

 

[alex_cs]

well i forgot to mention i was considering removing them.

but the completely addicting part of raid0 raptors is the system speed, startup and program load times. i figure if i used that as the system drive, then the WD as storage wont make much noise if all i do is play music? or will the system keep seeking even if theres no activity beyond music storage on the 500gig?

if i can find a quiet hdd for my system that gets close to matching twin raptors, then id go to that in a second. although im still interested in fully suspending the raptors in the new case to see what is possible, beucase currently theyre just screwed to the chassis and arent noisy except when they seek.

it can get so complex cant it? i wish there was a 10k rpm drive that was around 20dB max.

 

[radz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_cs well i forgot to mention i was considering removing them. but the completely addicting part of raid0 raptors is the system speed, startup and program load times. i figure if i used that as the system drive, then the WD as storage wont make much noise if all i do is play music? or will the system keep seeking even if theres no activity beyond music storage on the 500gig?

Well your system drive will be in use all the time because thats where your system data is. It just won't be doing heavy read and writes when you are listening to music (removing the benefits of the raided raptors and reducing the noise).

Raided raptors are about the noisiest HD solution you could go for IMO.

In your current PC they might not seem to noisey but as your pc gets quieter all those little noises you didn't notice begin to surface and the more effort you make the more those small noises annoy you.

I linked to this in another thread today http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...d=82&Itemid=27 and have spoken to people who have found it to be really good although never used it myself.

I guess it all depends how much you value fast load times and actually giving them a listen to see how you find them.

 

[caramelsoul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_cs ah i see. well i suppose the difference will be between the supplied fans and the nexus fans, which ive been told are basicallly silent unless you have your ear to the case. the case i love, in terms of design, all it needs is fanless and near silent fans to be perfect. i cant wait!

You are of course correct. I didnt see that you didnt use the supplied ones. I may need to look into upgrading the fans.....darn upgrades.

 

[alex_cs]

Quote:

Originally Posted by caramelsoul You are of course correct. I didnt see that you didnt use the supplied ones. I may need to look into upgrading the fans.....darn upgrades.

they arent expensive in any case, i believe 15-20USD each?

 

[Gamemako]

I get the impression you've been reading SPCR.

Make sure you do actually mount a fan on that heatsink. The Scythe Ninja can run without a fan, but you need a fairly cool case with good airflow and even in that case it'll be a bit warm. You do know that graphics card intake is an 80mm and not a 120mm, right?

And speaking of the heatsink, you might also take a gander at the Thermalright Ultra-120 -- SPCR ranked it above the Scythe Ninja.

With good case airflow and a nice heatsink you can OC quite a bit more than you'd think. You can get a bundle of silent fans into that case and come up with temps around 34C full load. And then you can do like me and clock yourself up by 50%.

If you want to know more about overclocking, the guys at EOC can help. We're all a bit nuts over there.

I'd get a better video card for futureproofing. That is, I'm fairly sure Vista will be a real bitch about that card. That is, if you actually use Vista, which is already a steaming pile of Microsoft (did you expect anything different?). I personally, even as a gamer, won't be using Vista until I absolutely have to. I already removed Vista from my main box and concatenated the partitions. Installing that was such a miserable waste of time.

 

[alex_cs]

thanks Gamemako.

basically this pc will be for FLAC>ASIO plyback and outlook/IE and thats it, and yeah know about the gfx part. i figured a stock E6400 with an exhaust 120mm would be ok for the expected use? is it not?

as i said im not that interested in OCing, done plenty of that in the past and atm and jsut interested in a solid quiet system with the lan/wan features on the mobo.

with the videocard, it cost 87aud which is prob 60USD, not a great deal with is fdine for XP atm

 

[Wilson]

mine system is like yours, and I installed a Fanless Power Supply, it is very quiet, although I still hear a bit of the resonance of the airflow or hard drive spinning within the chassis.

 

[Gamemako]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_cs thanks Gamemako. basically this pc will be for FLAC>ASIO plyback and outlook/IE and thats it, and yeah know about the gfx part. i figured a stock E6400 with an exhaust 120mm would be ok for the expected use? is it not? as i said im not that interested in OCing, done plenty of that in the past and atm and jsut interested in a solid quiet system with the lan/wan features on the mobo. with the videocard, it cost 87aud which is prob 60USD, not a great deal with is fdine for XP atm

You know, I don't know how hot Conroes run on stock cooling. It's funny; I never deal with stock cooling anymore. I would imagine it's not going to be horrible. I'd say you should probably get more airflow into the case though. You'd be surprised how much cooling your case fans provide. You need a good solid airflow in the case, so at least one intake and one exhaust (especially on stock CPU cooling). Otherwise your case will be something akin to a convection oven.

But then again, if you're not trying to keep it even remotely cool, you can go the Dell route and make the things INSANELY hot (but what is the consumer going to know when his 2-year-old processor dies? These things are normal, you know!).

For the love of all things sensible, DO NOT USE INTERNET EXPLORER. I cannot stress that enough. The mere EXISTENCE of IE is a mistake, and its voluntary use is just stupidity.

And hey, if you really don't need much, you might look into slapping Ubuntu on there and saving yourself the overpriced copy of Windows.

//EDIT: Wilson, keep in mind that fanless power supplies are either 1. very low output or 2. run hot as heck. The main problem with the heat is that power supplies can be extremely sensitive to heat and ones running too hot can burn out after less than a year.

 

[rshdhead]

Quote:

Originally Posted by alex_cs Hey all, I think Ive cobbled together a near silent PC. Ive figured you really need fans if you live in a climate that can get hot but anyway this is what Im thinking so far: - Western Digital WD5000KS 500gig (23dba max, normal 20db - for music storage) )

May I ask where did you get these acoustic spec. ?

This is the spce. in WDC.
Idle Mode 28 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 33 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 3 29 dBA (average)