Quick and Quiet P.C. can I have my cake and eat it?

[amjedm]

If by testing you mean the fan spins up then you can try the paperclip trick.

http://www.pcpowercooling.com/suppor...oubleshoot.htm

[FatalSaviour]

herulach water cooling!? It's been a while since I built a P.C. I'm not going to tax my 'fat' fingers with water cooling, I can only see myself causing hundreds of pounds of damage ... and I'm a poor swimmer.

MSIC thanks for the link to silentpcreview thread, liked 'Quiet CD-ROM/DVD-ROM section' I have a Yamaha cd writer when it reads a C.D. it drowns out my noisy PSU.

I'm beginning to think I don't need to go crazy for the premium quiet components, just about anything I buy will be quieter than the P.C. I have at the moment. Any how what's in/on my mind ..

CASE: P180 case - any reason why scan don't sell this
PSU: Seasonic S12 - not sure what watt yet
HD: Samsung SpinPoint P120S
VIDEO: some version of the Nvidia 7800 with a Zalman fan
CPU: AMD OEM - an Opteron might be in stock by the time I have my money
(Does any one have a good word of intel on the forum? I haven't see one recomendation .. yet.)
CPU COOLER: Scythe Ninja HeatPipe or Zalman 9500
MOTHERBOARD: I really like what I have read about the Asus A8N32-SLi but I don't think I would run SLI but it's good for overclocking.

Things I need to consider:
CD/DVD drive
floppy drive
mouse + keyboard
Fans for the case.
sound card
opps memory (kind of ironic forgetting that!) 2GB of something

P180 case question, any comments on the front door of the case (I need the case to be on the floor on a carpet will it open O.K?) I have read a few reports of it been a bit shonky.

The door was a bit annoying. Antec have a link on their website on how to bend it back into shape. It's about 50% better than it was before (49.58% to be precise), but still not perfect. However, the door does go someway to blocking out noise from any high pitched whines from fans or optical drives. I've got a couple now, overall, I'm happy with them.
As to, will it open on a carpet, my bedroom's laid with 0.8cm (near as I can measure) carpet. The door opens fine.

[manwithnoname]

Update My system is 'Pimped' I put all my crap into my new case with the Seasonic PSU. I got am extension cable for the M/B power cable.

A few notes and observations:

When I first powered up it sounded like a band saw - one of the HD power cables was touching the fan in the lower chamber of the case, I have unpluged the fan for now. My HD is in the upper chamber, the PSU chould be able to keep itself cool(?)

I haven't looked into fitting a floppy drive, it looks a bit trick, but I cannot be bothered to try until I have a Black drive to fit.

The Door on the Case is shonky - I only noticed the 'bow' in it when I read FatalSaviour post, I'll have a look for the 'un bowing' details on the Antec website later. If they had used the same build for the door as for the side panels I think they would have been on a real winner.

I'm not to sure how quite this is at the moment the side panel is off and my current CPU HSF is very loud. I think I can get away with disconnecting the Fan as I have 2 120mm fans drawing air across it, if anyone experience of this feel free to post I'm going to search the internet the weekend.
Extra info: The heat sink is about 90mm by 70mm by 25mm, the process is currently clocked at 733mhz (see the foot note on why is underclocked) and the heat sink is very cold to the touch. The PC has been running for about an hour .. I'm a s l o w ... t y p e r

Hope I'm not boring you all, I'll post again when I buy something better to put in the case, or if I get my current bits running quieter.


(I got a nvidia 5600 card with a Zalman coolor on it from a friend, the PC would work for about 2 hours then just lock up, the last thing I tried was under clocking to reduce the heat inside the case, did not help. I forgot to set the CPU back to stock speed)

[FatalSaviour]

For anyone who needs it, I've dug out the link out of my 300+ so called 'favorites'.
http://www.antec.com/p180/p180.html
Hope it helps...

[FatalSaviour]

IMHO opinion, there's no room in the PSU chamber for a 38mm fan at least. I'm gonna go with a modular Antec NeoHE when they get their Asus compatbility issues fixed to replace my Tagan TG480U01, just so as I can at least use a 25mm fan in there.
I'd say that unless you've got 4 hard drives in there, you'll be fine without a fan in any case...What model Seasonic did you get in the end?

Also, with the hardware you've got running in there, you should be able to get that PC running almost dead silent. If you do need a hand choosing any parts, coming up with new ideas to quieten it down, just post, or PM me.

[manwithnoname]

If you're not interested in reading about 5 year old components stop here.

You've been warned yet you read on ... I'm half way through an upgrade (well less than half: a PSU and Case) I thought I tinker around and see how quiet I could get my current system.

There are 6 fans on my system
3 case fans (P180)
1 CPU HSF (a coolmaster something!?)
1 M/B HSF (stand on the asus A7V133)
1 video card fan (an 'inno3D' Ti4200 128MB)

Before I did anything I had to unplug the fan in the lower chamber as the PSU cables were catching the fan.

Tweak 1 loudest fan: CPU
note the CPU is a athlon Thunderbird 1200mhz(133mhz FSB) clocked at 733mhz
The Seasonic PSU comes with a cable to fix a HD power connector to 3 fans. Used this to supply 5v to the 12v fans.

Temp readings/fan setting:
37C 12v
41C 5v
55C no fan

not sure if 55C is too hot so stuck at 5v fan as I cannot hear it above anything else at the moment

Tweak 2 loudest fan: M/B
disconnect M/B fan OMG that's one noisy mother.
(tried to run at 5v but it does not spin)

Tweak 3 loudest fan: video card
swap the Ti4200 for a 5600 with a Zalman HSF

Tweak 4 loudest fan: video card
Run the Zalman Fan at 5v

Tweak 5 loudest fan: CPU
disconnect CPU fan.

Tweak 6 loudest fan: Case
disconnect Case fans

Tweak 7 loudest fan: video card
disconnect... o.k. I'll stop here unfortuately the video card locks up after about 2 hours of use so I have left the fan connected.

All I can hear is the video card fan, broken up by the sound of the HD

.. Opps the CPU hit 63C I'll stop the game of chicken here, not since I used my ZX Spectrum has my computer been as quiet as that.

Sorry for spelling or if bits don't make sense - I need to post before the video card locks up

Anyone any thoughts on run this M/B with the fan disconnected? (humm...anyone else got one of these M/B ?)

[oshta]

Im a bit of a silence freak, and the pc im on now (see "my system") is very quite.

- The CPU has the stock cooler/fan on it, running at 5v, i fold all the time the pc's on, but the temp sits at 45 anyway.
- The Gcard has a zalman ZM80-HP passive cooler on it, and which keeps it far cooler than the stock one ever did.
- The NB has the blue zalman cooler on it, and again is silent, and more than coo enough.
- The one case fan is a 92mm papst at the back, running on 5v, just to keep the air ticking over the Gcard and NB.
- The PSU is a Nexus NX3000, which is very quite at stock, its the most audiable thing, but thats not saying much.
- Also, the HDD is a samsung spinpoint and sitting on a block of foam at the bottom of the case.

All in all, ive got a fairly decent pc which for few quid for the Gcard cooler and the NB cooler, and 5mins with the soldering iron to make the fans run at 5v, i cant here it when its on the floor 3ft away, except when its very quite (ie im up late doing an assignment till 2) most of the time it totatly drowned out by my typing or someone talking in the room above mine.


Daniel

[manwithnoname]

Just taken deliverly of this lot:
7900GT
Asus A8N 32 SLi Deluxe 939 nf4
Corsair TWINX2048-3200C2PT
AMD Opteron 165 socket 939
Arctic Cool. Freezer64Pro s939
250 GB Samsung SpinPoint P120
and a few other little bits

Only got the Arctic freezer because I was ordering a OEM Opteron and thought it came without a fan (and the Scythe Ninja I wanted was out of stock) - the Opteron came with a fan!

Anyway just transplanted my old system out of my P180, I've abandoned any more 'building' for today after sliceing my finger trying to fit the i/o back plate to the case - it's days like these where my 2 finger typing skills come to the fore.

One thing I've noticed, the 4 pin ATX12v connector on the M/B is as far away from my PSU as possible...