Comments on my potential build?

[herulach]

it sounds like you might be expecting a lot for a single machine. 8 sata ports is a lot, and as cat says is going to bump costs up quite substantially. Presumably you want to run 6 disks +optical and external? Thats not going to make for a quiet machine unless they're all ssds. Even 1 takes my system from just about audible to annoying as hell. Spinning down is of course an option, but then spinning back up again is really annoying. If you're going to have a lot of spinning drives in there then a sound deadened case is a must.

[koocha]

The problem is the case is not soundproofed,so if you really want a quiet system you need to mod it with acoustic foam. Plus the Nanoxia case comes with quieter fans. My mate has the Fractal R3 with a Phenom II X6 1045T with the AMD 125W TDP CPU stock cooler. He runs bioinformatics stuff on his CPU which pegs the cores at 100% for days at a time. The AMD stock cooler is not quiet under load,but with the sound proofing it really blocks most of the sound out.

The case and fans used are very important for a quiet system.

Even with my mini-ITX system I used acoustic foam on the side panel.



The Nanoxia case has all the ports at the top. Plus it is an mATX case meaning it is smaller too.

Edit!!

It seems you want 8 SATA ports too. That severely limits the number of motherboards you can get. Most come with six connected onto physical ports on the motherboard plus E-SATA on the backplate.

The Z77,H77,Z87 and H87 chipsets only support 6 SATA ports natively.

Any more ports come through the use of third party controllers which can cause their own set of problems.

It also bumps up the price of the motherboard too and also means mATX is probably out too.

Thanks for the suggestions.

The size of the case doesn't bother me. I've got a 42" telly on a stand with room at the back to spare, so the case will be hidden anyway. All ports at the top are a must, as they'd be easy to get to.
The other cases I've seen that fit the bill are the bitfenix ghost and the thermaltake urban t31

I think the motherboard I've found is perfect: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...id=4719&dl=#ov
6 x USB 3 on the back and 8 x SATA ports

Would the stock Intel cooler be quiet enough, or do I need an aftermarket one?

Here's something I found about the Asus R9 270 being quieter at full load than others are at idle:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7503/t...at-asus-his/16
so that's in my build now.

Here's the Xeon based build so far:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/2WFD8

[DanceswithUnix]

Back to the SSD, I don't think you will feel any difference between the msata card and sata ports. It is the almost 0ms access speed that makes the difference, not the 200MB/sec platters vs 500MB/sec SSD throughput difference.

I would get the SATA one personally, just because things have a habit of getting re-used and I don't have much need for msata cards. Cheaper helps too

Edited to fix mixed up stuff.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You might want to consider getting some adhesive sound proofing foam too.

My only experience with the Intel stock cooler has been in SFF gaming builds and I was not impressed.

OTH,it might be OK with a full sized build,but since you have a large bugdet,you might as well consider a better one for £10 to £20,especially as IB and Haswell run a bit hot.

[mikeo01]

I was going to mention same thing CAT has, sound proofing. Damping, foam whatever you call it. It really can save the day. All you need is an enclosed case with soft stuff basically to absorb vibrations and sound waves.

And to be perfectly honest you may do a better job at it than the more expensive pre-build cases. Should be quite cheap if you look on Amazon or even look for alternative materials
Damping for the hard drives will kill the noise (or better still, enclose them). They do run quite cool from my experience (the newer Barracudas).


Also for a little bit of gaming when comparing graphics card always look for the minimum frame rates (or the time variation between frames) as that's more important than maximum frame rates. An R9 270 is lovely jubbly MSI TwinFrost seem to have good reviews for being the most quiet card.


I'd personally replace the stock Intel too, it's quite rubbish. I'd just pick up some other cheap cooler, True Spirit 140, the overused CM Hyper 212, Thermalright Macho, Phanteks U-Type or even take a look at the refurbished water cooling solutions over at Scan

[koocha]

You might want to consider getting some adhesive sound proofing foam too.

My only experience with the Intel stock cooler has been in SFF gaming builds and I was not impressed.

OTH,it might be OK with a full sized build,but since you have a large bugdet,you might as well consider a better one for £10 to £20,especially as IB and Haswell run a bit hot.

I was going to mention same thing CAT has, sound proofing. Damping, foam whatever you call it. It really can save the day. All you need is an enclosed case with soft stuff basically to absorb vibrations and sound waves.

And to be perfectly honest you may do a better job at it than the more expensive pre-build cases. Should be quite cheap if you look on Amazon or even look for alternative materials
Damping for the hard drives will kill the noise (or better still, enclose them). They do run quite cool from my experience (the newer Barracudas).


Also for a little bit of gaming when comparing graphics card always look for the minimum frame rates (or the time variation between frames) as that's more important than maximum frame rates. An R9 270 is lovely jubbly MSI TwinFrost seem to have good reviews for being the most quiet card.


I'd personally replace the stock Intel too, it's quite rubbish. I'd just pick up some other cheap cooler, True Spirit 140, the overused CM Hyper 212, Thermalright Macho, Phanteks U-Type or even take a look at the refurbished water cooling solutions over at Scan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG10ks8PLQ4

Laminate flooring underlay!

[Pob255]

I'd agree with mike, Although I think some of those coolers might be a bit o.t.t.
Anything half decent in the £20-30 range should be good, scan has the be quiet! Shadow Rock Pro SR1 on sale http://www.scan.co.uk/products/be-qu...-fan-for-all-i
Now why I'd suggest the shadow rock over say the Hyper 212 Evo or Silverstone SST-AR01 is the fan, both these coolers should do the job, if the PWM settings are done correct they will be very quiet when idel/light load (desktop, web browsing, watching video, etc) sustained load for time (gaming) you'll probably here it kick in.
You could replace a fan on them but a good 120mm PWM fan is going to cost you £8-10

[koocha]

I'd agree with mike, Although I think some of those coolers might be a bit o.t.t.
Anything half decent in the £20-30 range should be good, scan has the be quiet! Shadow Rock Pro SR1 on sale http://www.scan.co.uk/products/be-qu...-fan-for-all-i
Now why I'd suggest the shadow rock over say the Hyper 212 Evo or Silverstone SST-AR01 is the fan, both these coolers should do the job, if the PWM settings are done correct they will be very quiet when idel/light load (desktop, web browsing, watching video, etc) sustained load for time (gaming) you'll probably here it kick in.
You could replace a fan on them but a good 120mm PWM fan is going to cost you £8-10

Thanks. I've put that cooler on my build. I'm thinking that maybe I might get the graphics card first? Do you think with my CPU I'd be able to run BF4 better?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

In MP the CPU will be a limitation,but the R9 270 supports Mantle,so when it comes out of Beta,it should help things a bit IMHO.

[koocha]

In MP the CPU will be a limitation,but the R9 270 supports Mantle,so when it comes out of Beta,it should help things a bit IMHO.

Thanks. Now to convince the wife I need to spend 140 quid on a graphics card. She is complaining about the noise mind...

[DanceswithUnix]

Thanks. Now to convince the wife I need to spend 140 quid on a graphics card. She is complaining about the noise mind...

Easy, tell her you need to spend £200 on a graphics card

[koocha]

Easy, tell her you need to spend £200 on a graphics card

That's a good plan...

[koocha]

Easy, tell her you need to spend £200 on a graphics card

BOOM! Early birthday present coming up!

Now for Asus, MSI or Gigabyte? Time for a Google!

EDIT: it's a no go. Was about to order the gigabyte from ebuyer but the Mrs thought it was 60 quid, not 130

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Supposedly a rebadged HD7950 is being released:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd...280,26022.html

[Jake12321]

2 SSD's sounds a bit overkill - i only ever need on my PC and they are overpriced to have 480GB of it because you could take one SSD away and have another £100 which could update your graphics card ALOT or get you something like an i7, also from my experience 16gb of RAM isnt needed for gaming as most games only require 8gb & you forgot to include an operating system lol

[Pob255]

The Xeon is an i7 minus the unneeded on die graphics and a lower TDP because of it for a slightly cheaper price, why it was suggested.

Same goes for the dropped idea of the 2nd ssd

OS I'm guessing he'll reuse his retail windows7

I'd say that dropping down from a 480gb ssd to a 240gb would be a nice way to knock £100 off the total for a new build http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/part/cruc...-ct240m500ssd1