New core 2 build, cooling raid and quiet answers

[julian.day17]

Guys

After a lot of advice from scan forum I finally went to scan and built the following system and would like to share some useful info on memory noise and cooling

System specification.

P5WDH Deluxe
1024MB DDR2 1066MHZ Ram
Asus EAX 1600XT PCIX Card
2x Seagate 320GB
Seasonic 600W PSU
Zalaman nbf47 cooler
Artic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO CPU cooler
AKASA Eclipse Case
2 x AKASA 120 MM 17DBA fans
HP 840i Light scribe DVD

Zalaman Northbridge cooler

On Asus p5wDH deluxe with Zalaman zm-nbf47 aftermarket Northbridge Cooler the Motherboard temp shows around 49 degrees which is the same as the asus stock coolers supplied with the asus board. The problem is if you use this you do not have heat sync on the Voltage regulators.
Therefore I can conclude that the Zalaman offers no advantage.

PSU and case cooling fans

Seasonic 600 W PSU. This PSU is version 2 and is much quieter than its 500W cousin as it supports Qfan technology. This means the fan on the 600W is the quietest i have ever NOT heard :-)
seasonic 600W allows you to put 2 case fans on low voltage connections.
This is done by connecting a separate qfan jumper wire from the PSU to where the chassis fan 1 would be. Then you connect the Seasonic low voltage output plugs to your case fans. This further reduced noise then means they run at approx 760rpm. I use the Akasa 120m 17dba fans as I bought an AKASA Eclipse Case.

P5w DH cooling bios settings

When the p5wdh bios are set in optimal then you never hear then and they also provide adequate cooling keeping the board at 50 degrees. Make sure when you set up the bios you first disable all qfan etc. set all the fans to optimal then enable the ai and qfan options.

CPU Cooler.
Initially I used the Intel Conroe 6400 CPU and the standard Intel cooler. This is ok but idle temp is around 50 degrees C. The noise is not too bad, but I found out the Artic Cooling Freezer 7 PRO is best. This is a lot quieter and more efficient when you set the P5w bios to optimal it will keep idle CPU at around 35degrees. Note I have had this cooler cause the bios on boot up to occasionally say CPU fan error as the fan is operating so slow 300rpm and the CPU is cold. I think it’s because asus bios expects initial fan speed at 700rpm. When the CPU warms up then is seams fine.

DDR2 1066MHZ
Corsair 1066MHZ 1GB 5-5-5-15 works at 1066 MHz on Asus Bios 1305 as this includes the memory timing of DDR2 1066mhz.

QUIET PCIX Card
Asus EAX1600XT will run Doom3 at full res at 1280x1024 with no problem. I have also seen Flight simulator X (new version) and this runs fine as well at high detail.

Setting up Win xp sp1 cd with SATA RAID 1.

To setup main XP C drive as a SATA RAID 1 on P5WDH you need to get 2 identical drives plug into SATA 1 and SATA 3 then enable the INTEL ide raid as per manual and Press control I on post boot to configure it. You must then boot from the asus cd that came with the board and make a floppy driver disk for the Intel raid driver.

Boot XP Sp1 cd and press F6 then select the Intel desktop RAID driver . XP will now load and then find the drive as 1 hard disk.

[rolph]

Planning a similar build. Thanks for the info.

[dancingmatt]

At first I thought "your system will be quiet, there's no processor..." :O)

Apparantly the MB temperature is read from/near the Southbridge, so your Zalman cooler won't make any difference to that.

Nice to hear you like the Seasonic, I'm thinking of getting that. Thanks.

DM