DescentBB

NEW ITEMS -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Gigabyte GA-K8NXP-9 nForce4 Ultra Motherboard (NCQ)----------$304.55
Seagate Barracuda 250Gb 7200.8 SATA NCQ (???)----------$226.06
Thermaltake Sonic Tower w/ Heatpipe (Passive)----------$ 80.44
AMD Athlon64 3200+ Socket939 CPU Boxed (Venice Core)----------$328.39
3 x Vantec Stealth 80mm case fans. (super quiet)----------$ 52.21
Cooler Master 450W Real Power, 120mm, ATX 2.0 (Silent)----------$150.64
Gigabyte GV-RX80L256V X800XL 256MB (Silent Pipe)----------$631.97
2 x Crucial 512MB Ballistix 184-pin DIMM DDR PC4000 ----------$273.84
=========================================================================
Total --------------- $2048.10


Recycled Items
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Lian-Li PC60 case. Black with window.
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz 5.1 sound (???)
Samsung CD/DVD
Samsung 52x CD-RW
Western Digital Parallel ATA WD800JB 80GB w/ 8MB


My PC is dead. I haven't been able to start it outside safe mode for more than a week. OK, I got it going once, but it died after 10 minutes... It's hardware. It ran 40% overclocked for 3+ years, and the gear is pretty much dead. The GFx card is toasted. The PSU is shagged.

My GF Emma is very noise sensitive, and as we "share" the study, she doesn't want a noisey replacement. To this end - I speced the above items, and I'd appreciate your feedback.

I selected the NF4 Ultra board over the SLI board because I don't want 1st Generation technology, and a single X800XL seems to beat dual 6600GTs in most benchmarks. I run dualhead also, and I understand SLI has (or had) troubles with this. Plus, I don't want the hassle of having to track down an identical nVidia card if I ever want to use the SLI. X800XL is less than 2 x 6600GTs...

I'm going for "ultra quiet" on this rig, so that explains the Coolermaster PSU (it has a nice analog 3.5" bay wattmeter which is nice!), the Thermaltake passive/massive CPU cooler, and the passively cooled X800XL. I'll replace the existing 2 inlet and 1 outlet 80mm case fans with the vantec stealths. (The Lian-Li originals probably need replacing afetr 2.5 years anyway.)

I have a couple of questions though:

1) Anyone know if that Seagate drive (Native NCQ, same as Motherboard) is a quiet unit? Can you recommend a 250GB drive which would be as fast, but quieter?

2) Is it worth installing the Santa Cruz Card? The board comes with nVidia's 7.1 integrated sound. Do I lighten any CPU load by installing the standalone board?

3) Anyone have any idea if the 3 Stealth's plus the 120mm PSU fan will be enough to keep internal temperatures low enough to prevent problems? The Lian-Li also has a top blow-hole - but I took the fan out to lower the noise - I figure just the slots in top provide a little extra cooling.

4) Overclocking: I think I should be able to pull a mild (10% +/-) out of this system. Care to comment? Given the Venice core, perhaps even 20%!

I just got a seagate 250 7200.8. It's IDE, but I don't think that would affect noise. It's a good bit quieter than the maxtor 80, which is also installed. The seagate doesn't produce the high-pitched whine like the maxtor. Also, the actuator makes less noise during heavy usage.

fwiw, sandra reported a 57 Mb/s rating for the seagate.

Sweet. Thanks man.

As usual, quiet is a trade-off. If the Stealths are quiet enough and move enough air, then you're set, but I doubt just 2x80mm fans intake will do the trick. Try it and monitor temps, see what you get. Let us know how it works.

Cool with a Tornado and get a new GF?

have been using the diamondmax 10s for about 6 months now. cooler and quieter than the 8s or 9s and the benchmarks seem to say 8% quicker. i only occasionally hear the head move during a heavy defrag session. still waiting on asetek and their new microcooler to come out for me to play with, mmmm phase-change

My dually rig uses Cooler Master heatpipes for CPU cooling. I used AS5 and strapped a low-speed Zalman fan to each one and they run at 50 degrees C all day long, with a single exhaust fan next to them. So if need be, you can always strap a low-speed fan on the heatpipe.

I'm not familiar with the PC60 case but if you have a fan in the side panel to cool the video card and mobo components, plus the fans in the front and rear, that *should* be enough to keep everything cool without driving you mad with noise.

Funny Iceman! She's lovely though, and earns 4 times what I do - so that option is - well - not an option.

I don't have a fan in the side-window, and don't want to put one in it. Yeah - the giant CPU heatsink can have a slow fan placed on it (or two even) but the idea is to keep the thing as quiet as possible.

I'll keep you all posted as to how it works out.

If you want cool yet silent, I'd go for water-cooling. Almost perfectly silent, and it works very well, too.

Problem with WC is that you can't cool everything in the box. And unless you could, you still need fans - which sort of defeats the idea of it. No. Watercooling is for big overclocking, rather than quietness. Sure, no CPU fan or GFx fan, but you still have to cool the chipset, PSU, Hard Drives, and optical drives.

I won't be going down that route as I don't plan to do any overclocking. OK, so maybe just a fraction if the box is stable on air.

I'd like to second that of all the hard drives I've used (WD, Maxtor, Seagate, IBM), the Seagates are by far the quietest and consistently remain that way. A Maxtor sounds absolutely rattly compared to a Seagate.

You need to browse around http://silentpcreview.com They'll tell you that Seagates are quitest, Vantec Stealth fans are noisy, and the quietest PS they've ever heard is a Seasonic.

They're a little fanatical if you ask me, but they're very knowledgable.

Thanks Mr. P.

Mobius wrote:Problem with WC is that you can't cool everything in the box. And unless you could, you still need fans - which sort of defeats the idea of it. No. Watercooling is for big overclocking, rather than quietness. Sure, no CPU fan or GFx fan, but you still have to cool the chipset, PSU, Hard Drives, and optical drives.

Sure you can -- there are water blocks for everything in your list. If you are a fanatic you can even get a watercooled PSU. With a dual 120mm fan radiator the fans can spin really slow. As quite as it gets. Koolance stuff is easy to deal w/, reliable and expensive For a PSU BTW I'd recommend a OCZ Powerstream -- very good PSU that's even pretty silent

For in-depth PSU info check X-Bit Labs:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/ ... ology.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/ ... l-psu.html
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/ ... x-psu.html

Edit: forgot to mention -- the problem w/ water cooling are usually various voltage converters (MB, GF/X card) that rely on airflow for cooling.

Edit II: quote from the last link above about your PSU:

Well, this power-meter is more like a mere decoration. I checked its showings to find them contradicting the reality: the higher the consumed power, the bigger the discrepancy is. The tool shows 50-70 watts less than it should when the PSU is under full load. So, even though it is going to look most strikingly on the system case, you shouldnâ??t rely on its showings too much.
[..]
So, the CoolerMaster RealPower RS-450-ACLY is a quality product. Its advantages include active PFC, stable voltages (despite its classic design without auxiliary regulators), a quiet 12cm fan with highlighting, and long cables with numerous plugs suitable for any system case. But the manufacturer is not quite honest talking about the compliance of this PSU with the ATX12V 2.0 standard. The load characteristic of this PSU on the +12V rail is only comparable with 300W models as described by this standard. The RS-450-ACLY will suit perfectly for modern midrange systems, but you may want to consider other PSUs, with higher currents on the +12V rail (they donâ??t necessarily have to have a higher wattage), if youâ??re building up some extreme configuration.

Edit III: oops, missed one -- http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/ ... p-psu.html

WHAT!!! $2048.10 !!!!

Why not just set fire to a bunch of money?
Your better off getting a 486 DX or somthing.

SLI. X800XL?

OMFG - you crack me up man. Best laugh I've had in days. Please enjoy your 19% finance rate!

Chris, the little I can advise would be in the area of the sound card. Unless the on-board sound chip built into the mb have matured since I tried using a couple of years back, I'd use the Santa Cruz card. I have never had a problem with mine.

Good one Xeon! That's brilliant man. Inappropriate, but funny! (What I'm buying is price/feature/performance sweet spot, not bleeding edge waste-of-money items )

Yeah Woodchip, unless the onboard 7.1 is clearly superior, I'll go with the TBSC card.

Grendel appreciate your input, and yeah - it's possible to cool everything in the box with water - but not economic. I priced up a system with enough capacity and loops to cool everything, and it adds around $500 to the total - which, as Xeon so kindly pointed out , is already quite high enough!

I *think* this box will be quiet enough to keep the GF happy.

I ordered all the parts today - the only thing not in stock today is the X800XL, which may take a little time.

If you want "ultra quiet" why not get an Asus A8N-SLI Premium Motherboard with a heatpipe instead of a chipset fan? The heatpipe works better than a fan, and with no moving parts it's silent.

Or is that too much of a "bleeding edge waste-of-money item" for you?

No. But depending on how noisey the chipset, and additional power-smoothing chipset fans are, I'll rip them out and the associated heat-sinks, and attach modified heat-pipe heatsinks.

I checked the price of the Asus board, and it's an additonal $160 for a feature I'll never use (SLI). The cooling solution looks good on it - but I'm sure I can come up with an equally quiet one for much less than the price differential.

Thanks for the tip though.

Question: Why are you paying for special fans when you can just solder a 50k pot to the power cable running a regular 80mm fan and dial it down to whatever you want?

A) Because the existing fans are 3 years old - and hardly likely to be in a great condition internally.

B ) Because a slowed down fan makes less noise it doesn't move nearly as much air which wouldn't be ideal for a passively cooled CPU and GPU methinks.

C) The existing fans *already* have speed controllers. Putting them on anything except "slow" results in too much noise. "Slow" makes the box hotter by 5 degrees C...