The Official PC building thread -3rd Edition

Pff quiet, you don't know the meaning of the word

 

There's a difference between quiet and silent. I plan to make this machine as quiet as possible within the hardware limits, including sleeve bearing fans, vibration dampeners on the fans, drives, PSU, and yes, auto fan speeds. Whether or not that meets your standard is another story ;P

 

Silent, if only
As quiet as possible is going a lot further than just using sleeve bearing fans. An aftermarket GPU cooler is a wise idea (though the stock XFX cooler on the 4830 is relatively good, but only if you use Catalyst, it's pretty poor otherwise as the fan speed is very aggressive by default)
Green 5400rpm hard drives only, a select set of PSUs (that means no oCZ), no case fan above 700rpm for 120mm or 900rpm for 80mm. Them you have a truly quiet system. It's easily doable as I proved, and using relatively high end parts in a case not remotely designed for quietness.
Agreed though, this is impossible to achieve with ball bearing fans, 7200rpm HDDs (vibration) and most stock GPU coolers and Power supplies. To give you an idea, a Corsair HX520 at idle fan speed would completely drown out my system at idle, and be as loud as it when gaming, if not louder.
Temps
CPU: 35ºC idle, 45-50ºC load (Fanless)
GPU: 65-7ºC idle (500rpm)(40%), 71-75ºC load (1100rpm)(55%)
PSU: c. 40ºC (370rpm)
Case fans: NZXT 120mm 1100 @ 400rpm (Rear Exhaust), SFF21F 1600 @ 600rpm (Front intake)

 

man i have a lian-li case.... this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112141&Tpk=pc-a70b

but i gave to to my borther as its a tad to big, and sold all the watercooling parts.

now i have a shoebox PC

 

Sam,
Hold onto you hat then because here's a case with 3 140mm front fans. Of course that's only if you use no ODDs. It looks like for 4 drives, you need to remove the top fan, as I don't think they would do much good with the door open! LOL!!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112159

I do agree that sleeve bearing fans are a bit quieter, but I can't get them to last. Not with my normal 14-17 hours a day, anyway. My oldest Silverstone is over 3 years old now and still is quieter than when I installed it new, 2 cases ago! About every 6 months, I clean and then lube them with a special oil I have that costs $32-$37 for 60ml. It also works great for Sleeve bearing fan's too! I haven't looked into lubing the rear Rifle Bearing LED Silverstone yet as it's not old enough to require any attention, and it is super quiet! At 53 cfm, it seems to be a good alternative to what I used in the Cavalier case. The rear Silverstone being 400rpm faster is quieter than the 800 rpm Kama Bay fan!

I have owned two Aluminum cases, and maybe I needed to use silicone mounts or o-rings or something, but they always transmitted more noise than the steel case does with the fans just screwed in normally.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Once again, quiet is relative. At 53CFM, most fans are what I would term 'noisy', i.e. on their own they turn PC from being inaudible until you listen for it, to clearly audible at all times. Also, the rear fan is only quieter because it's at the back of the case not the front. Since the Kama Bay is pure exposed air (which is why I dislike cases like the Antec 900 for having exposed front fans) it makes a lot more noise. Put that 800mm Scythe at the back and the Silverstone at the front, and you'd start hating the Silverstone I assure you.

Aluminium cases transmit vibrations more than other cases, but as I say, cut the fan speed low enough and you still can't hear them anyway. However I much prefer Alu cases to Steel ones for weight, and also for strength. You can bend Steel case side panels with your bare hands, as a result a lot of the steel cases I've had have had bent side panels that no longer fit, so I had to get the pliers out to bend them back into shape so the case would shut. I had to this with my Lexa Blackline (as that version is steel vs. the original Lexa's aluminium), and also had to do it with the HAF, merely a week after I bought it, as the material can't really take the extra weight of the side panel being twice the size.

 

You knew what I was implying ;P

My main goal is to: use my Freezer 64 Pro, 2 decent airflow 120MM red LED fans with silicone vibration dampeners, vibration dampener on the StealthXStream, dampeners on the optical and HDDs. Not silent by any means. But the idea is to take a decently specced system and, while keeping strong airflow, cut the noise level a notch or two. Sort of a theme I have going. Imagine that $85 Lian Li case with a red LED fan in the front and back with moderate to low noise levels. Quiet, sleek, sophisticated, yet mean. Kind of an overall theme.

The fans are preferably in the 40-50CFM range BTW. Good balance of airflow and noise, IMO.

 

Do you not think the 4870s will ruin that?

 

Nope this is for my LAN box

If I can leave the 9800GTX as the loudest thing in the case and only when gaming, I'm happy. It's actually quite low-noise, even at load.

Note: edited my last post for better wording.

 

Oh right I see. Shouldn't be an issue then. I'm still not especially confident about the noise level of the PSU though.

 

You must be listening extremely hard then. Because I had to look at the fan on the StealthXStream to see if it was actually spinning, with all other fans turned down or off. My head ~2 feet from the open case. It's really no louder than my Corsair, which is near silent. This is a PSU built for silence remember.

 

But it's also an OCZ, and the rest of OCZ's PSU lineup is noisy, hence why SPCR never test them. You probably couldn't hear the PSU over the Seagate HDDs. I couldn't with mine either, I had to ditch it for a WD or put it in a silentbox to hear it. The Samsung I later added also drowned out the HX from vibration.

 

Well the StealthXStream must be an exception because it truly is quiet out of all the things currently in the case. Maybe it will be more noticeable with a quieted down case, but it is certainly sufficient for a low noise PC.

The 2 320GB Seagate HDDs are near dead silent as well. My older drives, a 160GB, a 250GB, and a(now dead after a fall) 500GB were definitely noisy. But the 320GB drives are some of the quietest I've ever used. My new 500s are the same. Very quiet. I wouldn't put up with them if they were noisy. Exactly why I replaced my smaller capacity drives with bigger, quieter ones. The 320s were a surprise and thus, still get used.

 

See that's where 'Silence is relative' comes in, because I couldn't live with two Seagate drives in a system.

 

sam the drives may be quiet and different drive to drive.

 

For what it's worth I don't use either of my seagate hdds since they make to much noise. Eventually they'll be put in external enclosures and used for backups.

 

Here's my temps from when I started this post.

All my fans are running at 1200 rpm except the Freezer 64 Pro, at 1300 rpm. The loudest fan in it is the Kama bay, mainly because it's the one closest to me. Even then I know it will get quieter with age as it's a ball bearing fan. I just wish Scythe made a Blue LED fan, as it would look even sharper.

Ambient temperature is 27C, and the computer has been on since I got up at 4:30 AM. My normal idle temps are 29-32. Under load, it has to be very warm in here to hit 50C! You can hear air moving up to about 4-5 ft. from the computer, and it's quieter with 5 case fans than my old one was in the Cavalier case, with no mechanical noise at all. There's a little bit more vibration, given that there are two more 120mm fans than were on the Cavalier. 4 of the 5 fans are ball bearing. I don't use large drives, so vibration from them is almost non existent. On startup the Video card fan runs at 100% until the software loads. The newly designed Cooler fan makes far less noise than the Freezer 7 Pro did, in fact it has to get to over 1600 rpm to even be audible. The only time I hear a HDD at all, is from the DeathStar 250, and really only when it writes. My boot drive is my old faithful Seagate 160, and you can't even hear that spin up at startup with the side cover off. My computer is not completely silent, but it is quieter than my E6750 was!

I think you have done a great job with yours, cooling it passively as much as possible, and I'm sure you are pleased with it. My goals were a little bit different than yours, but I feel that we have both accomplished what we set out to do, and that's all anyone can ask for! I tuned mine for the best cooling, and you tuned yours for the lowest noise level, two different approaches, seeking two different results. The good thing is we are both happy with our work!

As far as cases go, they are a very subjective thing. I like the Criterion 534, and I was just hoping to be able to have as quiet a machine as I had before. After a little fiddling around with the fan's airflow directions, I wound up with better than I was looking for, both in temps and noise level. My HDD temps are 10-12 degrees lower than they were before, and I'll try not to ever get a case again that doesn't have the sideways mounted HDD bays. I'm sure that the tool-less mounts for the hard drives have something to do with that too!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

The Kama Bay is a ball bearing? Are you sure? I thought all Scythe fans were either Sleeve or FDB.
Realistically, my PC performs the same as yours, and makes a hell of a lot less noise doing it. It cost comparatively very little to build (about £350 excluding Case and Mobo) and can keep up with most gaming PCs. Temps in my mind are fine, as it's nowhere near close to overheating, and actually has ample room to overclock, though I haven't tried yet.

 

Sam,
Nope, the FN121-BL is the quietest fan in the case. I've tried it all by itself, and you have to take the cover off to hear it at all. I only bought it because I wanted to give it a go and see what it did. They advertise 26 Dba, but it's quieter than that! The noise you hear with the Scythe, is airflow. There is no mechanical noise whatsoever, except when the Video card spins up gaming, and it's not annoying as it never gets close to full speed, even while running 3DMark 03 or 06! I'm going to Orange next week, and I'm going to throw both the Kama Bay and the Silverstone in the Anechoic chamber, and I'll let you know how much noise each of them actually make!

What do you do to those poor covers to bend them like that? I guess I'm lucky, as I've never bent one, either steel or aluminum! I've had ones on cheap cases (before I knew better) that didn't fit properly to begin with, but that's poor quality control, not abuse! LOL!!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Detach and reattach the side panel more than half a dozen times, that's all it takes.
Also, airflow noise is 95% WHAT the fan is attached to, not the fan itself.