• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Help with silent SFF gaming build

W

willis936

n00b
Joined
Oct 24, 2012
Messages
10
1. What will you be doing with this PC?
Gaming, Overclocking, matlab/misc engineering tools, media playback, photoshop.

2. What's your budget?
Budget is fairly flexible but uncertain at this point in time. Looking between one and two grand when all is said and done. I'm not really looking to comprimise on parts here and will save as necessary within reason ($2200+ post shipping is not within reason). I'm also still assessing my financial situation and won't have a solid idea of a final budget for another few weeks. No tax in my state.

3. Where do you live?
Live in NH, no B&M hardware stores near me and can't adventure too much in semester.

4. What exact parts do you need for that budget?
CPU, RAM, SSD boot drive, case, motherboard, additional case fans, cooling system (likely air, wil discuss below). Would like a BR burner but not necessary for build.

5. If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing?
Possibly reusing GPU since my evga superclocked 560 Ti has not seen a price drop since I got it last fall but I figure I'd like to keep it clean on a new build. My old build is an aging Q6600 that I've had to overclock just to keep playing newer multiplayer games and even then it's holding my card back.
I also have a PSU I got a little over a year ago. It's a Corsair GS600. This model is not ideal for this build and will likely not be used.
Intel mPCIe NIC 633
2 x Cougar CF-V12HPB
AZiO uSB BT dongle
WD Caviar Black 1TB
WD Caviar Blue 500GB

6. What specific features do you need in a motherboard?
required: USB 3.0, SATA 6G, onboard support for wifi, at least one PCIe 3.0x16, XMP

support, good overclocking ability
wanted: RAID support for future upgrades, at least one PCIe x4 for potential add on cards

7. What resolution output do you need?
This will likely end up driving one 1920x1080 60Hz monitor and one satellite monitor with resolution varying from 1440x900 to 1920x1080. This second monitor will not be used for gaming, just expanded workspace and system monitoring.

8. Does this system need to fit into a particular space?
No. This is a gaming build. I realized going into this that there is a lot of unused

space on ATX and if I can make it small and make it silent without sacrificing any performance then why the hell not?

9. How comfortable are you with custom case design/modification and electrical wiring?
I am comfortable with tools and have access to a small vertical mill, small lathe, unlimited hand tools, power drill, dremel, several soldering irons, and a collection of jelly beans that would make any electrical engineer cry. I'm not looking to do heavy modification in this build though. At most I'd likely swap out a case's front LED to better suit the internal color scheme and lower the brightness so it's overall less noticeable.

10. How important is the noise/silence of this sytem?
As I said this is a gaming build but silence is incredibly high on my priority list. I

will have this less than 3 feet away from my ears and I don't want to even know if it's on or not unless I can see the LED.

11. How mobile does this system need to be?
I would like this to be mobile enough to the point that if I decided to go to a LAN party in the next four years I'd be able to without much difficulty. That being said mobility is not incredibly high on my priority list. I'd be open to the idea of a custom water loop.

12. Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license?
W7 x64. I'd like to get W8 x64 Pro as from what I've read it boots up like lightning and is much more efficient in terms of memory usage. It's also come highly reccomended from friends who know much more about OS design than I do as being very good for efficient workflow (major, major plus).

13. When do you plan on building/buying the PC? Immediately, in a couple weeks, 3-5 years?
I've been gathering information and researching for the past month and I'll likely pull the trigger on Newegg this coming Cyber Monday (end of November).



Now that I have that out of the way let me introduce myself and cover a few more details about what I know and what I'd like opinions on. My name's Paul and I'm an electrical engineering student. I made my first computer about four and a half years ago at this point and I think it's time to upgrade. The choice to make a silent SFF gaming build came primarily from me realizing I think a proper PC should have as small of a footprint as possible. I could easily use a mid ATX case and spend the same amount of money but the fact is I'm just not going to use more than one PCIe slot ever and I don't need 12 hdd bays. If I can cram a monster computer into a small space then I've done something more efficiently.

This build will likely be based around the Fractal Design Define Mini and Asus Maximus V Gene. It is entirely possible that I will end up reusing my 560 Ti as that is a very capable card and ends up trimming nearly a quarter of the cost right there. For right now I like the looks for the Asus 670 GTX DirectCU2 because from what I gather it's incredibly powerful yet incredibly quiet: the embodiment of what I'm aiming for. As for PSU I'm liking the looks of the Seasonic X650 Gold for reasons that should be apparent to anyone who looks at it. Processor wise I'm looking at the 3770k. It may have less overclocking headroom and may not be as well suited price/performance wise as the 3570k but it's an extra $100 and it makes me feel like I have the best non-enthusiast CPU on the market. After digging up lots of info on every SSD from here to enterprise-PCIe-SSD-land I can say that the 840 Pro 256GB is as good as it gets for a boot drive without selling a liver. Memory wise I would really prefer to keep it to 16GB and above. Anandtech has recently published a very good article on memory which I made my bible for a week. 2133 C9 2x8GB fits my wants exactly. There are only a few kits that meet this spec and only one that will fit under a noctua heatsink.


OKAY boys and girls here is why I've finally broke from lurking, made an account, and assembled the Great Wall of Text. I have been going back and forth for the past week on cooling solutions for this computer. I just got two black Cougar Vortex 120mm PWM fans in the mail today that I will be scrutinizing over the next few days. I ordered these because there is a shockingly low amount of empirical data on them, their marketing department has been working overtime for the past year to assemble "super awesome in house data" yet anecdotal reviews say very good things about them and a few youtube videos give the impression that the sound footprint is quite difficult to notice. If that falls through I'll just get some Noctua NF-F12s and be done with it. The M5G does support voltage regulation through the fan headers so 4 pin fans offer no benefit over 3 pin but I've had a hard time finding decent fans. I have assembled a short list but at the end of the day every fan has something to hold against it and much like audio something that should be scientific ends up being very anecdotal.

And the real star of the show: cpu cooling. I've wittled it down to six.
1: Noctua NH-D14. What an obvious choice. This thing has been given more gold stars than a kid who won the international spelling bee. With the ram I'm looking at this cooler wil fit fine. The real issue comes from the GPU clearance. I have not been able to find a definitive answer anywhere on whether or not this cooler on a M5G will work with a DCu2 GPU. I'm inclined to think not considering how close of a call it is with a GPU that doesn't have a backplate.
2: Noctua C12P-SE14. Throw those GPU woes out the window. Along with the overclocking headroom.
3: Noctua U12P-SE2. Same story as the C12P except it has 2 fans and may perform slightly better.
4: Corsair H70 Core. Now this is one I've been struggling with for a while. With proper fans this has the potential to be a really great solution. Of course a closed loop system with a single 120mm rad has the potential to be an enormous waste of money. Mounting this on the front of the case eliminates ALL clearance concerns; RAM, GPU, or otherwise but ends up being slightly more expensive, potentially a pain in the ass to install, potentially dead after two years, and potentially utter crap at cooling.
5: Antec H20 920. Same as above except it's even scarier. Probably wouldn't do this.
6: Custom water cooling. Here is where I want some serious opinions. This has the potential to be really really great. All clearance issues are gone, OC headroom explodes, and PC sexiness doubles. Of course costs and maitenance also go up. What I'd really like to know is where exactly I'm supposed to put the pump and resevoir. I'd also like to know if the system needs to be drained every time I travel with the computer or if the system is sealed to the point that tipping on it's side is completely fine. A 120mm rad is the only size I'd consider for this build as I'd like to not remove any moduvent ports (increases ways dust can get in and noise can get out) and I'm certainly not doing an external rad (see: loud and the exact opposite of small and mobile). Would this even be worth it for me? What price range would I be looking at? Could someone point me towards a guide that would give me useful starting information on this topic or even better give me a bit of coaching on it?

This is my current wishlist. Watch out, it changes often.

Thanks for reading and any comments!
 
Seems you also broke my lurking because this is so close to what I've built :)

First I'll start with the Fractal Define Mini, Its not small matx, its a short ATX is what it feels like and there's 1 USB 3.0. Personally I would have went for the Define R4 if I had the chance. Also the front filter can't be removed easily, also installing a extra fan is a pain with those machine tight screws. If small matx is what you are looking for consider the Silverstone TJ08-E (Change the AP fan in front), I've built one and I love it and wish I got one myself, it doesn't have the sound dampening but it can be quiet with air cooling.

Your 560 Ti at this point is plenty enough and I would not really spend the extra premium at the moment for a 670. Stay with the current card if you feel the need for more fps wait till the 670 price drops.

Seasonic PSU, great psu, platinum are coming out, use the GS600 its a great psu.

Samsung 840 Pros are great, personally wouldn't be able to tell the difference from 830 which are a better value.

I'm running a set of ripjaws personally but I wouldn't pay the extreme premium on 2133, go 1866 or even 1600 you won't feel any different in gaming and save tons of money. 16gb 1866 go for $80-90

NH-D14, great personally don't like the colours. Go for the H80 instead of H70 if you want a closed water loop. Custom WC is best. Personally I don't hear anything aside from my PSU fan in my fractal define mini but I would go air.

GL with your build and post pics :)
 
Thanks for the input! I know there's only one upfront USB 3 but I think I could make it work for me. The R4 is a really tempting choice but it's enormous for a mid ATX and the mini has all the key features I'm looking for. I know I didn't mention this in the OP but aside from silence I also like the low maintenance aspect of dust filters. Between positive pressure and all intakes being filtered the only maintenance would be occasionally taking a vacuum to the filters which is stellar. The inside would always look brand new.

The primary reason I'm attracted to the higher end ram and higher performing SSDs is primarily for boot time. I honestly can't think of any way of shortening the time from when you hit the power button to when you can do anything besides splurging on memory and nand. Noctua colors are a little off putting when you try to go for a theme. Out of curiosity why would you reccomend the H80 over the H70? The H70 has a larger rad and the only feature missing from what I can tell is the fan controller. I plan on using the motherboard headers for everything anyway. dat fan xpert 2. If I don't go custom water cooling I'll likely go with a closed loop water cooler. Sure they don't perform quite as well as noctuas but they also don't look like ass and they buy me precious space. Point taken on the card. Considering my current card is Still 250USD there really isn't serious reason for me to upgrade that right now. I do want to get a new PSU primarily for modularity (see: super clean cable management) and silence. Good call on the platinum series. Same price, higher rated efficiency, and marginally higher current ratings.

Most of the components at this point are very subject to change though. When I finalize a budget the list will look much closer to the actual build. Also the cougars are impressive. No sound from the fan, just from the air it moves. That's hydro bearings for you. Unfortunately my current mobo doesn't support fan speed control of any type on any fan other than the CPU so I swapped some fan connections around for my tongue in cheek testing. Near silent at 1100rpm (lowest my board would take it, rated to 800 on PWM). Unfortunately I can't get a better idea since every other part of my system is so freaking noisy.
 
Have you thought about the silverstone TJ-08E mATX case? It is one of the smaller matx cases out there, and it has very good ventilation and layout.
 
Only slightly. If I went with that I would be adding noise dampening material pretty much anywhere I could fit it. The thermal performance and size cannot be argued with, but dust and noise wise how does it perform?
 
I built a system for a friend earlier this month, all of the fans can be controlled if your uefi supports it and the openings all have filters. I only spent one day with it, so haven't used it long term. FrozenCPU has been selling noise dampening material at $1.99 per box for a while now, pretty good steal :)
 
Huh that would actually be an excellent choice. I'm not left handed and I don't walk on the ceiling so assembly might be a little tricky.

Also does anyone know of a 180mm fan with a hydro bearing? That would absolutely rock.
 
Last edited:
For boot time I doubt there is a visible difference from the 830 and 840.. boot time is based on the bios. I think the newer ASrock boards are the fastest at the moment. Pretty sure asus has a new bios that increase boot times also haven't tried myself.

Also quite sure that I read fanxpert worked on 3pin fans.. not quite sure don't quote me on this.

As for the H80 thought you really liked the silence so fan controls on it are worth it...its rad is pretty thick too.. and it looks better ;)

If your going for the define mini go for the modular psu then because it is tight back there, be careful where you route the 24pin try not to overlap too many things under it.
 
willis936 said:
The primary reason I'm attracted to the higher end ram and higher performing SSDs is primarily for boot time. I honestly can't think of any way of shortening the time from when you hit the power button to when you can do anything besides splurging on memory and nand.
Click to expand...

If you want it to boot up quickly, your best bet is to minimize POST. ASRock boards seem to POST quickly. For example, when powering up two systems at the same time in my computer room, the one with an ASRock Z77E-ITX is almost finished booting into Windows before the one with an Asus P8P67 Pro even finishes POST, and I thought that P8P67 Pro was a lot faster than the Asus P6T I had before it, which took around 25 seconds just to START booting up from the SSD. Also, enabling RAID just increases POST time.

Spending a lot extra on RAM and SSD might make a fraction of a second difference. Maybe.
 
Hmm I thought uefi bios were configurable to post quickly since self checks don't take too long nowadays and the delay is primarily so you have a chance to get into the bios but I guess it varies between models. I know raid slows down boot time that's why pcie ssd and multiple ssd configurations aren't optimal for boot time. Faster ssd and ram may only be marginally so for a dramatic price increase but they are what keep a system from moving faster. Booting up is taking a few gigabytes out of potentially scattered regions in the drive and loading it into memory. The CPU doesn't get maxed in this process, data generally isn't saturated, so then why doesn't it happen instantaneously? While memory may make a smaller impact it can reduce the overhead necessary. The key thing is the ssd, 4k random r/w of 100kiops is flat out amazing. I'd say that last 13kiops over the 830 justifies the price difference.
 
willis936 said:
Hmm I thought uefi bios were configurable to post quickly since self checks don't take too long nowadays and the delay is primarily so you have a chance to get into the bios but I guess it varies between models.
Click to expand...

My P8P67 Pro is UEFI, and no it does not POST quickly.

Hmmm, maybe I should check for a BIOS update? :p

willis936 said:
Booting up is taking a few gigabytes out of potentially scattered regions in the drive and loading it into memory. The CPU doesn't get maxed in this process, data generally isn't saturated, so then why doesn't it happen instantaneously?
Click to expand...

That's something you need to ask Microsoft. If you look at your HDD activity LED during boot, it isn't going the entire time.

Then again, my computer boots a lot quicker than my Android phone. Talk about a long boot time!
 
After looking through that TJ08 thread it looks like there are some water cooling components I didn't know about. Specifically the res/pumps that go in 5.25" bays. Take the hdd rack out, use a quiet HDD enclosure in one 5.25" bay for a data drive, use the other for pump/resevoir, froget the br burner, mount a 180x180 rad on the AP181, get some tubing, compression fittings, water, tubing, cpu block and dare I say GPU block. Opinions?



I'm not going to bump my own thread but I'd like to keep going with updates and new ideas so I'm just going to keep editing this post until I get some more input. I'm also using this thread as a place for me to brainstorm, document ideas, etc. so there will be a lot of text and most of it will be disorderly. Aside from wanting critique on just about everything I say here I also jot it down so I can reference later.


As of right now if I went with custom water cooling I'd eliminate either the BR burner or the HDD enclosure. I'd likely get rid of BR drive because I'd like to keep both an SSD boot drive and HDD data drive but the drive bay cannot stay with a rad.

subtotal: $616
total with rig: $1865

optional GPU water add on:
Additional $635 ($2500)



I would get one of the compatible pumps. Of the three that work with the rez which would you reccomend? I'm infatuated with PWM control as I know pumps can be loud and the tach is also pretty great to have on a rez.

Loop: rez/pump out 45deg - cpu in 45deg - cpu out 90deg - F/F extender - VRM in 90 deg - VRM out 45deg - rad in - rad out 90deg - rez in 45deg
Loop w/gpu: Loop: rez/pump out 45 deg - gpu in 45deg - gpu out straight - cpu in 45deg - cpu out 90deg - F/F extender - VRM in 90 deg - VRM out 45deg - rad in straight - rad out 90deg - rez in 45deg

interesting guide for water cooling

another guide

TJ08-E thread


Water list v2.0 (don't waste a 5.25" bay or break the bank edition)
subtotal: $175.5

Note: I have not done a significant amount of research into water cooling at this point and my choices in parts may not be optimal for performance/cost/noise. Please give me feedback. Also how much water and tubing is generally enough for a build of this size? I would like to hit both the CPU and VRM and in the future get the GPU (when I upgrade it). Also what is a the difference between a rotary compression fitting and a standard one?

pwm cable ($6)
6 pin pcie cable ($8)
sata cable ($8)
atx cable ($12)

over the top cable set ($100)
 
Last edited:
I don't think this has been addressed yet... but you're going to need an mPCIE to PCIE adapter for the Intel 6300. I know the Maximus V Gene has an mPCIE slot, but you're still going to need a kit that hooks up the antennas and whatnot.
 
I have a three input SMA wifi antenna and 3 ULF to SMA adapters so I should be covered.

I should also note that I have a PCI x4 NIC if I end up with a board without that mPCIe slot. (as most do not have it). The cheapest I can upgrade is $400. ASRock Extreme4 ($135), 3570k ($230), ripjaws x 2x4GB 1600C9 ($40). My current case is a hunk of junk (one of those raidmax specials) but a nicer case is not Necessary and the performance boost I'd see for that $400 is staggering. An extra $90 would land me a samsung 830 128GB as a boot drive which would also give my performance an enormous boost but as price/performance goes that's the peak. The rest is either on the downward slope or luxury items (see: smaller form factor, new case, aftermarket heatsinks, etc.)
 
Last edited:
MSI GTX 660 Twin Frozr (i have this.. it is virtually silent)
Corsair H60 with Noctua P12 PWM fan (again i have this and it is also virtually silent)
Silverstone SG05 (comes with small, quiet sfx power supply)

The rest is up to you

i can tell you this is such a quiet setup.. i currently have these and an i5-3570k p8z77-i, in a coolermaster 120 case, and the loudest part is my own power supply i have inside. awesome setup it wouls be with the sg05!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top