Silent System on air - advice needed

V

Val

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 1, 2005
Messages
299
Want to build a new system, want it to be fast and as silent as possible. Components im looking at are Q or E 6600-6800 and 8800GTX, no overclocking.

Looked up some stuff on water cooling and decided its no good - risky to leave without supervision and not that much more silent if not overclocking.

Would be great if some of you guys could advice on good ways to make a good and reliable noiseless system. Some questions:

1. Is it better to generally go for as many fans as possible at lower speeds or fewer fans at higher speeds?

2. Two primary coolers - CPU and GPU. I was thinking ThermalTake Max Orb and Thermalright HR-03-PLUS? Why Orb - it provides good airflow for the whole motherboard, im planning on ASUS P5K3, it looks like airflow will be importaint for it.

3. Looked up many cases. Lian Li V1100 seems like the best one. Its airflow is also very nicely matched with my cooling solutions as well.

Thanks!
 
1. Is it better to generally go for as many fans as possible at lower speeds or fewer fans at higher speeds? bigger fans at lower speeds. these days fans can be almost silent. normally the quiter then the less CFM of air youre pushing. i like to stick with 120mm fans. they push good area and are often mroe quiet than smaller crap fans like your 80mm

2. Two primary coolers - CPU and GPU. Zalman, Thermalright would be my top choice. from what i read if you want the best of the best thermalright ultra-120 extreme ranks with the best of them. one of the best cooling solutions + you get to add your own 120mm fan. so go with a low db fan that pushes mid CFM

3. Looked up many cases. Lian Li V2100 seems like the best one. Its airflow is also very nicely matched with my cooling solutions as well. dont get suckered on how a case looks. although lian li makes awesome cases just beaware that a good case can limit noise factor by a lot. i noticed many steel cases obsorb noise better than aluminum and plastic case. but if you move your PC around then it wouldnt be an ideal choice.

Thanks!
 
Zalman, Thermalright would be my top choice. from what i read if you want the best of the best thermalright ultra-120 extreme ranks with the best of them. one of the best cooling solutions + you get to add your own 120mm fan. so go with a low db fan that pushes mid CFM

I read a lot of reviews and all "supercoolers" are more then good enough for the job. I just picked the one which harmonises with system airflow in the best way - i.e. radial parallel design.

dont get suckered on how a case looks. although lian li makes awesome cases just beaware that a good case can limit noise factor by a lot. i noticed many steel cases obsorb noise better than aluminum and plastic case. but if you move your PC around then it wouldnt be an ideal choice.

Nah :D although they look amasing, the reasons are functionality, airflow, quality and most importaintly - silence. I havent got much experience with different cases, but it seems to me from different reviews that 2100 comes as one of the most silent cases avalible on the market right now?
 
Have a look here: www.silentpcreview.com

Always go for more 120mm fans at low speed instead of fewer at higher speed. AVOID AT ALL COSTS anything 92mm and 80mm as far as fans go, they do no more enough air, only 120mm fans (and larger pehaps) are your friends.

For quiet heatsinks for the CPU beware that the Zalmans will probably need a fan-swap to be sufficiently quiet. The Scythe Ninja, Tunic Tower or the ThermalRight 120 Ultra amongst others all fit any 120mm fan you care to use and so they can be (almost) as quiet as the fan you put on them. (Ninja with undervolted Nexus fan is very quiet!)

For the ThermalRight HR-03+ (which I can't find in stock in Denmark as of yet :( ) use strips to fit a lowspeed 120mm fan to it for most silent result.

For case. try and have a look at the Antec p180b / p182 cases, they are designed to minimize noise / vibration and are not as expensive as the Lian Li cases (which are pretty I must idmit).

BEWARE of harddisk noise and to a lesser degree noisy PSUs by the way. For harddisks Western Digitals 16mb buffer drives and Samsung drives seem to be the quietest. as far as PSUs go the Seasonic S series and the Corsair PSUs are quite quiet :)

Good luck.
 
Alright dude, I am going to share some very secretive secrets that I have.

Here's what you get:
1. Antec 900
2. Sunbeam Fan Controller
3. Yate Yoon 120mm fans
4. Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme
5. Corsair or Seasonic Power Supplies


I have a total of 8 case fans in my Antec 900 - 1 from my Corsair HX520, 6 120mm fans and 1 200mm fan.

My PC is totally silent. I can't even hear it even though it's right under me. Also, my temperatures idle at 28c @ 2.8Ghz.

All you have to do is plug all the fans into the fan controller and then turn the fan controller down so that you won't hear anything. Because there are 8 fans in my case, even at very low RPM, I have incredible airflow inside. A lot of people overlook the usefulness of a fan controller. It's probably the best hardware I've ever purchased.

I don't have the luxury of the Ultra 120 Extreme but my temperatures and noise level are great.

The Antec 900 is made out of steel so there are less vibrations. It definitely helps when you have a noisy hard drive.
 
For your cpu, a Thermalright Ultra-120 (or Extreme, if you can find and afford it) with a nice Scythe S-flex fan is next to impossible to beat as far as air cooling goes, so I've read. Reviews seem to find that the extreme is comparable to water, plus it has to be one of the best looking coolers for the industrial style of the case you're looking at imo. Honestly, I'd say pick the case that you want to live with, especially if you're spending that much one it, since you are using fans which create some amount of noise and the ambient noise level of wherever this machine is being placed is probably high enough to make any case vibrations negligible. As long as you use some nice large quiet fans (maybe look at getting some of those rubber fan mounting kits and sound dampening mats, etc.) you should be fine.
 
Val said:
3. Looked up many cases. Lian Li V1100 seems like the best one. Its airflow is also very nicely matched with my cooling solutions as well.
Click to expand...

IIRC, the V1100 mounts the motherboard upside down which (unless Asus started using heatpipes with wicks) makes it not "very nicely matched" :) as the heatpipes wouldn't work properly. I also like the V1100B so you might check out the Lian Li's PC-A10B.
 
I'm not sure why people are suggesting high-dollar / extreme performance HSFs when you've already mentioned that you don't plan to overclock but...

Probably the best suggestion above was to get a Scythe Ninja and pair it with a low-speed Yate Loon (or more expensive Nexus fan, but it's a re-branded Yate Loon). You can get 4 YLs at Jab-tech for $12.00 + shipping (what you'd pay for ONE more expensive fan), so just get a handfull of them for use around your case and put one (or two) of them on a Ninja.

If you don't plan to overclock (or at least not to the point where you start bumping up voltages), then pretty much any HSF will do - including the stock Intel HSF. But if you want something quieter than that, while providing better cooling, then the Ninja combo above is the best option. It is optimized for good cooling at low airflow - the more expensive, higher performance HSFs (like the Ultra 120 / extreme) can perform better with faster fans than the Ninja, but don't perform as well as the Ninja with low-speed (ie. quiet) fans.

I'm sure that the Max Orb would work fine too, if that's what you want, but if you're not overclocking, then you don't have to worry too much about blowing air around the board.

I can also recommend the Antec P180 / P182 as a nice case designed with quiet in mind. It has the psu isolated in a separate chamber at the bottom of the case (along with the HDs) and 3-layer insulated side panels to help keep noise down. I haven't used a 900, but it may have similar construction and seems to have better an overall airflow setup... it's a bit smaller than the P180 / P182 though.
 
FYI the Ninja is also sufficient for cooling moderate overclocks, I have one sitting on my E6600 with a 1000RPM fan attached to it and it's quite enough to cool my modest OC. (to 3.2GHz)

As for the P180 and cooling the graphicscard I fail to see the issue, I have the P180 and a 8800GTS (stock cooler :( ) and I have no heatissues... :) I have 2 intake 120mm fans in the top compartment, one in fornt of the graphicscard and one mounted in the top 3 5 1/4" bays, a 120mm fan in the bottom to pull air in over the HDDs and an exhaust fan behind the Ninja. (removed the fan and blocked off the top hole)

I can hear the graphicscard a little and my HDDs when they are seeking, that's it.
 
ijozic said:
IIRC, the V1100 mounts the motherboard upside down which (unless Asus started using heatpipes with wicks) makes it not "very nicely matched" :) as the heatpipes wouldn't work properly. I also like the V1100B so you might check out the Lian Li's PC-A10B.
Click to expand...

Their heatpipes have been wicks since the A8N-SLI... :confused:
 
A wick is the piece of cloth in the center of a wax candle. Some candles and lanterns are made up of a canister or jar of fuel, with a shoe-lace type 'wick' that has one end down in the fuel and you light the other end... as the fuel on the wick is burned, more fuel is drawn up through the wick.

In heat-pipes, this 'wick-effect' comes from some powdered material inside the pipe... it helps move the condensed liquid in the pipe back to the heat source (without using gravity) to get vaporized again.
 
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