Cooling/Silent/ Upgrade - Need Advice

TorinT

TorinT

TorinT

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Joined
6 Mar 2013
Posts
10
Dear All!

/1st of all: My English is not the best, so please get over the grammatical errors! :)/

I'd like to upgrade my PC in the near future, to make it as silent as possible. My current hardware:

Case: Thermaltake Soprano (about 4 years old, with stock fans)
MB: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3 USB3
Proc: Intel Core i5 760 (with stock heatsink)
GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 6870 1GB
Mem: 4x2GB Corsair Dominator CMP4GX3M2A1600C8
HDD: 2x1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3
1x2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001
Sound: Asus Xonar D2X PCI-E
Keyb: Microsoft Sidewinder X4
Mouse: CM Storm Inferno

I'd like to start the upgrade with the case, fans, heatsink and PSU. My budget is quite tight, around £200-£250. (Wedding in August, need I say more?;))

I thought about buying the Xigmatek Midgard II case, because of good reviews, nice features (HDD hotswap, removable drive cage, etc.). What do you think, is it good? Or is there something better for the price?

So, there is a lot of questions in my mind. My PC is in my bedroom, and I'd like to make it really silent. At this moment nothing is overclocked, and in the next 6 months I don't plan on buying new MB+CPU+GPU (maybe after the wedding). Please help me with ideas about what to buy! How "big" PSU needed? How many and which type of case fans? Which heatsink (I've got high profile RAM, but I can remove the top heatsinks from them)? Fan controller?

Thanks!
 
Have you found any specs of what cooler clearance and GPU clearance are? Reason I ask is they are critical to what cooler and GPU will fit in the future. Many of the best coolers are 165-170mm tall and GPUs are up to 280mm long now.
 
Case is personal preference really mate but as I like it too I'll leave it in there :p

YOUR BASKET
1 x XFX Pro Series 650W XXX Edition Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply £74.99
1 x Alpenföhn K2 Mount Doom CPU Cooler (Socket 775 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011 / AM2 / AM2+ / AM3 / FM1 / FM2) £59.99
1 x Xigmatek Midgard II Gaming Tower Case - Black £59.99
1 x Akasa 5.25" FC Six Channel Brushed Aluminium Fan Controller (AK-FC-08BKV2) £24.98
3 x Akasa AK-FN058 Apache Black Super Silent 120mm Fan - 4 Pin PWM £9.98 (£29.94)
Total : £264.00 (includes shipping : £11.75).



Added 3 fans which you can add to front/side/bottom/top lol and a nice fan controller to keep things quiet :) Ideally you will want a positive air pressure:
http://www.silverstonetek.com/techtalk_cont.php?tid=wh_positive&area=en

So I would add Akasa fans at side, bottom and front or one at top for exhaust :)
 
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Heatsink and GPU clearance is a little bit confusing, because according to Xigmatek "CPU Cooler: 160mm height support". But in the Bit-Tech review there's "CPU cooler clearance 170mm". By the same review "Maximum graphics card length 295mm (410mm with HDD cage removed)".
 
Indeed also Xigmateks states "Middle HDD cage is removable for long VGA card installation within 330mm."

Looks like one or both of the parties have got their facts wrong :p

But..the cooler I specced has the following dimensions

•Cooler dimensions : 154x144x160mm (LxWxH)

So it should fit regardless
 
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decads, I just answered the post before yours. :)
BTW, isn't the Mount Doom a little bit overkill, if my system is not overclocked?
 
Thanks for all the help so far!

I've decided the following components:
- Xigmatek Midgard II case
- CoolerMaster Hyper 612S CPU cooler
- XFX Pro 650W PSU

But i'm a little bit confused about the fans and their controller. :)
Which one is better: the Akasa or the Bitfenix controller?

And a couple questions about the fans:
- do i have to buy PWM fans, if i have a controller?
- if a fan is not PWM controlled, but i have a fan controller, can I change the speed of them?
- if I can, and the fan's speed is (for example) 1400, and it's voltage is 4-14, then it means, that i can change its speed down to about 500?
 
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I would go with the best cooler possible. There is no such thing as overkill. Reason is the higher the cooling capacity the less the fans have to work to keep CPU cool. A small cooler at 1300rpm will cool to 70c while a big cooler will do it at 800rpm. Lower fan speed = less noise, not overkill.

If you build your entire system uslng PWM fans you can control your entire system with PWM signal from CPU fan socket... or some from CPU fan socket and some from GPU fan socket. This means the speed your system's case fans will idle when your CPU fans idle and speed up as CPU fans speed up to keep things cool.

And if you CPU and/or GPU fans speed up your case fans need to as well. CPU / GPU need more airflow to cool means case needs more airflow to keep up.

You will need PWM splitter with molex power, an PWM adapter-splitter for GPU, etc. Not complicated or hard to find. If you decide to go this route I can give your all the info you need.
 
Both Akasa FC and Bitfenix Recon support 3 pin & 4 pin (PWM) fans :) So like the case it is personal preference which controller you go with but the Akasa supports up to 6 fans where as Bitfenix Recon is only 5 ;)

Yes it will allow you to reduce voltage of fans down to 4 or 5 volts
 
Ok, next stupid question:
(I have a lot, because I'm noob, but I'd like to learn! :))

- Which way is better? All PWM fans with splitters controlled by the motherboard, or fan controller? What are the pros/cons?
 
TorinT said:
Ok, next stupid question:
(I have a lot, because I'm noob, but I'd like to learn! :))

- Which way is better? All PWM fans with splitters controlled by the motherboard, or fan controller? What are the pros/cons?
Click to expand...

PWM fans won't need a splitter :)

How would you prefer to control fans with knobs/buttons/screen on fan controller or using software such as speedfan because they are connected to motherboard? Fan controller is far easier to control fans as it's within arm distance and you can have them all turned down when browsing internet etc then turn them up when gaming etc

So as far as I'm concerned there is no reason to connect case fans to motherboard when you can just buy a fan controller and keep things simple, but effective :)
 
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TorinT said:
Ok, next stupid question:
(I have a lot, because I'm noob, but I'd like to learn! :))

- Which way is better? All PWM fans with splitters controlled by the motherboard, or fan controller? What are the pros/cons?
Click to expand...

Do you want to "Set it and Forget it" after a few days of playing? Or do you want to have to change the fan speeds every time you want quiet vs performance? Turn them up to game, turn them down to watch video, turn them up to encode, turn them down to sleep. yadda, yadda.

Myself I prefer only needing to change seasonally or because I changed components. ;)
 
To change the fans manually isn't a problem for me. And I think with the Bitfenix Recon it's possible to set up speed profiles. Maybe the best would be to use the heatsink from PWM, and the case fans from a controller. What do you think?

I've spent the last nights reading reviews (a lot). This narrowed down my heatsink candiates to the Alpenföhn K2 and beQuiet!'s Dark Rock Pro 2, mostly because of memory clearance. (Silver Arrow not working with high profile RAM, and i don't like the NH-D14's colour). But in one test, the K2 was better, in another the DRP2, and elsewhere the K2, and... You know... So what do you think? Which one is better?

About case fans: What do you think about the Thermalright TY-14x range? I saw a lot of good reviews. They look to move a lot of air while they're very quiet. What about buying 3, and use them with the stock fans of the Midgard II? Or buy 5, and use only those in the case?
 
I also +1 the Apache Black fan recommended to you, I use this as my CPU cooler fan and since I swapped from the stock fan my PC is almost near silent now.
 
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