First W/C Attempt, Possibly Passive ?

Cesar67

Cesar67

Cesar67

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I have an Antec 300, The fans are driving me nuts!!

Three Xilence Red Wings, Two intake, One mounted on a TRUE for the CPU.

Also two Antec exhaust fans standard with the case 12cm and 14cm.

Using speedfan, I can reduce the RPM's but, I want as close to silence as possible.

My E8400 runs at 3.3GHz most of the day, I use the O/C profile for 4GHz when i want to game.

My HD4850's are to be sold, Making way for a HD5850 soon hopefully.

I don't know if i would want/need to cool the chipset on my P5Q PRO ?

So one loop Res>Pump>CPU>GPU>Res ? Could i manage this passively outside the case ?
 
hmm, depends what you want to go for for passive cooling - not sure how well a reserator would cope with that; others who run them would be much better placed to say. If you want completely passive then that, the zalman reserator xt or a lot of cape cora/innovatek konvektomatik tubes is what you're looking for. Jokester has a passive tj-07 set-upin cases section for an idea of what they involve. They're around £90 for 6 tubes these days iirc- depends a lot on your budget, sound tolerance, space and whether you want to tinker to site the tubes to the case etc.
 
The 300 is designed as a high airflow air cooling case - Half of your problem is here is you are serious about a 'quiet' system.

But before you splash out on a new case and 2-300 quid of passive watercooling you may (or may not) need I'd like to ask a few questions.

1) Do you use the machine at night?
2) Do you game, with headphones/speakers turned up.
3) Is the pc in a room with a window to a busy road (or near railway/moterway etc)
4) Are you looking to cut down gameing noise / non-gaming noise or both.
5) What psu to you have / is it noisey will all the other fan off (enter bios without gpu)
6) Hot HHD - raptors etc

The 3.3/4.0 profiles helps a lot. And leads me in two possables directions (guessing the answers to the above.

Air cooling - Ditch the antec fans - and use the redwings at 7v for supply and extract.
They are case fan not heatsink fans.
Get a gentle typhoon for the Heatsink (or other high pressure fan)
Ditch the stock cooling on the ATI and get a large aftermarket cooler.
A fan controller would be a plus - but P5Q + speedfan profile will be enough.
£50 pounds well spent.

Semi-passive watercooling.
CPU / GPU loop with PA120.3 (or RX360 or Feser) Roof mounted ideally
Quality psu and maybe new case.
Your E8400 should run at 3.3 with 1.1v (or less) and tbo you will not see much differance in games with 3.3 or 4.0. But that's your call.
Day to day have all the rad fans off or at 450rpm (use a fan controller)
pump is on - but cpu and gpu cooled my rad 'passively'
The psu and a single case fan will cool the rest at idle/office/web loads.
turn up the fans (gentle typoons/other) when gaming.
£250 (half that if you good secondhand - but only buy quality kit)

Your idle temps will be higher - but load will be much lower that air.
Hope that give you a starter on possible options

If buying passive of the shelve - you need SPACE for the rads (and most are external)
From my own testing a PA120.3 with ultra low airflow is better that a Reserator2, and slightly worse that twin Res 1's
But as MP said above the cape cora/innovatek konvektomatik tubes are the ones to get
But can be internally mounted, is copper and half the price.

Silent pc are not for games - but all gameing pc can be quiet when not gaming (hope you can see the differance)

And thanks mrdbristol :)
 
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Monkey Puzzle said:
hmm, depends what you want to go for for passive cooling - not sure how well a reserator would cope with that; others who run them would be much better placed to say. If you want completely passive then that, the zalman reserator xt or a lot of cape cora/innovatek konvektomatik tubes is what you're looking for. Jokester has a passive tj-07 set-upin cases section for an idea of what they involve. They're around £90 for 6 tubes these days iirc- depends a lot on your budget, sound tolerance, space and whether you want to tinker to site the tubes to the case etc.
Click to expand...

Tinkering is another reason i want to start W/C :D

I was hoping the budget would be minimal TBH. I see Jokester has still to finish His build It's lookin sweet too.

mrdbristol said:
shadowscotland knows his stuff when its passive water cooling.

Have a read here :

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17976832&highlight=passive
Click to expand...

Here he comes :)

Thank you.

shadowscotland said:
The 300 is designed as a high airflow air cooling case - Half of your problem is here is you are serious about a 'quiet' system.

But before you splash out on a new case and 2-300 quid of passive watercooling you may (or may not) need I'd like to ask a few questions.

1) Do you use the machine at night?
2) Do you game, with headphones/speakers turned up.
3) Is the pc in a room with a window to a busy road (or near railway/moterway etc)
4) Are you looking to cut down gameing noise / non-gaming noise or both.
5) What psu to you have / is it noisey will all the other fan off (enter bios without gpu)
6) Hot HHD - raptors etc

The 3.3/4.0 profiles helps a lot. And leads me in two possables directions (guessing the answers to the above.

Air cooling - Ditch the antec fans - and use the redwings at 7v for supply and extract.
They are case fan not heatsink fans.
Get a gentle typhoon for the Heatsink (or other high pressure fan)
Ditch the stock cooling on the ATI and get a large aftermarket cooler.
A fan controller would be a plus - but P5Q + speedfan profile will be enough.
£50 pounds well spent.

Semi-passive watercooling.
CPU / GPU loop with PA120.3 (or RX360 or Feser) Roof mounted ideally
Quality psu and maybe new case.
Your E8400 should run at 3.3 with 1.1v (or less) and tbo you will not see much differance in games with 3.3 or 4.0. But that's your call.
Day to day have all the rad fans off or at 450rpm (use a fan controller)
pump is on - but cpu and gpu cooled my rad 'passively'
The psu and a single case fan will cool the rest at idle/office/web loads.
turn up the fans (gentle typoons/other) when gaming.
£250 (half that if you good secondhand - but only buy quality kit)

Your idle temps will be higher - but load will be much lower that air.
Hope that give you a starter on possible options

If buying passive of the shelve - you need SPACE for the rads (and most are external)
From my own testing a PA120.3 with ultra low airflow is better that a Reserator2, and slightly worse that twin Res 1's
But as MP said above the cape cora/innovatek konvektomatik tubes are the ones to get
But can be internally mounted, is copper and half the price.

Silent pc are not for games - but all gameing pc can be quiet when not gaming (hope you can see the differance)

And thanks mrdbristol :)
Click to expand...

a lot of questions there mate :)

My PC is on just about 24/7, That's when the noise irritates me, Trying to sleep and hearing the whirring droning buzzing sounds!!!

I don't care really how loud it is when i am gaming it's just late at night, Watching movies etc.. I would like it to be pretty much silent (Just about impossible without heavy investment i know) 3.3GHz to 4GHz is only a few FPS in games anyway so i would settle for around 3.3GHz no problem. I manage 4GHz with 1.2Vcore.

The Antec Exhaust fans are 3-Speed, Low is still too noisy, I think the Xilence ones are just as bad, Never knew that a heatsink fan should be higher pressure, Used to run my TRUE passive before i went O/C'ing :)

I doubt replacing all my fans with quality 'Silent' ones and using a controller would make the kind of difference i am looking for, Would it ? Near silence ?

So really i am looking at a reasonable solution to this, I know the 300 is not designed for W/C, That's why i was thinking of mounting some rads or whatever outside/ontop of the case. Passively to avoid using fans.

My PC is at the other side of the room from the windows, Logistically it's not really possible to move around, I am about 2M to the window just now.

What got me thinking about this is your build with the rad on the wall :D

So, I am thinking semi-passive.

I have two HDD's, One Sammy F1 320GB Boot drive, Seagate 500GB Storage, Both relatively quiet

PSU- To make things complicated, I have a TRUST 550W and a Thermaltake 650W VGA PSU mounted in one of my optical bays :mad:

It was just a rush job to get the crossfire 4850's running, Will be swapping them out for a single quality PSU. So, Two PSU's in there just now, Very noisy!!

Looking at the CORA/Konvekt o matik rads, Would one be enough ? Say bolted to the side of my case ?

Hoping to get a HD5850 in there, Running some fans on the rad low volt with a fan controller (For one loop CPU/GPU) when idle, Full volts when gaming, How much more cooling i.e. intake extraction would i need ?

The more i use, The more pressure for the pump = 18W pump = noise ?

Thanks for taking the time to reply folks, I think i need to investigate this a bit more to see what kind of setup would suit me and what kind of budget it would take. Never really looked into W/C'ing in much depth.

I thought simple case of buying Res>Pump>Rad>CPU Block>GPU Block cheap as chips and viola!! :D
 
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Quiet watercooling is in some ways easier than pro/bling watercooling.
Mainly due to you having less choice of kit :D

If your loop takes the heat of the cpu and gpu away - one fan is all you need to cool the mobo/ram/HHD's in a good case.
I gave up on a completely passive rig - that one fan makes a world of differance.

A single bar of cape/konnect is not enough - they are rated about 20w or 30w each (lenght dependent)
So most intel cpu's need 3 or more, and gpu need upto 8 (at load)

The newer Konvekt-O-Matic rads now have radient panels (reduce weight inc performance)
as well as the convective tubes - this is what I'm experiment with currently.

Best use of the tube types I've seen is a set of four externally and an 120.1/.2 internally.
Will run passive 24/7 and you crank the fan on the active rad up when gaming.
Works quite well I'm told and save you sizing the passive rads for full load when you don't actually need it to be quiet.
Pump wise it's the D5 at setting 2 or 3 - the DDC pro (10w) is also good but slightly louder
And high flow blocks are a must - to keep flowrate as high as possable as it 7/16 tube

Two secondhand Zalman Res1 (about 40-50 each) may also work.
one for cpu/nb one for gpu (which you might need the optional fan top for when gaming)

I'm guessing the two psu's and gpu fan is what's making it to noisy at night.

As a side - a wall mounted system was not the best place for a passive rad (unless you have underfloor heating)
Floor level can have an ambient temp 2-3c below ceiling level. But that wasn't my only reason for puting at high level :)

In a word it is as easy as picking the parts.
The hard bit is which parts to pick within a budget
But there are a few folks here that value peace and quiet when not gaming.
Silent pc review is also a good place to find more info - but the forum are not really 'gamer' friendly
 
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