In search of silence

Std speed

Std speed

Std speed

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Joined
18 Jul 2009
Posts
10
I've reached that stage in my life where I no longer crave ultimate power but would like some peace and quite.
My rig sits in the same room as a piano and other audio recording kit, so would like to silence my pc as far as possible (all within reason).

At the moment have a Phenom II X3 Tri Core 720 Black Edition 2.80GHz (Socket AM3) 4th core unlocked and mildly o/c'd, cooled by a Freezer 64.
Graphics card is an Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 Glaciator+ 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express.
Psu is OCZ ModXStream Pro 600w Silent.

All in an Antac 300 fed by 3 X Akasa AK-274CB-4BLS 120mm Blue LED intakes plus the top exhaust.

All in all it makes a fair racket, i think particularly the GC.

I've never really looked at this side of things before so could somebody point me in the right direction. Budget not important, but would rather not lose the psu, not sure about the GC.

Rig mostly gaming (cod mw2), music production plus usual.
 
Don't go watercooling! I tried that in the same search and it was pretty loud. Try a fan controller to turn the case fans down a bit as they are 120mm they don't need to be at full speed. I have a thermaltake cooler with a 120mm akasa fan, 2 akasa 80mm case fans and a ocz psu with a 4870 gpu. Not much noise at all :) as I have a fan controller which keeps the case fans at a low speed.
 
Think a fan controller will be my starting point. Also don't htink I really need 3xIntake + 1 exhaust. Anybody no the optimum in an Antec 300?

Do the passive cpu coolers actually work?
 
Rather than buying a fan controller have you tried running speed fan to knock the RPM of the case fans down, might save having to buy the controller and use a drive bay
 
I wanted the same thing for my case fans and bought a fan controller, I really hated it as it meant lots of extra wires in my case. I ended up buying some quiet 3pin fans that plug in to the motherboard, and my motherboard allows me to set the fan speed from 100 - 60%.
 
I was running just two minimum rev 120mm fans for quite a while when I had a Zalman reserator cooling both my cpu and gfx card. With a 5850 and a extra fan for an internal raid HD enclosure, my PC is back to being mildly annoying again.

The Zalman managed a 2.5ghz AMDx2 + 4850 (gfx not overclocked), then a 3.6ghz core2 5200 with the same card. Note that both chips could overclock a couple of extra increments without the gfx. You get to a point where the temps will start to get out of control for its low flow rate on the stock pump.

Thats why its not more popular here. It can cool a quad, but no chance of gfx at the same time, thus the noise saving from two less 120mms is marginal. You still need a 120mm underneath the watercooled gfx, to ensure enough airflow over the mosfets - so again not totally silent.

However if you are prepared to accept a dual core cpu at a 90% overclock, and a 80 ish wat tdp gfx chip (roughly 110 watt card overall), then you end up with a really quiet PC. The advice on the cooling forum is to always buy over the top individual parts so that you 'can upgrade the loop later' - which whilst is fine advice, usually involves uncertainty about suitability with your case and/or dremel use, and a £300 price tag... and more 120mm fans stuck to the rad than you probably started with.
 
I used to have a E8400 passively cooled by a Scyth Ninja that worked well.

You could fit AC Twin Turbo cooler on the 4870 and set the fan to run at 50%.

Swap the case fans for some ultra quiet fans.

I think someone on the forums is using this cooler and is getting good temps.

Also, if your hard drives are noisey, you could try the bungee mod and mount them using sewing elastic.

Remember to monitor temps, should be ok now but could get a bit toasty in summer.
 
You aiming to "climb into tree rear first" as we say in Finland?
Leaky as bucket without bottom cheese grater case with hard HDD mountings... translucent/transparent plastic bling bling ping pong fans... small CPU heatsink... and small heatsink for such hot graphics card.
 
I would highly recommend the Antec P193 or P180 case....They both have a lot of sound dampening built into the panels and i found that my pc was barely audible when i switched to a p180b a few years ago.........
 
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