My reasonably quiet gaming machine (WIP)

racerboy59

racerboy59

racerboy59

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Objectives: To build an air cooled ivy bridge machine capable of running modern games at full 1080p resolution with all the eye-candy turned up, whilst being whisper quiet at the same time. Machine should also be fully silent in general use i.e. web browsing, youtube, minesweeper, etc.

Budget: Not a huge concern, but I like to keep it sensible. I see no value in spending extreme amounts on extreme components, if mid range parts would suit my needs just fine. Then again, I will always go for quality parts from reputable manufacturers since downtime = pretty bad.

Methodology: Since this isn't a new build, I will be adding & removing parts as and when my budget and needs allow me to do so.

So lets get started. Below is my machine as it currently stands.

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And now for the interior.
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I know, I should have given it a quick wipe before taking these pics. Also no proper graphics card in there yet, as i've sold the ATI 6850 that was in there before in anticipation of getting a new card soon. More on that later.

I've done a few mods to the case & desk to help reduce some of the noise being generated by the hard drive.

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This stuff is real good. It's called luxury liner pro, a sound deadening material typically used on car body panels for deadening road noise. I had some left over and thought i'd put it to good use.

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It's fairly thick and does weight a fair bit. In this case (no pun intended) it was needed because the side panel of the Lian Li P50 is 100% aluminium, which tends to vibrate pretty easily. If you are wondering, the hard drives are clamped onto hard drive trays, which slide into the chassis using rubber grommets.

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Another source of vibration noise is the case feet. I can't stress enough how much of a difference this stuff has made. It's practically removed all vibration induced noise from reaching my ears.

I have all my fans hooked up to a zalman fan contoller. They all run at minimum and provide good cooling, but i've placed inline noctua u.l.n.a.'s on some of the noisier fans to make them spin a bit slower.

Current spec:
Motherboard: Gigabyte EP45-UD3
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500
RAM: Geil 4GB DDR2 800Mhz
Graphics Card: Sapphire Hd 5450 (Silent)

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P
Fans: x2 Noctua NF-P12, x2 Noctua NF-S12, x2 Lian Li 140mm

Hard Drive (1): Samsung 830 SSD 256GB
Hard Drive (2): Samsung Spinpoint F1 7200RPM 1TB
Optical Drive: Samsung DVD-RW

Power Supply: Corsair HX-520w Modular PSU
Case: Lian Li PC-P50B

Proposed Upgrades:
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77X-D3H
CPU: Intel Core i5 3570k
RAM: Corsair XMS3 8GB
Graphics Card: Asus GTX 660TI Direct CU II

I've chosen this motherboard mainly because it supports SLI, which will allow me to add another 660TI in the future when I need the extra graphical performance. Multiple reviews have shown that Keplar scales extremely well in SLI, often by as much as 90-95%

I've chosen this particular graphics card for its high performance, low noise, and excellent power consumption.

So that's all I have planned so far, until I get paid next week. I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions from you guys & girls.

EDIT: Also need a CPU cooler, but can't decide whether to get the Noctua D14, Corsair H60/H80 or something a bit cheaper. Will be overclocking to around 4.2-4.4 Ghz. Any ideas?
 
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subtle but definitely an improvement...

I remain to be convinced with the sound-proofing INSIDE the rig. While insulating vs sound may improve slightly, thermally it'll retain more heat increasing the need for higher fan speeds.

Are you able to measure the temps and noise before/after?
 
Thanks Tattysnuc.

As far as I can remember, when I did the side panel mod I didn't notice much of an increase in temps, if at all. Could be because I've got pretty good case airflow already. 2 intake fans and 3 exhaust fans easily allow fresh air to be drawn in, and heat doesn't stick around inside for too long.

The main difference was noise, which was like night and day. I was going to upgrade to a more modern 5400rpm drive such as the WD Green, but given that my storage drive is used pretty infrequently I can just spin it down when I don't need to use it.

At the moment its pretty darn silent. Inaudible over the sound of the clock ticking 3 metres away. I hope it stays that way after the next couple of upgrades.
 
A well thought out upgrade.

For noise you can't beat the DirectCU cards and the only way to get your GPU any quieter is to watercool it. I've never seen two DirectCU cards in SLI/Xfire as they're 3 slot cards so that should be an impressive sight when you add the other card.

As for your CPU Cooler I'd be leaning towards the H80i (resolved pump issue) rather than an aircooler if noise is your primary concern
 
Robbiec053 - I believe the 660TI DirectCU is actually a dual slot card, which is good as it means even in SLI there will be a little gap between the two cards to aid cooling.

T345 - Although pretty old its still a decent monitor. I've had mine a couple of years and there isn't much to complain about. Here's hoping it lasts another couple of years!
 
racerboy59 said:
Thanks Tattysnuc.

As far as I can remember, when I did the side panel mod I didn't notice much of an increase in temps, if at all. Could be because I've got pretty good case airflow already. 2 intake fans and 3 exhaust fans easily allow fresh air to be drawn in, and heat doesn't stick around inside for too long.

The main difference was noise, which was like night and day. I was going to upgrade to a more modern 5400rpm drive such as the WD Green, but given that my storage drive is used pretty infrequently I can just spin it down when I don't need to use it.

At the moment its pretty darn silent. Inaudible over the sound of the clock ticking 3 metres away. I hope it stays that way after the next couple of upgrades.
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It sounds like standing the rig on something to dampen vibration has had the biggest impact. If all you can her is the rush of air then you know you're not going to lose more noise, save by soundproofing as you have done.

Are there any further mods planned? edit I presume the gigayte board you showed is the old one and that you've yet to update the "guts".
 
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Interesting mod :)

Where did you get the LLP from, can't see anywhere in UK to buy, would love to try some under my case too as my mechanical HDDs vibrate through the desk!
 
That's right. I'm yet to upgrade the guts of the machine. The new board is gonna be all black, and i'm sure will look amazing once it's been swapped out.

Space Monkey -I did buy it from Car Audio Direct about 2 years ago, but I see they don't sell it any more. You could either import it from the states or look for an alternative product.

As for other mods, I may be looking into swapping the front USB2.0 ports to USB3.0, as I really like this case and don't want to change it just yet.
 
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Did the platform swap earlier today and overall pretty happy with how it went.

Only deviation from the plan was an Asus 7950 instead of a 660ti, which tbh I kinda regret. No doubt it is a beast of a card and performance is great, but it almost didn't fit inside the case. Maybe I have sensitive hearing but this idles pretty loud (IMO) but when gaming I can't say I notice it over the sounds in the game, which is a positive at least.

Also there's no way I will Crossfire these cards because A) Noise, and B) A second card physically will not fit unless I remove my hard drive cage. I'll probably end up swapping for dual 660ti's some time in the future, or wait and see what the next generations of cards have to offer.

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I'm suprised the Asus dcII is noisy for you, i had a Sli setup with two asus dcII's and they were pretty silent on idle, even when gaming they weren't 'loud'....mine were on 580's.
 
They're not too disturbing, but when the rest of the room is quiet it's definitely noticeable. The 6850 DirectCU I had previously was near enough silent at idle but just lacked the gaming performance I was after.

CCC says the fan speed is 10% at idle, but setting it any lower in a third party utility doesn't make any difference to noise levels. I wish they could just turn off the fan completely at idle, because its only at 30 degrees!
 
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