Hello all,
I like quiet computing - I spend all day (and most of the evening) in an office that has 4 PCs in (3 tower + laptop). I have already successfully built 2 silent/nearly silent PCs which are on 24/7.
The first is an i5-3470S (65W TDP) ESXi server with 460W Silver Power passive PSU, two SSDs and a NoFan CR-95C. When I benchmarked it with prime95 before I installed ESXi, I couldn't get that system more than 30 deg above ambient - even flat out. The PC is entirely passive and has no fans in it at all (and lives in the living room). Silent!
The second is my home server and this runs passively now apart from a couple of fans blowing air over the 8 HDDs at the lowest possible setting of the fan controller. Although it uses an AX760, the fan never comes on and the 95W TDP Athlon II X4 630 is cooled by another NoFan CR-95C which maxes at 78 deg C after 3 days running a CPU stress test. This is all sat in a Fractal Define R3 with all the fan mounts opened to get the most convection. This too is effectively silent (you have to put your ear next to the case to hear the fans blowing air over the HDDs).
I'm just in the process of quietening the last PC which is an overclocked i7-2600K (4.4GHz). I'm moving from an Antec P180 to a Fractal XL R2 (yes, I like Fractal cases!) and I am also installing an AX860 PSU (overkill, but it was cheaper than the 760!!). I currently have a Scythe Ninja cooling the CPU and I get to the low 70's on an overclock. I am running a passive Sapphire 7750 graphics card - I don't game and only got this card as I am running 3 monitors. I am going to see where my temps are with the Ninja+fan and purely convection cooling (and a single 140mm fan wound down as slow as it will go blowing over the few HDDs just to move some air). I would like to change the Scythe for something quieter but would still like to retain the overclock, so I'm thinking of my third NoFan (everything I've read says the NoFan is the best entirely passive cooler) but...
Has anyone actually tried to balance overclocking a Sandy/Ivy with a completely passive heatsink? I'd be willing to move to Ivy (or Haswell when it comes out - in fact the 3 x PCI-e x 16 would help move the graphics card away from the CPU socket too) to keep noise at 0, whilst still retaining a medium overclock.
Thoughts?
I like quiet computing - I spend all day (and most of the evening) in an office that has 4 PCs in (3 tower + laptop). I have already successfully built 2 silent/nearly silent PCs which are on 24/7.
The first is an i5-3470S (65W TDP) ESXi server with 460W Silver Power passive PSU, two SSDs and a NoFan CR-95C. When I benchmarked it with prime95 before I installed ESXi, I couldn't get that system more than 30 deg above ambient - even flat out. The PC is entirely passive and has no fans in it at all (and lives in the living room). Silent!
The second is my home server and this runs passively now apart from a couple of fans blowing air over the 8 HDDs at the lowest possible setting of the fan controller. Although it uses an AX760, the fan never comes on and the 95W TDP Athlon II X4 630 is cooled by another NoFan CR-95C which maxes at 78 deg C after 3 days running a CPU stress test. This is all sat in a Fractal Define R3 with all the fan mounts opened to get the most convection. This too is effectively silent (you have to put your ear next to the case to hear the fans blowing air over the HDDs).
I'm just in the process of quietening the last PC which is an overclocked i7-2600K (4.4GHz). I'm moving from an Antec P180 to a Fractal XL R2 (yes, I like Fractal cases!) and I am also installing an AX860 PSU (overkill, but it was cheaper than the 760!!). I currently have a Scythe Ninja cooling the CPU and I get to the low 70's on an overclock. I am running a passive Sapphire 7750 graphics card - I don't game and only got this card as I am running 3 monitors. I am going to see where my temps are with the Ninja+fan and purely convection cooling (and a single 140mm fan wound down as slow as it will go blowing over the few HDDs just to move some air). I would like to change the Scythe for something quieter but would still like to retain the overclock, so I'm thinking of my third NoFan (everything I've read says the NoFan is the best entirely passive cooler) but...
Has anyone actually tried to balance overclocking a Sandy/Ivy with a completely passive heatsink? I'd be willing to move to Ivy (or Haswell when it comes out - in fact the 3 x PCI-e x 16 would help move the graphics card away from the CPU socket too) to keep noise at 0, whilst still retaining a medium overclock.
Thoughts?
