please help me silence my htpc

sare^baw's · 25 Apr 2006 at 14:28

i need advice to help me silence my htpc, i bought this htpc (silverstone lc17 case) second hand and i think the seller was fibbing when he said it was quiet and said he could not hear any noise when watching movies, yet the raptor could be heard in a disco

anyway heres a list of the noisey/ rotating components and hope you guys can give me advice on making this htpc as silent as possible, i dont want to go to extremes but im happy to pay for the necessary bits to quieten this htpc. also if i would be better removing or replacing something please say so. it is in my living room near my tv and so needs to be very quiet.

SILVERSTONE 8CM CASE FANS X 2
ZALAMAN FLOWER HEATSINK WITH FAN SPEED CONTROLER 110MM
CHANNEL WELL TECHNOLOGY CWT-450BDP - 450W 120MM QUITE POWER SUPPLY
WESTERN DIGITAL WD360GD, 35GIG, 10,000RPM, 13FEB04
HITACHI DESKSTAR 160GB, P/N 14R9463, 7200RPM, JULY 04
LEADTEK WINFAST GEFORCE 6800 LE - GFX CARD

i have read some poeple get good results using a silent maxx enclosure with their raptor, but also some people not, mine is very noisey (feb 04) and you can hear the seek rattle very loudly, i dont want to hear it at all, should i try a silentmaxx enclosure or just replace it. i would prefer to keep it but only if i can silence it.

i assume the zalman flower heatsink is worth keeping.

from what i see the power supply is a cheapo, which i did not know before buying, would i be better using my power supply from my other pc which is an enermax EG365P-VE, i think its a 350w model, its running a P4 3.0 ghz and 1ghz of of ram, would the enermax be noisier?

what can i do with the leadtek gfx card

i have an spl meter, can i use this to monitor the noise lever and improvements made?

all help and advice greatly appreciated.

sare^baw's · 25 Apr 2006 at 14:43

Lanz said:
Get rid of the Raptor, you dont need a fast, hot and noisy disk in a htpc.

Get an Arctic Cooler for the 6800LE.

(you do know the 6800 doesnt work with hardware HDTV decoding?)

i dont know anything about hardware hdtv decoding, my new plama is a 42" SD panel as i decided not to go the HD route at the moment. so would i be right in thinking my gfx card is fine for what i need it for ie gaming and watching movies on my plasma?

i should have said i am also using the htpc for occasional gaming and general pc stuff, downloading large files and unrarring and burning to dvd.

i could get rid of the raptor and use my hdd from my other pc a maxtor 250gb, but no doubt i will need an enclosure for this too as i was not thinking htpc when i bought it. should i get enclosures for my hdd's or selle em and buy samsung spinpoint without an enclosure?

sare^baw's · 26 Apr 2006 at 11:37

wilders said:
Yep, make sure the fan in the graphics card is quiet, also the psu, another thing is running the dvd drive at 1 speed (check the site of the manufacturer for software to do this).....should make it pretty much silent

i can hear the gfx card fan noise quite easily, not sure of the noise from the psu as eveything is running together, is there a way of checking the psu by running it on its own ie how do you switch it on without powering up the pc?

already quitened my nec dvdrw drive using nero drivespeed, is it alright to run it a slow as 1x as i thought 4x was maybe as low as you should go with it.

Logan09 said:
1 - Ditch the Raptor (you don't need that kind of speed in a HTPC) & get something quieter, like a samsung spinpoint.

2 - If the 6800LE has stock cooling then consider either getting a quieter cooling solution (Zalman/Artic Cooling) or, better yet, selling it and getting a passive 6600GT (perfect for a HTPC).

3 - The silverstone case fans aren't the quietest. I'd reccomend 7V modding them (possibly even 5V depending on how hot everything's running). Or if you don't fancy doing that, then get a fanmate for them.

yeah im kinda now thinking the raptor has to go, i assume the samsung spinpoint are great when eveyone recommends them so ill get myself one me thinks.

the 6800 has stock cooling and i looked at the the artic cooler at £20, im happy to pay this if it will make it quiet enough, what is the zalman cooler for my 6800? Would buying a passive 6600gt give me less performance or is it similar to my 6800, does passive mean it only has a heatsink and no fan?

Where can i get info on 7v or 5v modding the fans i have a fanmate with my zalman cpu cooler, aint heard of modding the fans is there much to it.

thanks guys for all the great info

sare^baw's · 26 Apr 2006 at 14:50

cheers for the info mate, what model of passive 6600gt did you go for and are there many available?

sare^baw's · 26 Apr 2006 at 15:06

daz said:
You've gone for 80mm fans... a larger 120mm fan spinning more slowly will push the same amount of air or more, and be a lot quiter.

the fans came with the case i assume, the previous owner set the pc up, now im trying to get it quiet as it should have been.

the case only has holes to suit an 80mm fan, would not fancy cutting a large hole in the case for a 120mm one, without the right tools it would look a little rough, not impossible though. something to think about thanks

sare^baw's · 26 Apr 2006 at 22:52

gigabyte GV-NX66128DP someone has a second hand one of these for sale for £55 ono, would this be a good alternative to my LEADTEK WINFAST GEFORCE 6800 LE

sare^baw's · 27 Apr 2006 at 10:30

im not familier with the pci-e but here my card here http://www.leadtek.com/3d_graphic/winfast_px6800le_tdh_2.html and it says it has pci-e. Going by the spec my card has 256mb of memory, the passive one for sale is 128, will this make much difference or should i stick to a 256mb card?

my motherboard says its
1 x AGP slot
5 x PCI slots (PCI 2.3 compliant)

does this mean my mother board supports pci-e, by the looks of things the gfx card is in the agp slot.

sare^baw's · 27 Apr 2006 at 13:12

from what i have been informed my gfx card is an agp and my mobo does not support pci-e.

the leadtek card is not the 256mb retail version but a 128mb agp version which the previous owner bought bundled in an oc 'primo gamer' system.

so now im looking at either trying to find an agp passive cooled gfx card or just buy the artic cooler for my existing card. But as said above someone bought the artic cooler and still found it noisey and in the end bought a passive cooled card.

argh these things are never easy, i aint going to the trouble of changing my mobo ill just live without pci-e