Please spec me a quiet system (I don't have a clue)

[LuvCLub]

Hi all,

It has probably been 5 years since I built my last PC (1gig thunderbird)
and I think it is gonna kick the bucket very soon.

The thing is, I need all your help! I basically want to get a whole new
system and don't know which bits work the best together. Everything seems
so different from the relic that I'm using now.

My ideal PC would be reasonably powerful, yet not unnecessarily noisy as
it would be kept in the bedroom and left on 24/7. I am not that into
gaming, but it would be nice if it would run the latest games reasonably
well. An important factor would be that it would be powerful enough to
play 1080p video and HDVD (when HDVD drives become affordable). Other
than that it would mainly be used for normal web browsing, P2P and
downloading/playing movies.


Budgetwise, I'm looking for everything to be £800-900 (incl VAT) excluding
the LCD monitor. If you could quote me a spec which would save me money
then even better, but please tell me if I'm being unrealistic.


CPU - E6600

Don't ask me why, but I seem to have my mind set on a E6600. I don't want
to waste the overclocking potential of the CPU and want to keep noise to
a minimum, so which HSF would you recommend? Preferably the HSF should
enable a reasonable overclock without increasing the noise.

GFX CARD - Asus 7600GS SILENT 512MB DDR2 PCI-E
MONITOR - BENQ FP241W

I am looking into getting the Benq FP241W for its real 1:1 1080p (on all
connections) and HDMI, therfore I need a decent gfx card. The Asus 7600GS
seems able to handle the 1920*1200 res of the lcd. A good thing is that
the card does not need a fan. Any suggestions for similarly priced cards?

RAM - GeIL 2GB (2x1GB) PC6400C4 800MHz Ultra Low Latency DDR2

This seems to be a highly recommended memory, but would I need the speed?

MOTHERBOARD?

I have no idea as to which board to get (Asus 5b Deluxe, Gigabyte DS4, 965/975?)

HARD DRIVE?

I would like a big hard drive 300-500GB. It needs to be a compromise
between being quiet and fast. I've heard good things about the 7200.10, but
the Samsung Spinpoints are supposed to be very quiet too.

DVDRW?

Suggestions? Needs to be quiet and not like a jet fighter! The ones with
lightscribe seem cool!

CASE and PSU

I like to fit it all in a QUIET case. The Antec P180 seems good. Do you
think everything would be near silent once fitted in this case? The I would
need a good quiet PSU for a system such as the above and which would still
allow for a few more future upgrades.


Thanks for reading throug my long winded post. Any suggestions are very
welcome as I'm definitely a NOOB.

 

[melbourne720]

CPU - I got an e6600, and have been very happy with it. But the e4300 wasn't out at the time. Swapping to an e4300 would be a good place to bring down the cost of your rig (you could always upgrade at a later date) without sacrificing much performance.

Get a scythe Ninja to cool it quietly, or some of those Zalman heatpipe coolers.

GFX card - 7600 GS is a fine card. If your really into gaming at high detail/res, you want to be looking at the 8800 series (from £199). But it is a lot to spend if you're not too bothered, and the 7600 GS will do fine for most things.

RAM - I'd go for the cheapest PC6400 and run it at stock. At the moment that is the C5 version of what you've suggested.

Motherboard - I'd go for the Asus P5N 650 SLi, P5B, then GB DS3/4 in that order.

Hard Drive - I find my Hitachi is quite quiet, but I have heard good things about those Samsung SpinPoints.

DVD - The Pioneer 111 series are the best.

Case - For quiet it has to be the P180. I have this case and it is really good at sound proofing.

PSU - For low sound it has to be Seasonic. I went for the M12 600W.

Hope that helps

 

[Cosimo]

The P180 case is a very quiet case if not a little difficult to setup as the PSU is in a cage at the bottom of the tower. If you set the three case fans to low it is very quiet. The Enermax Liberty 620 PSU is very quiet. You could use a Zalman Aero Flower for the CPU with the fan on a low setting.

 

[BigAl]

I'd recommend a 7600GT for the graphics which you can also get without a fan.

 

[LuvCLub]

CPU - I got an e6600, and have been very happy with it. But the e4300 wasn't out at the time. Swapping to an e4300 would be a good place to bring down the cost of your rig (you could always upgrade at a later date) without sacrificing much performance.

Get a scythe Ninja to cool it quietly, or some of those Zalman heatpipe coolers.

Thanks for your suggestion. I had also thought about the e4300, but due to my inexperience with the hardware I plumped for the e6600. The thing I'm worried about is that the e4300 would generate more noise than the e6600.

If I were to use the Ninja, on both, at the lowest fan speed what overclock do you estimate I'll be able to get on both? Another thing is (since I'm getting a bit concious about saving the planet ) would the power consumption of an e4300 be similar to an e6600 if both were overclocked to a similar speed?

GFX card - 7600 GS is a fine card. If your really into gaming at high detail/res, you want to be looking at the 8800 series (from £199). But it is a lot to spend if you're not too bothered, and the 7600 GS will do fine for most things.

Yes, the 8800s would be wasted in my system.

RAM - I'd go for the cheapest PC6400 and run it at stock. At the moment that is the C5 version of what you've suggested.

Would you still choose C5 over C4 if you went for the E6600?

Motherboard - I'd go for the Asus P5N 650 SLi, P5B, then GB DS3/4 in that order.

May I ask why you recommend the Asus P5N 650 SLi? To me the P5B seems to have more features for a little bit more.

Hard Drive - I find my Hitachi is quite quiet, but I have heard good things about those Samsung SpinPoints.

DVD - The Pioneer 111 series are the best.

Thank you for your suggestions. I'll look into those.

Case - For quiet it has to be the P180. I have this case and it is really good at sound proofing.

Great! Thanks for confirming that!

PSU - For low sound it has to be Seasonic. I went for the M12 600W.

It looks good, but the 600W seems to be too much for me. I might go for the 500W model. Another thing I heard about the P180 is that the PSU cables need to be extra long to reach the mboard. Does this affect your seasonic?

Hope that helps

Thanks very much for taking the time. It helped a lot!

 

[LuvCLub]

The P180 case is a very quiet case if not a little difficult to setup as the PSU is in a cage at the bottom of the tower. If you set the three case fans to low it is very quiet. The Enermax Liberty 620 PSU is very quiet. You could use a Zalman Aero Flower for the CPU with the fan on a low setting.

Thanks for your input. It would be great if I could find a website which compared noise leveles between different PSU and HSF. So many to choose from!

I'd recommend a 7600GT for the graphics which you can also get without a fan.

I'm afraid the 7600GT costs quite a bit more than the 7600GS. I'm not sure if I will make enough use of it to justify the extra cost.

 

[melbourne720]

I also like overclocking at low noise. I went for a tuniq tower, but found that in my case (and this affects only a very few people) the stock fan was quite noisy. I replaced it with a nexus fan (search with google for them) and I can hardly hear it now. I think the fan on the ninja is better, so on low, a 25% overclock on a 6600 (which gets you up to 3GHz) will still (touch wood) have temps under 60oC load.

Regarding the memory, I just leave mine at stock. So the cheapest is the best, IMHO Others may be better to advise as to which memory is better to overclock, but the Team Extreme and Cellshock uses Micron chips (I believe) which helps with the OC.

The P5N can unlink the memory from the FSB. A friend of mine is OCing a 6300, but is limited by the speed of his memory on a P5B. As the memory won't go over 450ish then neither will his FSB, and hence with only a 6 multiplier this limits his 6300. I suppose the e4300 (with its 9 multiplier) wouldn't be likely to be limited.

Regarding the Seasonic PSU and the P180, one of the power connectors has to stretch over my 8800 GTS, but other than that they all fit with room to spare. Some PSU cables on other PSUs don't even reach the right sockets!!

Hope that helps.

 

[raptor4216]

Hi luvclub, welcome to the forums

I was in a very similar situation to you about 6 months ago, wanted a new powerful but quiet PC for about £800. Take a look at my sig to see the spec i settled on after looking around, cost just under £900 in the end.

CPU - I felt E6600 was best price v performance at the time although i dont know what the new E4300 is like. The Zalman cooler is virtually silent at lowest speed and keeps it very cool compared to the stock fan.

RAM - got same Geil stuff you mentioned, although it was cheaper when i got it!

Motherboard - went for an Abit board as i dont like Asus, but im sure a lot of people here would disagree with me

GFX - HIS X1900GT is silent and will comfortably play any current games, may start to struggle a few months down the line though. If your not into new games i agree with BigAl, the 7600GT is a good card and can have passive cooling.

HDD - got 2 hitachi's which are excellent and almost silent in quiet mode.

DVD-RW - have Pioneer DVR111 which cant be heard when playing dvds etc and then spins up when reading a lot of data.

PSU - the seasonic is excellent and totally silent, expensive though!

Case - have an AcoustiCase that i bought from a mate so i cant really help here, it has foam padding and is a good quiet case but is expensive to buy new. I also mounted 2 tri cool fans which have adjustable speed and are very quiet at lowest setting.

Overall my system runs all the games/programs i use easily and can only just be heard (i often leave it on all night and all u can hear is a faint hum). It also has potential for overclocking in the future.

Hope that is useful

 

[LuvCLub]

The P5N can unlink the memory from the FSB. A friend of mine is OCing a 6300, but is limited by the speed of his memory on a P5B. As the memory won't go over 450ish then neither will his FSB, and hence with only a 6 multiplier this limits his 6300. I suppose the e4300 (with its 9 multiplier) wouldn't be likely to be limited.

Do only particular mboards have the ability to "unlink" the ram from the FSB? Is it determined by the chipset?

GFX - HIS X1900GT is silent and will comfortably play any current games, may start to struggle a few months down the line though. If your not into new games i agree with BigAl, the 7600GT is a good card and can have passive cooling.

Thanks for your ideas. I'm still unsure of the gfx card. Previously I had believed that 1080p video playback and a 1920x1200 LCD would require a 512MB card. Am I correct? Or would a regular 256mb card be suitable for video but not for games? Both the 512MB versions of X1900GT/7600GT unfortuantely cost way more than the £85 Asus 7600GS 512mb that I had originally thought was ok.

 

[melbourne720]

Do only particular mboards have the ability to "unlink" the ram from the FSB? Is it determined by the chipset?

P965 can only run RAM faster or the same speed as the FSB, whereas the NVidia 650i and 680i chipsets can run RAM at pretty much any speed, independent of the FSB.

Thanks for your ideas. I'm still unsure of the gfx card. Previously I had believed that 1080p video playback and a 1920x1200 LCD would require a 512MB card. Am I correct? Or would a regular 256mb card be suitable for video but not for games? Both the 512MB versions of X1900GT/7600GT unfortuantely cost way more than the £85 Asus 7600GS 512mb that I had originally thought was ok.

That 7600 GS should be fine. Most of the difference between a £85 card and a £285 card is its ability to move 3d stuff around at phenomenal speeds.