Quiet system build recommendations

GeForce

GeForce

GeForce

Soldato
Joined
14 Feb 2006
Posts
4,644
Location
Surrey, UK
Hi all,

Looking to put together a new computer, and one of my main requirements is that it's really quiet.

Have put together the following, has anyone got any suggestions? Anything that could be improved? Is all of the below OK compatibility-wise?

I should mention that I already have an HDD and optical drives.

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Cheers :)
 
The Gigabyte GTX 460 OC 768MB is one of the quieter/est GTX 460s according to this review: http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-review/13 So that looks like the best choice you can make in terms of GTX460s. It's possible that maybe a 6850 would be quieter, but that would cost at least £20 more, without necessarily getting better performance or a significant decrease in noise levels.

The Fractal R3 case is definitely a good choice for quiet due to the foam sound dampening sheets that are pre-installed into it.

The Antec Truepower New TP-750 according to the SPCR review stayed below 30 dBA until about 300 watts of load, which your system might rise up to if you were to stress it under furmark or by folding, etc, so as long as you don't do that then it shouldn't bother you.

The noise threshold of 30dBA gets further away when you put the PSU in a separate thermal zone to the rest of your system, mounting the PSU in the bottom of a case, with a separate intake should be sufficient to keep it below 30dBA even upto 400W. Which you are extremely unlikely to reach.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1067-page1.html

I think it is highly likely that the fan on the 650W version will behave very similarly to the 750W version, so I think that review is actually helpful in showing you what potentially you are dealing with.

If you wanted to get an even quieter PSU, I usually recommend Nexus PSUs, these are amongst the quietest fan cooled PSUs I've seen tested around the web, and as far as I'm concerned they perform very well in an electrical sense as well: having reasonably low ripple and noise, good voltage regulation, decent efficiency. Unfortunately for the wattage they provide they do cost more than their competitors, it depends how much you're willing to pay for a really quiet PSU.
 
The 6850 will be bit faster than the 460 768 and quieter as well.
If you hurry you can pick it on this weeks special for just 8quid more than the 460.
Swap memory for this one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MY-041-PA&groupid=701&catid=8&subcat=1517

both cheaper and better.

Also I'd recommend better cooler, the freezer is really getting old now, there is better stuff out there for not much more.

Like one of those:

19,99
25,98
26,99

If you can add some extra and grab one of the high end coolers ( 35+ ) I'll do that as well. In the long run 10-15quid extra isn't a big deal and extra cooling is always nice.
Knowing AMD from the past, any AM3 cooler should also be compatible with the new incoming socket in the future and the intel one is supposed to be similar as well.

I'll also get THIS PSU

And don't forget a tube of MX-3/4 on your way : ).
 
Pheonix, it's cheaper because it's 4GB, rather than 8, which I forgot to mention in my post. I saw a test the other day (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/ssd-vs-8gb.html) which compared 8GB to 4GB and harddrives to SSDs and there was virtually no performance improvement due to using 8GB over 4GB, so GeForce could easily save £60 on the RAM and possibly put that money elsewhere. Unless you (GeForce) know that your usage model justifies the extra RAM of course.

Altho £112 for an 8GB set of RAM still seems quite incredible to me, because 4GB sets used to cost that much.

I was thinking about how the 6850 compares to the GTX 460 1GB, with typical overclocks, so yes the 6850 will definitely have more performance than a GTX 460 768MB edition.

Agree that a better cooler only costing ~£7 more would be worth it. Altho out of those three that Pheonix suggested the Tranquillo is the one I'd pick. Seeing as the Tranquillo comes with some GC-2 thermal compound I don't really think it's necessary to get any more thermal compound, altho it's good to have a tube lying around.

I disagree with that PSU suggestion, mostly because the efficiency is better on the Antec Truepower and I don't know of anything that justifies spending £7 more to get that CoolerMaster, when their noise levels will be quite similar.
 
Hi all,

Thank you all very much for your help so far, really appreciate it. So these are the conclusions I've come to thus far:

1) Good call on the Arctic Freezer 7 Pro, have swapped to the Tranquillo. It seems like the best in terms of performance, noise and cost.

2) I am going to need the 8Gb RAM - certainly in the near future if not right now. It's better if I buy 2x4GB now, and stick another 2x4GB in later if I need 16GB.

3) I think I'll stick with the Antec PSU as I don't really want to spend that much more on the Nexus units and I've heard good things about the Antec's noise and electrical performance.

4) With respect to the graphics card, I chose an nVidia one because I run Linux (Ubuntu) and have heard the ATI driver support on Linux is woefully poor compared to nVidia.

Any opinions on the above?

Thanks again for everyone's help :)
 
You could maybe consider the next 460 up the 1gb model. But you may not require the extra memory.

Otherwise I agree with the True power, I have the 750 version and have had no issues running the single 460 card.

Good build all round otherwise.

Edit: +1 to tranquilo
 
If you're running Linux and 8gb of memory then I suppose u won't be doing much gaming?
If that's the case then u could do fine with just onboard gpu. Also if its just a hit of older games then you could get like 8800 gt for about 30quid 2nd hand.
 
You are correct, I don't intend to do much gaming. However I run dual 24" monitors (need dual DVI) and would like the machine to be capable of 1080p video playback, but moreover I would just like the graphics card to match the rest of the machine in terms of performance.

I do dual-boot Windows so there is some potential I will use this machine for a bit of gaming.

This, combined with the lack of ATI driver support for Linux, leads me to stick with the GTX 460 I think, unless anyone has any better ideas? :)

I will definitely stick with the Antec PSU, seems like a good choice to me.

Thank you all! :)
 
Well, if you dual boot then you'll game on Windows where there would be no problems with drivers haha.

I can't put my name on it, I'm not an avid Linux user, when I've been trying few older distros ( suse, gentoo, red hat ) around 7-8yrs ago there have been slight problems with the ATI drivers ( i got them in the end but it was a bit of pain ) however, later maybe around 2yrs ago on Ubuntu I had no problems whatsoever with the 4xxx series.

But yeh, 460 is a good choice as well, especially the one at 115quid is a great deal, HOWEVER if you plan to game on that 24", I'd strongly suggest the 1GB version.
 
Brilliant, thank you for the information :)

I'll have a think over it and weigh up my options, but at least I can make an informed decision thanks to you!

Cheers :)
 
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