Spec check for quiet PC

Grafter67

Grafter67

Grafter67

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Joined
19 Jan 2008
Posts
279
1st post so be gentle with me :)

It's time to admit defeat and replace my ancient Athlon XP system.

Main priority is for it to be as near silent as possible.

How does this lot look?

Intel Core 2 Duo E2160 "LGA775 Conroe" 1.80GHz (800FSB) - Retail £40.99
(£48.16) £40.99
(£48.16)
Samsung SpinPoint S 250GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (HD250HJ) £35.99
(£42.29) £35.99
(£42.29)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition inc. SP2 - OEM - 1Pk (N09-01991) £47.99
(£56.39) £47.99
(£56.39)
Scythe Ninja-CU Full Copper CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £36.99
(£43.46) £36.99
(£43.46)
Antec Solo Quiet Mini Tower Case - No PSU £49.99
(£58.74) £49.99
(£58.74)
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Intel P35 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £55.99
(£65.79) £55.99
(£65.79)
OcUK 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C5 800MHz DDR2 Dual Channel Kit £23.99
(£28.19) £23.99
(£28.19)
Corsair VX 450W ATX PSU (CMPSU-450VXUK) £37.99
(£44.64) £37.99
(£44.64)
Gigabyte GeForce 8600 GTS Silent Fanless 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail (GV-NX86S256H) £69.99
(£82.24) £69.99
(£82.24)
Samsung SH-S203PRSMN 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer Lightscribe ReWriter (Beige/Black/Silver) - Retail £19.99
(£23.49) £19.99
(£23.49)
Scythe Kama PWM 92mm Fan - 4-Pin PWM £6.99
(£8.21) £6.99
(£8.21)
Sub Total : £426.89
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £12.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £76.97
Total : £516.81
 
Looks good, it'll all work together. What's the 92mm fan for?

For what will you be using this machine? If it's for gaming I think you'll want a more powerful graphics card.
 
The 92mm fan is for the front of the case. I'm not sure if I'll need/use it, but for the sake of a few pounds, I might as well order it at the same time, as I'm in N.Ireland and delivery to here is more expensive than standard.

re Gaming, I only play games occasionally and don't mind playing at lower res. I think this is the best sub £100 passively cooled card at present?

Main use of the PC is for poker, with a database running alongside the poker site's software. My current PC is struggling when I join a new table, with CPU usage up at 100% for minutes at a time before my opponent's stats appear, which can get expensive :(
 
Hi, I have that case and you are right, a 92mm fan is a good idea for the front, especially if you are gonna use the full suspension hard drive mounting, which I'd guess you are as you're aiming for quietness. The supplied rear fan is fairly quiet on its lowest setting, I've replaced mine with an Akasa Amber and I think that's slightly louder than the stock one on low, might change it back sometime.

One tip - don't connect up the system status/power LED unless you like particularly bright blue lights on the front of your pc.

Edit- Oh and I run a similar gigabyte P35 mobo and E21xx cpu to your spec and its all good. There's some OCZ platinum DDR2 6400 on special offer this week that might be better and slightly cheaper than the stuff you selected.
 
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Thanks Maf,

I've changed the memory as you suggested.

I have a silent (at low speeds) 120mm fan in my current/old PC that I can swap over. It's either an Acousti dustproof or a Zalman (can't quite remember which I kept and which I sold).
 
invest in some elastic bands to suspend your HDD in it's cradle, stops vibration =]
 
Thanks Ben, but I think it comes with those.

and Thanks mp. I think it's the same case (apart from the front aesthetics). I'm pretty sure p150/Sonata 3 and designer/Solo are all the same case except for the skin and/or psu.

So, since I don't care how ugly the box under my desk is, it's down to PSU.

My current, about to be old PC has a semi-fanless Elan Vital Greenerger (now known as Nesteq) 400W psu, which may or may not be re-usable. It's 3 years old, as is my PC building experience. I'm going to get the new kit in, stick it together as stock, including the nasty hs and fan and then start playing once I've hopefully got my confidence back up.

Looking forward to getting a E8400 or a quad once I know what I'm doing with this Intel stuff and this sata stuff and this pci-e stuff.

It's hard for us wrinklies you know :)
 
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Don't bother with an 8600 GTS. It's too naff to be a gaming card, too expensive to be a standard card. 2400 Pro is a good fanless card, I used it on a build for a musician (so obviously that had to be quiet).

I would also recommend getting a case like the Akasa Eclipse or the Antec P180/182 that take 120mm fans - they are much quieter.
 
Thanks to Everyone for your help with this.

Bits arrived today and worked first time. No blood lost or knuckles skinned and only one minor hickup. Half way through formatting the (totally silent in it's garters) HDD I realised I hadn't plugged the case fan into a molex. Oops!

I chickened out and set it up with the stock HS + fan. I'll go for the ninja tomorrow. It's a serious lump of metal. Temps are already 10 degrees less than my old pc (athlon 2800+ xp), so although it's not as quiet as I want just now, swapping to the ninja hs passive and swapping the rear fan will get me very close.

ps Maf, I really did try to wire the power light properly, but it hasn't come on. :)
 
melbourne720 said:
I wouldn't go passive, no matter how good the stepping was on a C2D.
Click to expand...

Fair comment. I suppose I mean semi passive.

The copper ninja is so big that it'll only be an inch or so away from a rear exhaust fan, when I put one back in.

I didn't get as far as installing the ninja today. It seemed only fair to go along with the overclocking spirit of things first and get some stock figures, even though silence is more my thing than speed.

Couldn't get my core temps (according to speedfan) past 46 at stock (1.8)with the supplied Intel hs + fan on auto and the supplied case fan on low, but once I put it up to 3 Ghz , core temps were at my personal comfort limit of 60 degrees after only 6 and a half minutes of orthos even though the poor wee stock fan was doing a surprisingly good job, still sounding smoothish, despite pumping it's heart out at 2200 rpm. It's been fine within Windows, poker apps and Oblivion, with core temps comfortably below 40.

This was with no exhaust fan. I took the supplied rear fan out and haven't got round to figuring which fan to put in where in it's place. Across the grapghics card and northbridge seems attractive, but you guys'll shout at me if I don't give the psu fan a bit of help.
 
meansizzler said:
"no such thing as silent"
Click to expand...

yes there is - any of the zalman Reserator's will achieve a fanless solution - you can't acheive very high overclocks or SLI/Crossfire setup but one will easily suit this type of spec.

Only problem is the included GPU block is not conpatable with the newer cards. So new block / old card (see sig) or passive card & single case fan.

Silence does come cheap though :(
 
My old system is indeed usually silent with a reserator and semi fanless PSU. The pump started to rattle recently, which prompted thoughts of this upgrade initially. A new pump for a tenner wouldn't have been as much fun :)

The new box is pretty quiet now that I've swapped the stock hsf for the copper ninja today. Unfortunately I have to retract my brag about lack of skinned knuckles and bloodloss. It was a complete sod to fit. How the new mobo is still working I don't know.

The only fan at present (apart from PSU) is the one that came with the Ninja. It's only running at 700rpm, so pretty quiet and what little noise there is (not sure if which fan it's from, just yet) is only above ambient at night and is smooth so not too unpleasant.
 
I use a Zalman 500w modular PSU which is silent and a Zalman CNPS9700-LED which in my case are silent. In fact the loudest thing I can hear is the air flow through the grills on the front of my PC which gives a very gentle whoosh!

Zalman stuff is superb quality and really quiet. Just thought I'd add that to general discussion
 
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