Building for dead silence...

[Blorton]

Alrighty, I'm planning out a new system and would appreciate any feedback on silence options....

First of all, I'm not interested in water cooling simply because I don't overclock and think that it's a lot of money and trouble for not that much return over oversized air cooling. I don't need a cooling system rated for nuclear reactors...

I'm thinking of going with either a two or three way SLI setup and an intel quadcore. Case size isn't an issue since I normally just put the system on the floor next to my desk.

What cases do you guys like that have lots of room and can run larger fans that can be quieter?

Any other pointers to make me not feel like I have to put headphones on every time I play? :)

(At one point, I tried extension cables and just put my rig in the closet, but there's no ventilation in there and it got too hot. heh. Maybe I could put in a bathroom fan...)

Thanks much,
Blorton

[Xzin]

I moved all of my cpus ~ 30 ft away, installed soundproofing and vented and cooled the space.

It wasn't cheap or easy.

But man is it quiet.

[maqz]

Check out silentpcreview.com! Most people on these forums just throw a bunch of computers together and don't care abot the noise. :P

[-silencer-]

Check out silentpcreview.com! Most people on these forums just throw a bunch of computers together and don't care abot the noise. :P
I've been reading that site for years now - it's fantastic. In summary of what I've built based on many reviews from that site and testing out various components, here's what I would use for the goal of silence:

Case: Antec P180/P182. It's heavy and large, but it is built for silence with great cooling. The sides use metal-plastic-metal layering to further muffle sound, and it works. Note: If you use a very long videocard, like an 8800GTX, you'll have to remove the middle 3.5" harddrive rack out of the case. That's not usually an issue because there is still room for 4 hard drives in the lower drive compartment - where they should be anyway for better cooling.

CPU Heatsink for air cooling: Scythe Ninja (the best heatsink for low-rpm 120mm fans since the fins are spaced further apart than the Infinity/Tuniq Tower/Zalman/Thermalright 120 heatsinks). Get a Ninja and 800-1200rpm Scythe S-Flex or Nexus 120mm fan and it's very good cooling for virtually no noise.

Northbridge chipset heatsink: Thermalright HR-01. It's a tower-type heatpipe, so make sure you have room. However, it's fanless and cools very well compared to the tiny 40/60mm fans that are currently stock on chipset heatsinks.

Graphics card/heatsink: It depends on your card and the amount of space you're willing to lose since nearly all videocard heatsinks are larger than stock, but the Thermalright HR-03 series (Plus model for the 8800GTX/Ultra) is currently the best for quiet cooling. The Arctic Cooling Accelero S1/S2 models are cheap and very good as well.

Fans: The Nexus 120mm fans have been around the best for years, but I prefer the 120mm Scythe S-Flex noise characteristics now. They come in a variety of speeds as well (800rpm, 1200rpm, 1600rpm).

Hard Drives: The old Seagate Barracuda IV was very quiet for years, but the last couple years have been dominated by the Samsung Spinpoint models (T model now). My next drives to try out are the Western Digital GP drives - they vary in speed from 5400-7200rpm depending on use, which lesses power consumption and heat while not in use. They're also extremely quiet so I'm probably going to purchase a pair for my next machine.

Power Supply: All SeaSonic models. They're a bit more expensive, but you get what you pay for. Not only are they very quiet, they're also very efficient, stable, and reliable. Corsair's power supplies are simply rebadged SeaSonics, and there are some Antecs (like the Earthwatts) that are also SeaSonic PSUs.

DVD/CD Drive: Plextor & Samsung. There are a lot of drive models available, but I've seem to find the Plextor and Samsung drives to be more 'solid' while discs are spinning - leading to less vibration & noise. For the price, the Samsung drives are hard to beat.

If I were to build a machine now for quiet multibox gaming & WoW, I'd go with something like this:

Intel Q6600 w/ Scythe Ninja & Scythe S-Flex 1600rpm 120mm fan.
Gigabyte X38T-DQ6 motherboard (or eVGA 780i motherboard for SLI)
8800GT (or 8800GTS G92) w/Thermalright HR-03 & Scythe S-Flex 1600rpm 120mm fan.
2x Western Digital GP 500GB hard drives
Samsung DVDR/CDR drives
Antec P182 w/4x Scythe S-Flex 1600rpm fans.
Corsair 620W or SeaSonic 700W PSU
Front drive bay fan controller - Switchable from 5V/7V/9V/12V for all 4 case fans, CPU fan, and GPU fan.

My current machine is similar to the above, and I have no problems with the noise even while overclocked.

[leukos]

I've been building my system down a similar design goal. Here are some of the various things I've found out.

Gaming aside, my first thought was to by a couple more Macs. Apple actually does a pretty good job on system design, and the computers are pretty quiet to begin with. If my macMini had a solid state drive I would rarely ever here it - the macMini also can't play games. In general, I've found that Complete Silence (~0dBA), Computing Power, and Low Cost are at the corners of a triangle, and, in general, you can only pick two. (it is a flawed comparison, don't poke any more holes in it).

You will never reach complete silence with any moving parts.

Fans can be a big contributor to noise, not just in the obvious noise they make, but in the vibrations they cause in the computer case. You would probably want to pick up silicon/rubber gaskets and mounting hardware to isolate your fans from your case.

The same applies to a hard drive. Some people over at the silentpcreview forums have gone to great lengths to isolate the hard drive from the computer case. Even going so far as to suspend the hard drive with elastic rubber cord to keep vibrations from being transfered to the case.

In general, the larger your power supply is the harder it will be to cool. Even with high efficiency power supplies at 80% - 85% efficiency, when you start talking about requiring 500W - 700W from your power supply unit (PSU) that will probably be putting out about 125W - 175W (at 80% efficiency) to 88W - 123W (at 85% efficiency) of heat. In general, removing this type of heat from a power supply with conventional off-the-shelf PSUs means there will be a fan. (Don't you love the generalities here?)


There are some solutions to the above problems.

The first is to redefine the problem. The problem isn't you need to have a quiet computer next to you, the problem is you need to have a quiet computer. Put the computer in another room. This is Xzin's approach and it works.

Solid state drives will get rid of the hard drive noise (relatively, expensive). Water cooling can rid of some of the need for fans, specifically on CPUs and graphics cards. However, you will probably still want at least one fan moving air thru the case. Water cooling also captures the heat and allows you to move it someplace else (another room, outside, to a loop of pipe buried underground). All these solution will require a pump, the more exotic solutions will require a larger pump - which makes noise. If you thought normal off-the-shelf water cooling solutions were expensive price out what it costs to put 250 feet of pipe 5 feet underground.

Another solution is to not go for complete or dead silence (~0dBA), but relatively quieter. -silencer- seemed to cover these very well. No need to duplicate the wheel.

The solution is another redefine the problem solution. The problem isn't you need to have a quiet computer, the problem is you don't want to hear all the fan noise from the computer. The solution is simple, wear a good set of studio headphones and pump music and the sound output from the game thru them.

[Blorton]

Wow! I mean, just WOW! 8o

Thank you all so much for the motherlode of tips and information. I'll use that in the shopping list.

Fwiw, I can deal with a little bit of noise, but the my current cheap case and fans are just obnoxious. I'm sure even just some of what you guys suggest will make a big difference.

(Fwiw, I used to keep a large reef tank and am more than a little familiar with outrageous plumbing projects. I once seriously considered doing a setup involving a a very expensive specialty pump to recirculate water from a very large basement holding tank to a viewing tank in my second floor office. My aversion to water cooling has roots in that. Heh.)

Thanks again,
Blorton

[-silencer-]

Another solution is to not go for complete or dead silence (~0dBA), but relatively quieter. -silencer- seemed to cover these very well. No need to duplicate the wheel.

The solution is another redefine the problem solution. The problem isn't you need to have a quiet computer, the problem is you don't want to hear all the fan noise from the computer. The solution is simple, wear a good set of studio headphones and pump music and the sound output from the game thru them.
I should have mentioned that! Back before I valued silence so much, I used to use *closed* circumaural headphones almost 100% of the time to dull out the nosie from my 92mm Vantec Tornado CPU fan. This was around '99-'00 in the Pentium3/Athlon t'bird days, and air cooling was all about high-powered fans. The thing sounded like a mini-vacuum cleaner inside my case, so the closed heaphones were the best way to play games in peace. I still use high quality closed circumaural heaphones when there's too much background noise in the rest of the house or I need to head the smallest sounds while audio mixing & production - the Sennheiser HD 280 Pro headphones are fantastic for around $100.

[maqz]

...here's what I would use for the goal of silence:

CPU Heatsink for air cooling: Scythe Ninja...
Graphics card/heatsink: ...Thermalright HR-03 series (Plus model for the 8800GTX/Ultra)...
Fans: ...Nexus 120mm fans...
Hard Drives: ... Samsung Spinpoint...
Power Supply: All SeaSonic models...

That's pretty much what I have. Although I have a smaller case (Antec solo). It's fairly quiet, although I could probably turn the fans down some more.

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/5708/solohslargejp3.jpg
http://img503.imageshack.us/img503/3517/solohssidegd1.jpg

[Sanctume]

I got myself an Alienware 9750 and it's pretty quiet for a Core 2 duo & SLI. $3800 taxed and shipped.

[-silencer-]

Core 2 duo & SLI. $3800 taxed and shipped.
8| Dual core at that price? I suppose that's alright if you don't want to build it or have someone build a machine for you. I wouldn't recommend dual core for anyone spending more than $1500 on a machine they're having custom built.

$275 Q6600 cpu
$260 eVGA 780i 3xSLI capable mobo
$240 8GB Corsair XMS DDR2-800 memory
$950 2x eVGA 8800GTX SLI
$160 WD Raptor 150GB 10k rpm hard drive
$210 2x WD GP 500GB 5400-7200rpm hard drives
$30 Samsung DVDR w/Lightscribe
$400 Antec P190 case w/2x power supplies (650W & 550W)
$570 Dell Ultrasharp 24" display
$80 Logitech G15 keyboard
$75 Logitech G9 mouse
$150 Creative Labs X-Fi sound card
$270 Logitech Z5500 speaker system
$160 Vista Ultimate 64bit or WinXP 64bit.
$3830 (okay, around another $100 shipped, so drop a hard drive, 4GB memory, or cut back on the sound system to make it $3800 shipped - still no taxes for about 48 states.)
The most similar system I could build on alienware.com (with only 4GB memory, Vista Home Premium, and older 680i mobo) was $5026! It's simply overpriced when you can find an experienced system builder to put together a system for a 10% markup from newegg costs.. roughly $750-1000 total cost less than stores like Alienware. Plus, every component comes with a warranty, so that point isn't an argument.

That much money buys a pretty badass system for home builders.

Even a more economic quad core system is capable of blowing through WoW 5-boxing with 2 monitors:
$275 Q6600
$90 Gigabyte P35-DS3L mobo
$120 4GB Corsair DDR2-800
$450 8800GTX
$105 WD 500GB GP 5400-7200rpm hard drive
$30 Samsung DVDR drive w/Lightscribe
$150 Antec P182 case
$180 SeaSonic 700W power supply
$550 2x Dell 22" 11680x1050 LCDs
$140 Vista Home Premium 64bit or WinXP 64bit.
$2115.. add mouse, keyboard, and speakers and it's still under $2500 shipped for a very good quad-core.
($3204 configured very similar system on alienware.com.. again.. vastly overpriced.)

[leukos]

This was around '99-'00 in the Pentium3/Athlon t'bird days, and air cooling was all about high-powered fans. The thing sounded like a mini-vacuum cleaner inside my caseThat comment brought back some old memories. I dug around some of my archives from those times and found these comments about the whole "fan" thing.

You might have too many fans in your computer when ....


- it hovers.
- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has asked to borrow your computer when their windtunnel broke down.
- you've lost an argument with it.
- WHAT !!!???!!! WHAT !!!??!!! I can't hear you.
- you've lost a girlfriend over it.
- you had to take out a loan to pay the power bill.
- you blew out the local Power Switching station the first time you powered it up.
- you did it the second time, too.
- you know what "Shit hits the fan" looks like.
- the fans have their own power supply.
- you blew out the regional Power Switching station the third time you powered it up.
- you only have four fingers on one hand.
- people laugh at you.
- you only have four fingers on two hands.
- you imagine the "fans" are cheering for you.
- you've gone deaf.
- you think everything in the would be perfect, if you only had one more.
- you have a website about - your fans.
- Grainger is your fan supplier.