ATX Cases: cool vs. quiet

[dZeus]

hi Patrick,

I've been looking into getting my system as quiet as possible as well the last couple of months, and I have to say that the Zalman flower cooler is a perfect HSF for that purpose!

the fan is almost inaudible in 'noise-prevention mode', and it keeps the CPU more than cool enough.

I've even tried to run without any active cooling at all, and the CPU (Cu 700E) would still run within operating specifications according to Intel! (barely though, @75 degrees Celcius). Though that was a tad too high for my liking, so I kept the fan for the airflow

I've also bought an almost completely quiet HDD, i.e. the Seagate Barracuda ATA IV series... those are completely silent during idle, and during seek they also are very hard to hear (that's with acoustic management disabled. With management enabled you can't even notice the seeks any more).

What remains is the power supply, which has 2 options:
- replace the FAN by for example a quiet Papst one
- take out the FAN and put in some major heatsinks to make the PSU passive cooled only

I'm looking into that last option, though I probably have to mod the PSU first to make it more efficient (and output less heat).

The fan in my CDWriter also is quite annoying, so I'll add some simple circuitry that makes it only go on when it's burning a cd.

[Wombat]

Just to nitpick, fans are not active cooling. They're passive. Peltiers are active.

Another way to quiet a PC, which I've been meaning to do, is use a cutter to remove the preforated steel in front of the fans. The interference in airflow is a large part of the noise you hear.

[TnT]

The dual case fans in the Lian-Li cases come with a 3 mode switch. The low mode seems to be fairly quiet, but I always keep mine on the medium.

[Greebe]

@Rob... you got that straight!!!... I'm not sure exactly when this mess/confuzzion started exactly, but when I hear of a fan being active I just

[KvHagedorn]

Well 5000 RPM does qualify as quite a bit of activity..

Why not get a small refrigerator and stick the comp inside? Drill some holes for the cables, and perhaps get external cd/dvd drives? condensation could be controlled by a dehumidifyer and the sealed up box would keep any fan noise at bay.. add to that the fact that such a sealed system would take in no dust..

[Paddy]

I have got some pretty hot kit in there.

I cant help feeling that the Zalman setup is not going to be enough for my drives... but it will be a lot cheaper than watercooling.

Perhaps if i got a bigger case... then I could space my drives out a bit???


What do ya reckon to this beestie? Yeong Yang Server Cube





A bit OTT me thinks

[Paddy]

I did find a UK based company that sold water cooling stuff:

http://www.tekheads.co.uk/products.php?view=list&catId=20

I know that I would need a resevoir, a pump, a water block and some tubing.... but I have no idea what is good and what is not....

[RichL]

As far as your HDDs go Paddy, try one of the 'Ultra Thin' Hdd coolers from The OverClocking Store.
They take up an extra 3.5" bay below your HDD, but they are very quiet and seem very good.
I've got them on both my Maxtors and my Quantum 7200rpm drives, and they all run cool to the touch.

While youre there look up their "Super Slot Fan" too. I've got a similar product under a different name that works very well.

[Paddy]

Cheers!

Unfortuatly I have no room for that

When i split into two systems, I will get a new case and two Seegate drives... I'll think about buying one then! Cheers.


My XP 1800+ is on its way, but I have noticed that the Zalman Flower only supports upto 1.4GHz on silent mode.
Does anyone know if it would still be OK?
Is there a alternative for the same price? - Water is too dear...

[VJ]

@greebe

What is the room ambient temperature and how/where are you measuring the case ambient temps?

The ambient room temperature is about 21-22°.

The ambient case temperature is measured by means of a digital probe / lcd display (.1° accurate, 10s sample refresh). The probe is mounted in between the two harddisks (in this case, the drives are mounted vertically, there is room for 6 disks, my disks are in positions 2 and 5; the probe is situated near the rear end of the drives, right inbetween them. The drives are mounted behind the front 80mm intake fans (which are set to run at full speed). I know this is not the best way of measuring harddisk-temperatures, but if the ambient temperature remains around 25°, then I have no doubt the drives themselves run well within "safetylimits".

The rest of my rig is quite cool by itself :
Pentium II-450
384 MB SDRAM
Matrox Millenium G200
3com 3C900 Combo
Adaptec 2940UW
Adapte 2906
Creative AWE32
Plextor 4220 internal
Samsung scr3231 cdrom

And then of course:
Quantum Atlas 10K
IBM Ultrastar 36LZX

I searched long for cases that provide adequate cooling of harddisks (I have no intention to overclock), but most of the cases I found purely concentrate on the CPU-portion. I wanted a case that has no fans on either left/right side; as this prevents placing towers next to each other (or next to some desks).
As I did not want to use harddiskcoolers, this case seemed appropriate (and about the only case I could find here in Belgium).

I completely agree it is overkill for my current rig (smaller LianLi cases have similar harddiskcooling), but this case supports just about every mainboardsize, so I'll have this case for a long time (my rig is now over 3 years old, so I do intend to upgrade soon.... Just waiting for M to release something ; my upgrade will most likely be towards a dual cpu-system).

I was worried about my harddisk running too hot in my previous case (it even crashed once, was replaced under warranty, yet I doubt heat was the cause), and when I needed a second harddrive, I opted to play safe and go for a better case. This SCSI-stuff is great but costs enough to be mounted/cooled properly to extend their lifespan...



Jörg

[dave m]

QuietPC say that the flower will cover 1900+, with the fan on full presumably. I bought their biggest PSU and a < 1 Gig athlon CPU fan and they were so quiet even with the case off, I had to double check it had powered up. This was for my home theatre PC. Then I bought a Sony Projector with a fan from hell, so wondered why I bothered :-)

Dave

[Paddy]

My XP 1800 arrived today. Unfortunatly I wont get the HSF for another few days.

Nice CPU.... pushed my 3Dmark2001 score into the mid 7Ks.... not that that means much...