help me Silence my PC please

[Nenso]

Right now I use

E6420 2.13GHZ OC'd to 3.4GHZ

XFX GeForce 8800GTS 640MB

4x1GB Corsair C4 (comb-styled heatsink) ram.

Chasis: Antec P182SE

Stock cooling for everything I guess..

Windows XP 32-bit

My main concern is that my videocard is very hot, so I always have to keep the 2 fans on my case on HIGH mode, which makes it very loud.

Is there any way I can fix this? I don't care about the cost as long as it isn't outrageous.. so I'm willing to change to watercooling, heat-sinks, etc if it makes a significant difference. Thank you for your time

I hope I will be able to quietly listen to music on my desktop one day..

Nenso

[krrm]

See this link:http://silentpcreview.com/

I have good experience with slow (i.e. less than 1000 rpm) 120 mm fans.

[Fungi]

You have a very nice base to work off of. Here's what to get first.

CPU Heatsink: Thermalright Ultra-120 or Ultima-90 with applicable fan, I'd say Nexus but I suspect better (and possibly cheaper) has come out lately. Bolt-thru retention kit highly recommended.

VGA Heatsink: Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 rev.2 (optional Turbo Module), also get some VRAM heatsinks to replace the Accelero's lackluster ramsinks.

Case fans: 120mm Scythe Slipstream 800RPM or 1200RPM

OPTIONAL: Thermalright HR-05 (SLI) chipset cooling, as well as the Bolt-thru Kit.

Also get some zip ties to manage your cables neatly as to promote free airflow.

Then later on you'll probably realize your power supply and hard drives can be somewhat noisy...

[Shiki]

You might also want to get a fan controller so that you can control the voltage of the fans.

I have 2 Nexus 120mm fans in my P180 running at 7V and it's pretty quiet.

What's your power supply and hard disk? Seasonics are Corsairs (the HX series, which are Seasonic OEMs) are very quiet. I also turn on AAM to full on my hard disk to reduce the seek noise.

[Spiug31]

fit this to your graphics card http://www.silentpcreview.com/article793-page5.html it should help

[Spiug31]

if airflow is the problem pics of internal layout would help

[dc]

overclocking is counter-productive to quietness... also you haven't mentioned your power supply but a good quiet one will do wonders too

larger heatsinks with more surface area using heat pipes = good

thermalright are extra good in this regard

bigger, but slower spinning fans are good

use hard disk bungees/suspenders

neat and tidy cabling to encourage proper air flow

a high quality case with its air flow well thought out

and some cases now also have 3 layered panels

might also want to use sound deadening foam on the inside of your case, though it'll probably increase the temps

[Fungi]

overclocking is counter-productive to quietness... also you haven't mentioned your power supply but a good quiet one will do wonders too

If you can overclock without overvolting, it's fine. I have my E6400 overclocked AND undervolted. But if you don't need the performance increase then stock undervolt is fine too.

larger heatsinks with more surface area using heat pipes = good

thermalright are extra good in this regard

But not recent Thermalright, like the IFX14 or whatever. They either ran out of improvements (likely) or hired some dipshit design team (also likely, given the "flame" fin design in recent heatsinks)

bigger, but slower spinning fans are good

Definitely. Stay around 1000RPM and you're good.

use hard disk bungees/suspenders

neat and tidy cabling to encourage proper air flow

a high quality case with its air flow well thought out

and some cases now also have 3 layered panels

might also want to use sound deadening foam on the inside of your case, though it'll probably increase the temps

These points are pretty much taken care of by using an Antec P18x case.

[dc]

yeah those antec cases are pretty sweet

i've got an SLK3000B for my ageing machine it's so quiet though

sonatas are supposed to be pretty quiet too

[Fungi]

I love my Solo, but it's a tiny bit too small. If 2 120mm fans fit on the front, and the case was extended a little, it'd be the case of my dreams.

[Nenso]

thanks a lot guys, ill look further into it after next week (exams)

Edit: I'll take pictures soon.. BTW I made a mistake.. not everything is stock cooling, I have 120mm fans i think.. and my cpu has a small heatsink/fan but I'm not too sure..

my powersupply is 620W (i forgot brand, but it isn't a self-built bad no-name brand one..) I also have a RAID 0 array of 2x 500gb.. and a Raptor 150GB that runs my OS.

[guzziguy]

If all else fails, this approach is guaranteed to silence your PC:

[Nenso]

If all else fails, this approach is guaranteed to silence your PC:

I'd rather give my parts away to my friends instead lol

[Nenso]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24328473@N03/

Heres the Flickr I made, I tried to upload it on imageshack but it shrinks the images.

Talking to some people made me realize that it might not be the fans, but the harddrives.

However, other than noise there is a problem with running my fans on low speed is that it gradually gets warm and hot in there. Do you guys think there is room for a heatsink? and for GPU only?

What about my CPU? thanks

[ojnihs]

where's Iron_Dreamer? he could help you a lot

[Fungi]

If you could list all the stuff that's in there (fans etc) it'd help. What's with that baby fan on the northbridge? If you have around $30 to spare, get a Thermalright HR-05 and bolt-thru retention kit. Gigabyte's nb heatsinks are known to kind of suck; I know my stock one got really hot to the touch. You can definitely fit an Ultra-90 or Ultima-90 in there, or Ultra-120 if you want more cooling (it should fit). There's probably room for an Accelero S1 if you move the cables (and maybe hard drives, can't see them) a bit.

If you lower your fan speeds of course it'll get warmer inside; less fresh air is replacing the heated air. There are some good options for fans that push good air while staying quiet (800RPM Slipstream comes to mind). Hard drives are kind of tough; everyone runs into that wall eventually. WDs are fairly quiet, Samsungs are said to be quiet, but if that's not enough for you then you might have to invest in some (expensive) drive silencer boxes.

[Dusty Chalk]

I want to build this one.

[tkam]

You mention that you think your gfx card is getting hot (too hot??) what temp readings are you getting from it? The 8800 series cards that are based on the older G80 90nm chips run awfully hot. 60+C at idle and up in the 80Cs under load are common and completely safe.

[aardvark baguette]

I want to build this one.

sorry, couldn't resist:

[Dusty Chalk]

[Nenso]

I got someone to help me build this computer (my first custom) and he picked most of the cooling/cables etc parts since I have no experience. I only know about harddrives and gpu/cpu/mb etc but now I think I'll try to DIY this. Thanks for all the great suggestions Fungi, I'm going to see what I can do with the cables but they don't move in any further. Is it because they're too short or something? Also for harddrives. There are 2 disk trays, the very bottom tray has 3x 500gb 7200RPM harddrives. Two of these are in a RAID 0 array forming a 1000gb RAID 0 (split into 2 partitions, 1 for programs and 1 for file storage.) The third harddrive is 500gb for some important file backups. The tray above this one has 1x 150GB 10000RPM Raptor harddrive (my operating system is installed on this) from Western Digital. It is the main source of noise I believe, including my mini fan over the stock NB heatsink. The guy told me that the fan will help with overclocking a bit but it makes a lot of noise (I don't mind it if its the harddrive. What I'm saying is that is I want to minimize noise for the maximum amount of cooling under those circumstances.

My case fans in the back/top are both 120mm but I would have to ask what they are, including other fans like the Coolermaster one.

Today I'm heading to the computer store and I'll check if they have any of the parts, etc.

Thanks again,

-Nenso

[Fungi]

Oh god a Raptor...

Yeah, if you want to keep that thing you'd better get one of thoes quiet drive enclosures. It's spinning faster, and more spinning mass means more noise and vibration. And why in the world do you have a 1TB RAID0 array?

A fanless HR-05 will cool your NB more than that dinky fan+stock heatsink.

[aardvark baguette]

You have a raptor and you put your programs on the 7200 drives?

[tkam]

Yeah I wouldn't put anything you can't afford to lose on that RAID 0 array. One thing you might want to try, is getting some dynamat sheets and covering as much of the interior of the case as you can with them.

[Nenso]

You have a raptor and you put your programs on the 7200 drives?

Here I'll break it down for you.

Raptor: OS, main programs like microsoft office, etc etc.. safe programs that are important and used a lot.

RAID 0: Warcraft 3, anime, music, more games, lots of FLAC, ALAC, etc.. its basically all the programs that can easily be reinstalled.

Lone 500gb: backup for some program file stuff like WAR3 maps, music, anime, etc.. but not all. Basically I dump all the stuff that may be considered trash on my RAID 0 and backup the files I want on this.

Fungi I'm looking into it right now.

My plans are to buy

Accelero S1 + maybe a 120mm fan strapped on it or the turbo (which one will give better cooling? and fits better?)

Thermalright HR-05 (SLI) chipset cooling, as well as the Bolt-thru Kit

Please help, what is the diff between the normal one and the SLI one. My motherboard Gigabyte GA-965P-DS3 should be able to use the non-SLI HR-05 (normal one, not IFX) and bolt-thru kit is for the ULTRA-120 (I decided to pick the 120) CPU heatsink right??

I see three bolt-thru kits that works, is there one that you suggest? Link here --> http://www.ncix.com/search/?q=bolt-thru&minprice=Min.+Price&maxprice=Max.+Price

Also for the VRAM heatsinks, I took a look but I have no idea what you mean. Could you find me a product please?

Quiet harddrive enclosures, sounds like a good idea. Is there one that you suggest or are they all pretty much the same?

I'm sorry for bombarding you guys with questions but it really helps someone inexperienced like me a lot!

Thanks,

-Nenso