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aerog

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Hello, computer geek time. I upgraded my nearly 4 y/o PC a couple weeks ago. Surprisingly only took an afternoon to get it completely done, but then I didn't start from scratch with the operating system and software.

Here 'tiz:



The lower-most drive (200gb IDE) will be changed to a 500gb SATA drive this week if I get the time. I have other drives that slide into the removable slots up to for backups. Software projects and photo backups are going to be stored on a 750gb or 1TB drive then left in a safety deposit box - just haven't had the patience to do it yet.

For the real geeks among us, the Q6600 is running at 26-28°C under normal loads, while the motherboard sits at 35°. My old Pentium 4-3ghz would run in the mid-40° range constantly, and that was with additional fans mounted in the front of the machine! The Zalman 9700 heatsink/cooler is a work of art, it sure seems to do the job.
 
That's almost exactly the same setup I'm looking at upgrading my upstairs desktop to. How's the noise? The case I have right now sounds like a plane taking off, and I want to use it as a server (amongst other things, so always on) and I'm looking to silence it as much as possible.
 
I want to silence mine too. Personally I'd get another case, or look at a different cooling solution.

This case by "default" is supposed to have 2 80mm fans in the back, one on the side, and 1-2 in the front. Even with just the 2 rear and 1 side fan it's still noisy... I should mention that the video card has a pretty substantial fan (not too loud), the power supply has a large fan on the bottom, there's the CPU cooler fan, and two 40mm fans in the removable drive sleds.

There are other cases out there that use a single 120mm fan that runs slower and quieter than most fans. I'd look at those, and read the reviews on newegg.com

ALSO! The zalman cooler comes with a speed controller so you can manually turn the thing down or off if need be (the motherboard should be able to do that anyway). It's already pretty quiet though.

My big concern is the HD temps in this box. My two drives up top (which each have a 40mm cooling fan behind them) run at 35°, the IDE drive runs at 37°. My internal SATA drive runs 45-47° constantly. I'd be pretty worried about stacking a couple of those drives in a tight fitting case.

You can always look at water-cooling, everyone is doing it these days. Seems like a pain to me though.
 
Which drive sleds are you using, Scott? I have Promise 1100 SuperSwap here but found the enclosures kept heat too high, killed two SATA drives kinda quick (WD 120G). Now I will only put drives in to do a backup, then remove when complete. Have had no more drive failures.
 
They're Vantec EZ-Swap 2 sleds. They have one with a fancy monitor panel on the front, but the front of the plain ones is 100% cooling louvers. The rack itself has a 40mm fan in the back, and the sleds are made of heavy aluminum (ie: good heatsinks).

A month before I did this upgrade I pulled a drive out for something and it was hot! SO, I added a hd-temp monitor program to keep an eye on things. My problem was I had the SATA drives stacked tightly together against the top of the case. Directly under them were two optical drives. The top of this case has the least airflow of anywhere in the box, add that to the hottest place and it didn't help at all.

I yanked out my CD-writer and moved the SATA stack down, leaving a ~1" gap at at the top of the case. The side-fan on the case had been blowing into the case (I figured having airflow directed at the CPU/Vid-card was a good idea). I turned it around to give the case negative air pressure in an attempt to suck air through all the front openings, like that 1" gap.

It must have worked because the temps went from the high 40s down to around 35, and they feel a lot cooler than they were.
 
aerog said:
I turned it around to give the case negative air pressure in an attempt to suck air through all the front openings, like that 1" gap.
Click to expand...
That's the trick, more fans don't = better cooling. Cool air needs to come in, do something useful, then exit the box as hot air. Strange how some case manufacturers haven’t worked that one out yet.
 
Plenty of ventilation (3 of the 80mm case fans, plus the P/S fan) with this big Antec case I've got but I did have the two drives stacked together at first. Removed one unit, replaced the drives and still had what I can only attribute as heat related failure... the one in the sled. Now both are mounted in the case innards and all seems fine. I got a bit peeved after the second RAID array failure. The first two drives failed within hours of eachother, too. There is a fan in the drive receiver.
 
GregW said:
That's the trick, more fans don't = better cooling. Cool air needs to come in, do something useful, then exit the box as hot air. Strange how some case manufacturers haven’t worked that one out yet.
Click to expand...

Very true. I can't knock the case folks too badly though. They'd intended that the HDs be mounted in racks near the bottom (and cooler part) of the box, directly behind a large filtered air opening - with the option to have a cooling fan directly in front of them.

If anyone's curious I tried an experiment. I took the side/case fan and switched it around to blow cool air directly on the CPU/MB. Their temps didn't really change, but the HD temps all went sky high!
 
aerog said:
I want to silence mine too. Personally I'd get another case, or look at a different cooling solution.

This case by "default" is supposed to have 2 80mm fans in the back, one on the side, and 1-2 in the front. Even with just the 2 rear and 1 side fan it's still noisy... I should mention that the video card has a pretty substantial fan (not too loud), the power supply has a large fan on the bottom, there's the CPU cooler fan, and two 40mm fans in the removable drive sleds.

There are other cases out there that use a single 120mm fan that runs slower and quieter than most fans. I'd look at those, and read the reviews on newegg.com

ALSO! The zalman cooler comes with a speed controller so you can manually turn the thing down or off if need be (the motherboard should be able to do that anyway). It's already pretty quiet though.

My big concern is the HD temps in this box. My two drives up top (which each have a 40mm cooling fan behind them) run at 35°, the IDE drive runs at 37°. My internal SATA drive runs 45-47° constantly. I'd be pretty worried about stacking a couple of those drives in a tight fitting case.

You can always look at water-cooling, everyone is doing it these days. Seems like a pain to me though.
Click to expand...

I have a case with a single 120mm at the back. 1 40mm fan at the back of the PSU and 1 120mm fan on the bottom of the PSU. The CPU has a single very quiet 60mm fan on it.

The noisiest part of my PC is during boot up where the video card fan spins at max speed before the BIOS and system drivers take control of it.

It's probably the quietest PC i've owned since the Pentium I days.

By comparison, my Debian G4 machine sounds like a 747 on stand-by on the run way all the time, and my Xbox 360 sounds like a C-130 when the DVD drive spools up...
 
This is kind of interesting (yup, GEEKTIME AGAIN). My Antec case has a lockable cover that swings to cover the front of the top of the case (CDROM/HD-sleds, power switch, etc). It also covers that 1" slot I opened up for airflow.

Last night I modified the cover with a small grid of 1/4" air holes. With the cover closed the HD-sleds are still maintaining about 35c, but the lower internal drives dropped their temps a little too. One drive had been 45-47c, the other was 44c. Both dropped to 40c.

All I can figure is obstructing the upper airflow gap forced more air to come through the front bezel.

I dunno, I thought it was interesting. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif
 
Maybe the smaller holes created a higher velocity for the airflow. Kinda like narrower runners on an intake manifold. Wow, actually brought cars into this thread. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazyeyes.gif
 
aerog said:
Hello, computer geek time. I upgraded my nearly 4 y/o PC a couple weeks ago. Surprisingly only took an afternoon to get it completely done, but then I didn't start from scratch with the operating system and software.
Click to expand...
Fair play to you!

Last time I tried that it all ended in tears and some funny burning smells! /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif
 
Car related... they use "Water Wetter" in the water-cooler computers /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif
 
Car related... I used an automatic transmission oil cooler from a Volvo 940 as the radiator in the last water cooled system I built. /bcforum/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/grin.gif
 
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