Abdul, can I ask how hot your CPU runs at idle? I think mine starts aronud 35 but then climbs up to 35-40 (varied over cores and time). I guess at idle it should be running at 4 Ghz not 4.4 so should be a good comparison (to check if I've done something wrong installing the heat sink). Btw have you ...

The i7 4790K is very fast but also runs hot, im technically not overclocking, well kinda.... my motherboard allows the full turbo on 4 cores, so i run at 4.4ghz, but at this on prime.... i reach 90C+ on 800K test... i drop it to 4.2ghz and i dont reach 90s, more like mid to low 80s under prime95, u...

Both the Scythe Kozuti and the Noctua NH-L9i are meant for 65W max CPUs. The i7-4790K is pretty much the hottest 1150 CPU at stock, those small coolers simply wont cut it. You will have to get something bigger to cool that CPU. Thanks for the reply! I have the stock cooler which I guess I could pro...

I recently posted about a system I intended to and then finally built: Case: Sharkoon CA-I CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K - 4 GHz Cooler: Scythe Kozuti SCSK-1100 GPU: GF GV-N970IXOC-4GD Mobo: Asus Z97E-ITX/ac RAM: Kingston HX318C10FBK2/16 (16gb) HD: Samsung/Seagate ST1000LM024 Momentus Spinpoint M8 PSU: S...

Yes, this is for my own personal use and my priority is "portability" in the sense that I want to be able to lug this thing to other countries when I travel for a few weeks at a time (otherwise I'm stuck on a laptop). I'm actually curious why you think a Xeon or ECC memory is so essential. Maybe for...

Thanks for the link. It looks like the scythe shuriken will possibly block the discrete GPU. OTOH the other scythe Kozuti has an 80 mm fan :-( Any idea if there's a less noisy (i.e. 120mm) fan on a heat sink that won't block the discrete GPU on a mini-ITX board? The Samurai ZZ might be a reasonable ...

yeah, sorry i missed the GPU in your parts list. id be very wary of frequent traveling with any tower heatsink. so my vote is a low profile cooler in the coolermaster elite 110 Coolermaster elite is a nice form factor but weights 1kg more than the sharkoon. The sharkoon supports a 10 cm cooler and ...

I apologize in advance for trying to steer you in a different direction...have you considered using your laptop as a remote terminal and having the powerful PC back home? If you considered Amazon cloud, then you have internet access. No problem but yeah I did consider it. Unfortunately we often hav...

If you look at a picture of the internals of this case on the Sharkoon website then I think you'll see there isn't much empty space on the inside when its got a gpu and a PSU in their. I've built using a larger mini ITX case with no GPU and things were very cramped. Maybe putting some non-static foa...

So what I mean by portable is that I can take it with me when I travel as I often spend a few weeks a year in different countries and that's when I have the most time to do some of this numerical work (so its annoying to be restricted to a laptop). I checked and my suitecase (a standard dufflebag li...

I've speced out a small form-factor, light portable PC that is very powerful yet small/light enough to put in a suitecase. Noise was not my number one priority but at this size it will probably often be _on_ the desk so I'd like it to be as quiet as possible. The choice of case is unfortunately dict...

Hi HFat, Well specing this thing out it doesn't seem like its going to be much more expensive than the HP microserver I found. But why do you say my PSU choice is not quiet. Do you have a better (budget) recommendation? The review here: http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=57573 Seem...

Hi again abula,

Thanks a lot for the recommendation but unfortunately its not available at all (the Q08 was just out of stock). But I've just noticed that its only the Q08 red that's out of stock and the others are still available so I might just go for the black.

Thanks for all the help!

I've been planning to build a home server/NAS and settled on some basic specs: Lian-Li PC-Q08 case Asus P8H61-I Be Quiet! 300W Pure Power L7 PSU Pentium G620 2 GB DDR3-1333 RAM WD Green 2TB Unfortunately it looks like the Lian-Li is not available locally anymore (in Paris) so I need to consider alte...

While I'm converging on some base components thanks to all the recommendations here I'm also starting to think more broadly that it might be good to try to make a media center out of this (the fewer computers around the better). While a nice HTPC case might work, cases with LCDs and remotes seem to ...

No one is willing to do so: but such an URL lets us to check the availability of our recommendation. No, I understand. I was just joking and hope I didn't offend in any way. Thanks for all the feedback. Trying to stick to a low budget the Be Quiet! 300W Pure Power L7 comes in at 40 euros and seems ...

quest_for_silence wrote: Europe, but *where*? You may also point us out your favourite online price-comparator.

I'm in Paris so I use:

http://www.rue-montgallet.com/

But I wasn't about to ask anyone to do my shopping for me

For power supplies I am trying to save money but quiet is important. I can't seem to find the seasonic you recommend near me (I'm in Europe so newegg doesn't work). Any other cheap, quiet recommendations?

Hi Abula, Thanks a lot for the response. I thought the H67 was the low-end chipset but I see the H61 is much better value. The only issue is only 4 sata ports and no 6 gb but I guess for a (low-end) fileserver this isn't too big a deal. I can run two drives on the same sata port right (I'm still and...

Hi, I'm trying to setup a home fileserver (and maybe media server) to store media, backups and maybe run some sychronization servers. For (paranoid) security's sake most services will probably be hosted in virtual machines. Initially I tried to run this on an old laptop but the hard disk died so now...

Thanks for the useful reply, ame. Actually I have to say the system is not very noisy. Its almost inaudiable once there's background noise but if the room is very silent you definitely here it. I'm going to disable the top-fan which is running at 1100 rpms and see if that helps. Unfortunately the p8...

Thanks for the informative reply lodestar. Strange as it may sound I'm not very likely to be playing games with this system. I intend it more as a workstation for photo-editing and mathematica. These will likely strain the cpu more than the graphics card (unless they start using cuda). Unfortunately...

I recently purchased a cooler master 690 ii advanced (in spite of some warnings on these forums) and I have to agree its not a quiet case. For now I'm just focusing on getting the system up and running without putting too much effort into silencing it so there's no doubt room for improvement but it ...

Thanks a lot for all the replies figment. You've really been very helpful!

PSU: If the acoustics of the 500w matches that of the 700w, then I would recommend the 500W, hands down. 14 dBa @ 1m until 150W, modular, 5 year warranty, made by a well-regarded manufacturer. Availability, as you mention. In my country a similar sized PSU (in terms of wattage) cost twice as much. ...

Sorry this may be a basic question but is it possible to reduce the speeds on the stock fans in the 690 ii? From the motherboard bios or something or do i need to buy a controller?

That looks quite nice figment... thought something like that might be the way to go. I don't think I'm gonna run with that many drives so I can put the HD in the bottom 5.25 bay and then put foam padding in front of the other bays (except the dvd one) and at least part of the lower intake fan. What ...

Thanks for the info figmet. I looked at that thread but not in detail yet. In any case I'm glad to hear open mesh cases are not a complete no no. Is you "open/low-flow strategy" discussed in the thread you linked to? I'm not necessarily going to mod the system immediately. I'm ok running it as is to...

Thanks a lot for the info. Having to check that it is on is exactly what I'm looking for! I'm thinking of a very similar build but with a GTX 560 instead so hopefully that should run a little cooler. I see you're running a 5400k HD though which is also probably quieter than the WD black or blue that...

The front mesh thing is much more about aesthetics for me than functionality -- as I said the Mac Pro or Fractal Design Arc Midi represent the kind of look I like. Somehow the boxiness of a front door I find a bit ugly. Nonetheless I am considering the R3 but the lack of hot swap bay and reduced num...