SYSTEM RECONSTRUCTION FOR BETTER COOLING AND SILENCE

[MGP]

After spending a GREAT deal of the past summer researching and building a silent/quiet P4 PC instead of looking into colleges like I was supposed to be doing , my system is still quite loud. My first DIY PC was a P3 500 and it eventually became a thermal disaster. Therefore, on my next PC, a 1.4 Athlon system, I made sure to put so many fans into the thing that the case/cpu temps were excellent but the PC was REALLY loud and not worth the time to mess with. I decided to build a lower-airflow system based around a P4 that would be both quiet and powerful. However, although the current state of the P4 system is okay (not overheating, temps are just right around 35C case and max 53 CPU), it is, surprisingly to me, LOUD. Anyways, to combat the noise, I have decided to replace the very noisy Gainward GPU fan on my Ti4600 with a ZM80A-HP, get a new case that is easy to quiet and has excellent airflow characteristics (I know one now, thanks to Ralf, the Antec 3700SLK ), and replace the noisy 850E Gigabyte chipset cooler w/ a ZMNB32J. Does anyone know if its possible to run the Ti4600 passively (safely, of course)? If not, then I will probably have to get a Zalman fan bracket so I need to take into consideration if the new case has enough room for this (my current case does not). As of now, I think that I will be taking a close look into cases that I currently know of like the Antec and Chieftec cases. I know that these are both VERY similar, but would anyone be able to recommend one brand over the other or a specific model? BTW, will having a 120mm rear exhaust fan in my case hurt my “quest for silence?” Thanks everyone!

System:
Palo Alto Products ATCX (Dell Dimension 4100 case)
300 Watt ZALMAN ZM300A-APF Power Supply
Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz
Gigabyte GA-8IHXP (Intel 850E)
512 MB Kingston PC1066 RDRAM (2x 256MB modules)
120 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital HD w/ 8 MB Cache
Gainward 750XP Ultra Geforce 4 Ti 4600 128 MB DDR Golden Sample
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP Sound Card
16X/48X Universal Buslink DVD Drive
40/12/40 Plextor PlexWriter CD-RW
Mitsumi 1.44 MB Floppy Drive

Cooling:
Alpha Novatech PAL8942T Pentium 4 Socket 478 Heatsink
Arctic Silver 3
80mm Silent low-profile (15mm thick) Sanyo Denki Fan on CPU (Specs are VERY similar to Panaflo L1A)
92mm Dell Rear Exhaust Fan (JMC fan)

[GamingGod]

very nice system. And the 3700slk is a nice case too. Question, how did u get the front panel (power on button, led's ect.) connected with a normal motherboard to a dell case, did u have to get a convertor for the wires or did they work without modding?
Oh and I would not trust a ti4600 without some direct airflow.

[Ralf Hutter]

BTW, will having a 120mm rear exhaust fan in my case hurt my “quest for silence?”?

A 120mm case fan will help your "quest for silence". These fans have much greater airflow than 80mm fans so you can run them at 7 or 5 volts and get the same, or more airflow than an 80mm fan but with MUCH less noise. And the noise that they do make is lower-pitched and not so "whiney" as an 80mm fan.

[MGP]

Thanks. Will a rear 120mm be better than having a pair of 2 80mm rear exhaust fans as in the Antec/Chieftec cases?

btw, my case is the the exact same case as the Dell (same design, manufacturer) except its LED connectors actually work w/ non-dell mobos and the front bezel is a little different...

[NeilBlanchard]

Will a rear 120mm be better than having a pair of 2 80mm rear exhaust fans as in the Antec/Chieftec cases?

Yes! The other thing that can happen with two idendical fans close to each other is if they are *slightly* different speeds, then you get a beat frequency which only makes them noisier.