Quiet despite heat production

[ckolivas]

I started out with a relatively high heat producing system and aimed to get it quiet (not silent) and allow it to run at its maximum potential. I apologise in advance for the copious use and mention of silenx fans (this forum has a bad history with the supplier).

Summary:
430W PSU
P4 3.06HT Overcloked to 3.45 GHz
Gigabyte Nvidia 4464 based card with DVI out
ASUS P4PE motherboard with miscellanous other stuff less relevant here

This is a Northwood, not a Prescott, but the overclock puts its heat output quite high. The relevance of the video card is that particular model came with a rather annoyingly noisy fan despite the fact that other 4464 based cards don't. For some reason the DVI out version was twice as fast as the fanless version I had in another box.

The first surprise came when the overclock made no difference at idle to the cpu temperature. I couldn't undervolt so I started playing around just for grins and absurdly the stability remained changing from 133 to 150 x 23. So I figured I'd try to quieten it down.

I went for a case with absurd amounts of venting as its main cooling advantage. It's an e-pc case if I recall correctly so not really expensive.

This is what it looks like from the front:


Eeek! Why on earth did I put the dvds on the front panel? Well to be honest I couldn't care less about looks. The case supported hidden drives behind the top two spots, but stupidly you can only put them in from behind before you mount the motherboard. Suffice to say I didn't do it in that order.

A look inside the case layout:


The cables show up much more than they actually are; after closing they are pretty flush onto the back of the case. A few things to point out; you can just make out the baffle at the back; that includes pretty much the whole area along both sides (more pictures later). There is a spot for a 120mm fan at the rear but I didn't use that for reasons I'll explain later.

A view of how the PSU and HSF are located:


You can see they're pretty close to each other so the flow from one can adversely affect the other.

The PSU:

This started out as a Q-PC low RPM 120mm fan PSU, and I modded it to have a 120mm silenx fan. In another thread on this forum someone mentioned that the flow through this fan is massive when connected directly to 12v and much more and noisier than the Nexus equivalent. However, I should mention that by default this includes an extension with a resistor that drops it to a very quiet fan with much less generous airflow (no idea how much it truly moves). Here's a photo of the resistor:


You can see the back of the PSU here:


Here's a photo of the HSF:

The HSF started out as a good old Zalman7000Cu. However the default fan was very noisy compared to the rest of the system at higher settings so I modded it to use a 92mm silenx fan.

Here's a photo of the position of the vga card showing the absence of the default 40mm fan:

The relevance of showing this position is that I needed some way to blow on this heat sink..

Here's a photo of the inside of the left panel of the case:

On this you can see the dust filter which means I was trying to get all inward airflow coming from this side. The position of the two 80mm silenx fans were 1. directly over the cpu HSF, and 2. directly over the vga heatsink. Once closed, the thermistors from each of these fans was put in contact with their respective heatsinks. Without the fan directly over the cpu HSF the load temperatures were 4 degrees C hotter.

Once closed, here are the outside photos:

and


You can make out clearly the way each side is actually a massive airflow baffle. The machined metal finish was hard to photograph without glare.

Final results:
Overclocked to 3.45, ambient temperature 26 degrees C
idle: 42 cpu, 31 motherboard
load: 60 cpu, 36 motherboard.

Load was 2 instances of cpuburn, one bound to each logical HT cpu.

Full res photos here: http://ck.kolivas.org/cooling/

[ckolivas]

I've been borderline with my interpretation of the size guidelines for the photos using 640 width for the profile shots. However, given how aggressively I've compressed each jpeg and set them to progressive display I hope that noone minds.

[burcakb]

Hey, ckolivas,

That's a nice build. It looks like you did a very good job with what is essentially a bad-airflow case. That stepped design at the back would force you to use the plastic fan bracket and the grill is pretty restrictive so I doubt using a 120mm fan there would have been quiet anyway.

Does the case come with the side venting, or is it DIY?

Your zalman fan mod looks neat. Do you have any pictures handy? That's a mod people are very interested in.

You still seem to have a dust problem though

As for silentx, the animosity is directed towards a certain person and the advise is based on the fact that you can get better fans for cheaper. If they work for you, who's to say anything

[ckolivas]

That's a nice build. It looks like you did a very good job with what is essentially a bad-airflow case. That stepped design at the back would force you to use the plastic fan bracket and the grill is pretty restrictive so I doubt using a 120mm fan there would have been quiet anyway.

Thanks. Oh yeah I forgot to mention why I didn't put anything there. It didn't help to suck or blow there and was not quiet. Probably crap turbulence with the other two fans so nearby preventing good heat improvement and the grill as you say made the noise bad.

Does the case come with the side venting, or is it DIY?

That's the case design

Your zalman fan mod looks neat. Do you have any pictures handy? That's a mod people are very interested in.

I wish I had taken photos during the mod, but I only took these photos since joining the forum and seeing people are interested in other peoples' rigs. It's surprisingly easy to remove the zalman fan. The scariest part is butchering a good case fan and deciding how to mount it. I used blutack which may not be available outside of .au but gives a very firm hold. The sound improvement from the fan swap is absolutely massive I should add.

You still seem to have a dust problem though

Ah I should say have mentioned throughout that the reason I swapped boxes was the huge dust problem in the previous one. I never bothered to clean it too aggressively before changing as you can see

As for silentx, the animosity is directed towards a certain person and the advise is based on the fact that you can get better fans for cheaper. If they work for you, who's to say anything

Quite aware now. However I had bought all this stuff before finding this brilliant site so I was unaware at the time. Nonetheless you're right; they do work well for me.

[Edward Ng]

So, when do you plan to swap in some black opticals?

[ckolivas]

So, when do you plan to swap in some black opticals?

Heh well as I mention in the article, all I need to do is remount the dvds in the top two slots behind the flaps and their ugly fronts wont show. However I need to remove the motherboard first to install them there and plainly can't be botherd at the moment

[Edward Ng]

So, when do you plan to swap in some black opticals?

Heh well as I mention in the article, all I need to do is remount the dvds in the top two slots behind the flaps and their ugly fronts wont show. However I need to remove the motherboard first to install them there and plainly can't be botherd at the moment

Have you pushed on those bezels at all to see how they feel? Are they well-made, or are they flimsy? Almost all the drive hiding bay faces I've seen feel really flimsy.

-Ed

[masp]

Maybe you should change the GPU HS? Looks like temp could go really high if gaming. Drilling holes in an old CPU HS and screwing it on to the gfx card could work. Some kind of airflow would be good too.

[ckolivas]

Maybe you should change the GPU HS? Looks like temp could go really high if gaming. Drilling holes in an old CPU HS and screwing it on to the gfx card could work. Some kind of airflow would be good too.

There's an 80mm fan blowing directly onto the heatsink from the outside - check the lower fan position on the inside of the left case. It runs cooler with that fan than the stock fan.

[ckolivas]

Have you pushed on those bezels at all to see how they feel? Are they well-made, or are they flimsy? Almost all the drive hiding bay faces I've seen feel really flimsy.
-Ed

Yep, they're plasticky crap.

[ckolivas]

Since coming to this site it was clear how little justice that mod did this site. So I've started improving on it. Since this site is unique for innovative ways to silence and mount things I thought I'd go shopping at the hardware shop and came back with a few goodies.

Let's show the changes so far.

I don't know if people outside of Australia are aware of blutack http://www.blutack.com; it's a tacky substance used for sticking things together with ease that also has good sound isolation properties.


It has strips of the tacky material that once opened look like this:


I used some of this on the hard drive mounting bay to mount the hard drive

and removed the screws entirely. It's safe for movement and stability but I wouldn't turn it upside down!

The noisiest part currently are the 80mm fans mounted on the left side of the case. Moving them away from the baffle even a small amount quietens them considerably so I bought some of these.


which close up look like this:


and put them on the side of the case


and the fan


which raised the fan slightly from the baffle and decoupled it by not screwing into the mounting bracket. This mounting method was surprisingly secure and easy to do.


I also figured I should cleanup the box layout considerably to improve airflow


side on you can see the extra space for airflow more clearly


and the fact that I changed the resistor on the 120mm fan for a Zalman fanmate. This allows me to crank up the PSU fan to a gale force wind if I ever need to run it real hot.

I'll keep you posted if and when I do more changes.

[teejay]

I also figured I should cleanup the box layout considerably to improve airflow

And clean it up you did! The two pics showing the before and after of your wiring should be side-by-side in a sticky... titled "look what SPCR made me do"! But seriously, it's starting to look better and better and already in the realm of very nice. Keep it up!

How much difference did your last mods make, esp. the velcro-dot-fan-mounting?

- EDIT: re-phrased silly sentence...

[ckolivas]

And clean it up you did! The two pics showing the before and after of your wiring should be side-by-side in a sticky... titled "look what SPCR made me do"! But seriously, it's starting to look better and better and already in the realm of very nice. Keep it up!

Thanks! I was more interested in making airflow better than looks; not much of a looks person as you can tell from the yucky cream coloured opticals sticking out of a black machined metal finish case.

How much difference did your last mods make, esp. the velcro-dot-fan-mounting?

The case is fairly thin aluminium so it has a tendency to sing with firmly mounted things . The blutack on the hard drive made it inaudible over the other things except during seeks (it's a maxtor 80Gb 8Mb cache single platter so reasonably quiet). Prior to that there was a constant but not really offensive hum from the box. The velcro dots were a bigger win for exactly the same reason - the hum from the fans making the left panel sing was silenced. As I also said the turbulent airflow noise from the fan being flush against the baffle was reduced somewhat - I won't make the mistake again of buying a case with such a lousy fan mounting design with small airflow holes.

As for the magnitude of improvement, it's so hard to convey these things based on subjective improvements. It was small, but considering the actual price involved in the change it was well worth doing! In the realm of quiet to very quiet everything counts, no? I couldn't comment on temperature changes with the airflow improvements since it was over 30 degrees in that room yesterday making for a different ambient temperature.

[burcakb]

I also figured I should cleanup the box layout considerably to improve airflow

Zalman: "What is this strange odour?"
Maxtor: "Fresh air, sir!"

Loved the blutack hdd decouple btw. Let me see if I can find some over here. All my hdds are suspended but I've been thinking about decoupling the PSU. This just might work.

[ckolivas]

Loved the blutack hdd decouple btw. Let me see if I can find some over here. All my hdds are suspended but I've been thinking about decoupling the PSU. This just might work.

Funny you should say that; that's exactly what I did to my other box and just hadn't gotten around to doing it to this quieter one
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewtopic.php?t=19112

[edit] it wasn't a complete decouple; I felt the PSU should be mounted completely to allow safe plugging in etc so the blutack was put between the metal components and it was still screwed on.

[burcakb]

Hehe, missed that thread as the pics just weren't coming through.

No, I plan on decoupling the entire PSU case. Even with decoupled fans, due to tight spacing some vibration still remains. And it's amplified along the length of the PSU so that you have the innermost corner transferring significantly more vibration. I previously tried thick double-sided tape and foam but didn't like any of them. I plan on tying it down somehow with ziptie (not too tight) so it doesn't slip around.

[ckolivas]

No, I plan on decoupling the entire PSU case. Even with decoupled fans, due to tight spacing some vibration still remains. And it's amplified along the length of the PSU so that you have the innermost corner transferring significantly more vibration. I previously tried thick double-sided tape and foam but didn't like any of them. I plan on tying it down somehow with ziptie (not too tight) so it doesn't slip around.

Well I did put sparse amounts of blutack along it and it made quite a difference (including the interior of the PSU case). Generous application will probably be even more effective, and is what I'll end up doing for the pc in this thread.

[ckolivas]

While I was at the hardware store I wandered across these and thought I could use them as ducts:


I put them on the side of the case raising the 80mm fans even further from the baffle and... it made no difference. Just to show that not all ideas are great

Anyway investigating it further revealed the reason there was less noise when I raised the fans off the filter/grille was probably more due to the fact that air was being drawn in from around the base of the fan instead of just the base area of the fan. To confirm this I will have to investigate ducts that are conical in shape with a larger area where they attach to the grille... in which case using a larger fan will probably be better too (darn; I'm trying to make the most of what I already own).