Somewhat quiet Opteron Rig

Shukuteki · Post by **Shukuteki** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 3:18 pm

I built this a while back, and finally got some pictures of it.

SPECS:

Opteron 144 1.8ghz (Thermalright SI-97a heatsink)
Asus A8N-E motherboard
1.28 GB PC3200 ram
ATI X300SE video card
80gb Seagate ST380011A (IDE)
160gb Western Digital WD1600JB-00REA0 (IDE)

The fan on the CPU heatsink is a Nexus 92mm, and while it is completely inaudible at 670 or so RPM, it leaves really no headroom for summer. I am looking into getting a triple blade low speed Delta for summer use.

The 80mm fan in the lower area is there to cool the Nforce 4 chipset. I couldn't stand the whiny litle fan, and this Yate Loon at 5v cools just as well, and it also adds some airflow to the memory and the vid card. In terms of noise level, it might as well not even be there.

The front fan (though you may not be able to see it) is a 120mm Yate Loon at 5v. It does its job admirably. The rear fan is a Cooler Master 120mm (it came with the case) at 5v. It makes a bit of bearing noise, and is scheduled to be replaced with a Yate Loon.

The hard drives are audible, and thats all there is too it. The tooless mounting system of the case allows them to rattle and it amplifies the seek noise (the WD especially) and short of suspending the drives, there really isn't anything I can do about it. It does not really bother me though. The whining of my DSL modem is louder than they are.

The PSU (Thermaltake 430w) is carried over from my first build and it is moderately noisy. I was considering replacing the fans with 80mm GlobalWin NCBs.

Post by **NeilBlanchard** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:42 pm

Hello,

Some tin snips would do ya' some good?! Restrictive fan grills are the enemy of quiet and cool running systems.

Shukuteki · Post by **Shukuteki** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 4:59 pm

NeilBlanchard wrote:Hello,

Some tin snips would do ya' some good?! Restrictive fan grills are the enemy of quiet and cool running systems.

Well, I tried but this case prevents me from cutting them completely out like I wanted.

The rear grill is mostly cut out, but the front grill has the USB attachments placed on it so it cant be cut completely out.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 6:23 pm

i'm guessing thats a cooler master elite..i've got one for my server upstairs [i don't use it as a server though, just audio recording/editing]

i found cooling to be much greater after removing the metal plates in the 5.25" bays..if they front panel is going to be mesh, you might as well make it effective, no?

since my machine runs so hot i have to get it at least two Aerocool Turbines...but one will be suspended and the other will be soft mounted so its not like they'll be screaming away.

my system is a little stuffed though...too bad i can't get around it...no onboard audio or video, and i need the USB 2.0 card...

just out of curiosity, what made you buy the case?

Shukuteki · Post by **Shukuteki** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 6:47 pm

bonestonne wrote:i'm guessing thats a cooler master elite..i've got one for my server upstairs [i don't use it as a server though, just audio recording/editing]

i found cooling to be much greater after removing the metal plates in the 5.25" bays..if they front panel is going to be mesh, you might as well make it effective, no?

since my machine runs so hot i have to get it at least two Aerocool Turbines...but one will be suspended and the other will be soft mounted so its not like they'll be screaming away.

my system is a little stuffed though...too bad i can't get around it...no onboard audio or video, and i need the USB 2.0 card...

just out of curiosity, what made you buy the case?

You are mostly right.

I have this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811119115

which is the elite without the included power supply. I bought it because I needed something cheap and functional. In retrospect, it would have been better to save up for something like a Centurion 5 or P180 but I needed a new case pretty badly.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 7:05 pm

yea, i've got the elite without the power supply, i got mine at a local store, so it was in the same box as the elite.

ahh...i had to swap systems from my server to my P4 rig because of insane temps in this case, i had to wait about 2 weeks before i could get the elite, i was going nuts because my server is my favorite computer...

the mesh was my turn on...it gives much better cooling than a computer with a solid front from my experience with dual Pentium II Xeons...i have the 450Mhz with 512k L2 cache...the hottest were the 2m L2 cache, but mine are still insanely hot...now i'm waiting on a pair of 700's with the 2m...maybe it'll run cool?