Hi everyone! this is my first post in the forum. First of all I would like to thank all the people who share their rigs, pictures, opinions and answer to others' questions. My rig was Inspired by Krick's nsk3480. I'm not finish with it but i've already done some modifications to the components. This is a multi-purposes rig (gaming included) and compromises have been made, so it is not an ultra silent rig.

Components:
-Antec nsk 3480
-Earthwatts 380+ PSU
-P5e-vm hdmi
-Q6700 @ 3,2 Ghz (fsb 400)
-2x 2Gb ddr2 800 Ram (ratio to fsb 1:1)
-8800 GT @ 720/1000/1750
-2x 7200rpm Samsung HDDs (320gb+500gb)
-dvd rw

Added components and modifications:
-Case side-panel swap
-PSU fan swap for Noctua NF-R8
-Xigmatek HDT-S1283 heatsink for the Q6700
-Accelero + tricool 120mm fan for 8800 GT
-2 Scythe Slip Stream 1200 for intake and exhaust

The psu fan swap was actually my last modification. I did the rest about 2 months ago. I thought that with the 120mm tricool (set on low) sticked to the accelero and the 2 scythes at ~800rpm (5v mod) I was good to go but I was wrong.

For surfing, music, office, etc.. the case was really silent and cool (to my standards) but once I launched GTA, temps went up to still acceptable numbers considering the limits for quads and 8800gt BUT the most annoying thing was the little psu fan, it was really loud.

I did some research and coudn't find much about a psu fan swap for a noctua NF-R8. I decided to do it anyway and it seems to be working perfectly, the fan starts without a problem when you start the computer and speed go to max when gaming but it's silent. Note that there's a difference in CFM at max speeds between the original ADDA (38,6) and the Noctua (31,2). While gaming the air going out of the psu is still very fresh. It's worth noting that in my case, the psu doesn't get the heat of the other components due to the anatomy of the nsk3480, so maybe this fan swap in other type of cases might be a not so good idea.

With the Accelero and the 120mm fan below it there was no room for my second HDD so I get creative. As you will see in the pictures, I've managed to screwed/ziptied it to the front panel.

Summer has arrived and temps went up, I had to change the scythe's 5v mod for the 7v mod, and now I can hear them. And I still don't like my temps at idle -> cores=50 GPU=50 MB=42 for the warmest day so far. My temps have rised around 7°c with summer, is that normal? and it's probably gonna get worst next month..

So here are some questions for you:

-I recently discovered the Scythe Kaze Maru 140mm fans that can be screwed to 120mm holes. Has anyone tried them? I thought buying one and putting it as exhaust outside the case (do you follow me?), would it be efficient?someone tried it?

-What will the best fan configuration for my system? negative pressure?

-Do I need a NB heatsink? I dont use the integrated GPU..

-I even thought about cutting a 120mm hole where the psu sits so I can replace the current psu for a more powerfull psu that exhaust the air from the main chambre of the case. Anyone tried that, or it is just too crazy?

I will probably start by cutting out the fan grills and doing a better job with the cable management.

Answers to the questions and comments will be very much appreciated. Now, a couple of pictures:




EDIT 20.06.09 added pictures of hdd mounted on the front panel.

The open case..

Here you need to cut a little piece of metal between those 2 holes in the fan grill in order to put the silicon grommets at the right distance.. and use thin zipties instead of that cable I used for the upper mount..

I superglued the other 2 silicon grommets to the upper hdd corners.. And voilà!.. the cool thing about having the hdd in this position is that it's always well cooled..


EDIT 22.06.09 2nd hdd under the ceiling configuration, cable management improvement (?) and the "120mm Solo Turbo Module for Accelero"

I tried putting my second hdd under the ceiling of the main chamber as in SteveRCE configuration. My goal was to gain room for a 2nd intake fan. At the end, well, I decided to go back to my previous configuration. Problems I got: raise in temp for the hdd in the main chamber, the hdd touched the cpu heatsink fan, the room obtained wasn't much and the poor cfm of a 80mm fan just doesn't worth it. Here's a couple of pictures though, they might help somebody



So after this I went back to my original configuration, I wanted to improved things though. Changed the hard latex for silicon grommets on the corners of the hdd mount (updated former picture); runned some of the cables outside the main chamber, especially that ide cable..



Another thing that bothered me was that 120 fan sticked to the accelero, there was so little espace between it and the bottom of the case, and I thought about that turbo module Artic Cooling sells in option for the Accelero.. I'll let pictures speak for themselves..




Now the fan takes the air not just front the bottom but from everywhere (I think) specialy that fresh air brought in the case by the front fan. I placed the fan to that side of the card because that side gets hotter than the other, due to those black "cubes" I think.. I got 3 or 4 of those near the cpu too and the get hot, what are those?.. Anyway, if you wanna mutilate your fan and do what I did you have to tighten really well at least 2 "arms" of the fan or you'll get vibration.. I twisted the cable in the picture with a thin plier... Next step? Two 140mm Scythe Kaze Maru fans, one for intake, the other (placed outside the case) for exhaust..


EDIT 24.06.09 Fans speed control workaround

Since the last edit I have also removed the exhaust grill and cut a 120mm hole for the intake, you can imagine how it looks like so I won't post pictures. On the other hand I wanted to share this little idea with you. I know it's ugly but I don't care...

For gaming I just plug the exhaust fan to the 12v molex. I could actually plug both but the intake fan at 12v is too loud (because of turbulences due to the restricted airpath I think..). I could've also made a 7v molex but I would have been a little too much..


EDIT 27.10.09 new pictures + Scythe Kaze Station, a must have..

Here you can see the 120mm intake hole I made and you can also notice that now I have a noctua as exhaust fan (it's really silent even at max speed).


I put the 80mm adda fan from the psu aiming the ram, it's really not necesary but it's undervolted and completly inaudible just as the 120mm scythe bellow. To the right, the scythe kaze station, audio, usb, e-sata ports AND two fan speed controllers, in my case, gpu and exhaust fan are controlled by these.. and guess what, it's really cheap!


What you can see in this picture, sitting on the case, is a Dock Station for 2,5 and 3,5 sata drives, with usb and e-sata connectors.

Given the front intake fan's positioning and air path, you should be fine with your stock NB heatsink.

It's always great to see builds with this case, I love it!

Due to the cable routing and airflow issues, I really recommend going with a full SATA drive setup if possible. PATA ribbon cables just don't cut it in this case.

Are you using a PWM fan on your CPU heatsink? I'm very happy with mine, it only ramps up under load.

Hey c_g_f :
1. How did you secure the HD sideways like that. I like it.

2. "I even thought about cutting a 120mm hole where the psu sits so I can replace the current psu for a more powerfull psu that exhaust the air from the main chamber of the case. Anyone tried that, or it is just too crazy?"

I'm also interested if anyone did this.

G.

The design of this case deliberately separates the PSU area from the motherboard area. This is so that hot air from the CPU isn't sucked through the PSU, making it even hotter than it already is, which would cause the fan to ramp up even more.

Is your CPU getting that hot that you NEED extra ventilation? Mine sure isn't and I've got it overclocked to 3.4GHz...

http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/vi ... hp?t=51264

Remember, more fans usually means more noise. The whole purpose of this site and forum is to build full featured computers that are QUIET.

I know that cable is ugly, I'll somehow tape it to the top and front panels so it doesn't block the airflow. I don't think I will be buying a sata dvd drive, I rarely use it anyway but I want to keep it (to burn stuff for friends when they come over..)

And yes, the cpu heatsink (xigmatek s1283) comme with a 120mm pwm fan.. it's always around 900rpm.. bios has 3 settings for it..



I'll post pics tomorrow...

CPU temps are acceptable I guess but when playing the whole main chamber becomes pretty hot, cpu (cores) a little over 60, gpu around 68 and, my main concern, the motherboard temp goes up to/near 50! (idles at 39-42 these days). I've read somewhere that the sensor that tells the board temp in this particular board is placed near the northbridge (or is it the southbridge?) and because of that the temp display is higher than it should be as that "bridge" is supposed to be hot, but I can't help telling myself that it might be too hot.. Also, as a said, I was happy running the scythes at 5v but had to give them a little more power these days and I don't want this to be a permanent solution.

I've just seen what SteveRCE has done with his 2 HDD and I love it but I'm not sure I have the room to do the same (because of my heatsink fan), but if I do I will put a 2nd scythe slip stream in the front and buy that 140mm scythe kaze maru for the exhaust.. those 3 running at 5v should be silent enough for me.

Thanks for the answers, I'll post clearer pictures taken in daylight..

Looks pretty sweet. Have you thought about doing the behind the tray cable routing mods that Krick did? If you are going to cut out the fan grills, you will need to remove all your components anyway, so you could do that at the same time. It could really help with your cable management.

An alternative to your current HDD location could be to suspend it under your DVD drive in the top chamber, but it looks like you've got a pretty sweet mount where it is currently anyway.

i've thought about this myself, except i've got a low powered system so my aim was to reduce my number of fans to one.
i think cutting a hole at the base of the case where your gpu fan is will help alot more- you'll increase intake and get some more fresh air, i'd expect gpu temps to drop significantly, followed by case temps and then some of the other component temperatures too.

The reason I asked is because my CPU does get hot and I thought this would help, maybe I got a mediocre C1 stepping batch:
My setup: Q9550 running at 3.4 Ghz, Xigmatek s1283 (with Noctua 120 mm @900 rpm) , 8gigs Gskill, one HD on the floor of the case, integrated video, 120 mm fan intake (800 RPM)+ 120 exhaust at 750 RPM.
Prime95 full load small FFT ~72 degrees C.
Same system in 180 Mini Prime95 full load small FFT ~67 C.
I'm not expecting same cooling as in Mini but....
I do love the NSK3480, best in it's class.
Thanks for your pictures and taking time to display your work

Mind you, if you wish to use a PSU with a bottom 120mm fan, there is a bit of clearance between the top case cover and the PSU itself. There's just enough room to still draw air from the grated slits of the case's top through the PSU's fan.

are you using the factory backplate with the 1283? it makes a difference, but it's a seperate purchase, unless you have the black knight(?) version.

72 degrees with prime95 is too hot, if you have the backplate already installed, i'd be looking at how the thermal paste was applied.

Yeah, people tend to go overboard on thermal paste. Get a good brand, like arctic silver and use a small amount, about the size of a grain of rice. Then spread it into a really, really thin layer on the CPU heatspreader using a single-edged razor blade.

Thanks guys, I am using the Thermalright backplate. I did re-seat this thing twice. I will try to see if a little lapping will help and use less arctic silver on it.

G.

In fact I already have a hdd under de dvd-rw... I will definitely cut the grills and the holes for the cable routing, just dont have the tool yet. But I'm happy with the way cables are right now.. little different from the pictures because today I've changed a couple of things to the system.. pictures tomorrow.. but one of the changes is pretty cool (my opinion) you'll tell me yours..

pictures added + "120mm Accelero Turbo Module"

That's a really good idea to route the drive cables out the drive bay and down the front. I never would have thought of that in a million years.

You know, you could save yourself a lot of trouble with the two hard drive situation by just getting a single 1TB drive. Also, seriously consider one of the WD "green" drives. Since they run at 5400 RPM, they are quieter, run cooler, and last longer than 7200 RPM drives. The performance difference between 5400 and 7200 is almost undetectable in most normal usage due to the large caches modern drives have.

Soon I'll be needing more disc space, maybe then I will invest in a 1.5T hdd.. And about my project involving the fans, I've just read in Scythe's site that at the same speed (1200rpm) the 120mm Slip Stream that I already have give more CFM and less noise than the 140mm Kaze Maru.. that just doesn't seem right to me.. but if it's true I will just go on and cut 120mm holes in my case..

since you are working with negative case pressure... what if you cut a 120mm hole in the bottom of the case, with the fan blowing out the hole, instead of blowing air towards the video card?

you'd probably have to get another fan in order to reverse the mounting, and maybe create a bit of short ductwork to keep the exhaust from sucking in more air, between the fan and the hole.

Interesting.. but I'm done doing holes to this case, I've already got rid of the back grill and cut a 120mm hole for the intake (a bit of a pain in the ass job).. Also, the fan would be like 1cm from the ground (with the duct idea) and there might be not enough pressure. There's also the fact that hot air goes up. But anyways I'm not concerned about my gpu temps, what bothers me a bit is the "motherboard" temp. It idles at 40-43 and raises over 50, even near 60 -if I remember correctly- while gaming. Is this normal? safe?

There's an option in the bios, Qfan control, one of the subsettings lets you set the desired motherboard's temperature, default is 37°c and max setting is 46. Also I remember getting 32-35 with my previous board. In forums people talk about cpu and gpu temp, rarely about the motherboard temp.

Would somebody having alike configurations with this board (case, fans) please post their motherboard temps? I thought everest might get temps wrong but bios tells the same.

Right now I have the intake fan at 5v (~800rpm) and the exhaust at 7v (~1000 I guess, since the 7v mod doesn't give the info).

"Fans speed control workaround" picture added.

I have the p5q-em which is the updated G45 version of the board and according to the tech support on Asus forums the MB temperature sensor is close to the CPU fan header area. So it's not the Northbridge or SB temp. My MB temps are low 50's.

Thanks mate, just did some research on the Asus forums on my own and found those lines where tech support says that MB temp should not go over 65°c. I've added the 7v plug for the fans to have a complete choice. I think I'll be just using the exhaust fan at 5v or 7v when browsing and for light tasks.I think I'll leave the case alone for now and have some fun with my baby (I'm talking about the system) until the next great idea

new pictures added.. And discovery of scythe's kaze station, a must have...