5 GHz of Silent Powa w/ 6950
Posted: Thu Mar 10, 2011 12:54 pm
Here is my new build I wanted something that was better in every way than my previous desktop (P180 e6600 2.4GHz GTX 8800) and am more than pleased. Using the Lian Li A05NB my new system is literally half the weight of my previous system (19lbs vs 48lbs), and its much smaller, both bonuses. I did some small mods to the A05NB to make the airflow more efficient by buying 2 perforated covers and venting the front. With the case open on my desk all I can hear are the 2 92mm fans of the video card, and even they are quiet, after I put the sidewall on and put the case on the floor I can't hear it. I actually had to adjust the brightness/contrast of my Dell U2410 monitor because the loudest thing in the room was the back light transformer! After a search I found adjusting brightness up and contrast down fixes the problem.
I decided to go with 2 nexus fans on a u120e rev c at 530 RPM controlled by speedfan, needless to say at this RPM you can't hear them, AT ALL. I then have another nexus sucking air out the front. The PSU is fanless until it gets high load, but I have never heard the fan come one in it, even under full load. The SSD is of course silent The video card is the loudest thing the case by far, and when I mean loud, most people would laugh, after about 3' from it you can't hear it either. At stock the fans are 40% and audible, but simply using MSI Afterburner (like speedfan for video cards), you can set the fans to 25%, which is what I have them at.
I was going to vent the front with the same hole pattern as the 5.25 covers I bought, but after calculating I would need to drill over 500 holes I quickly changed that plan as you can see I thought about painting the nexus black in the front, or putting a grill so you can't see the fan, but currently I don't care too much. The front does need to be vented beyond stock as mentioned in another post.
As for overclocking I got very lucky with my CPU, after reading many forums, my CPU overclocks to a value that less than 2% of CPUs can. I did boot windows at 5.2GHz, and got it stable with prime95 at 5.1GHz but was approaching the limits of my air cooling due to the increased voltage, I then decided to settle on 5GHz as a nice round number before trying to get 5.2GHz stable and frying the CPU.
Intel Core-i5-2500K at 5.0GHz
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB
256GB Crucial C300 Real SSD
16GB CORSAIR Vengeance DDR3
ASUS P8P67 PRO LGA1155
Seasonic SS-560KM Active PFC F3, 560W
LIAN LI PC-A05NB
Thermalright U120E-Rev.C CPU Cooler Heatsink
3x Nexus BASIC D12SL-12 @ 530 rpm
I decided to go with 2 nexus fans on a u120e rev c at 530 RPM controlled by speedfan, needless to say at this RPM you can't hear them, AT ALL. I then have another nexus sucking air out the front. The PSU is fanless until it gets high load, but I have never heard the fan come one in it, even under full load. The SSD is of course silent The video card is the loudest thing the case by far, and when I mean loud, most people would laugh, after about 3' from it you can't hear it either. At stock the fans are 40% and audible, but simply using MSI Afterburner (like speedfan for video cards), you can set the fans to 25%, which is what I have them at.
I was going to vent the front with the same hole pattern as the 5.25 covers I bought, but after calculating I would need to drill over 500 holes I quickly changed that plan as you can see I thought about painting the nexus black in the front, or putting a grill so you can't see the fan, but currently I don't care too much. The front does need to be vented beyond stock as mentioned in another post.
As for overclocking I got very lucky with my CPU, after reading many forums, my CPU overclocks to a value that less than 2% of CPUs can. I did boot windows at 5.2GHz, and got it stable with prime95 at 5.1GHz but was approaching the limits of my air cooling due to the increased voltage, I then decided to settle on 5GHz as a nice round number before trying to get 5.2GHz stable and frying the CPU.
Intel Core-i5-2500K at 5.0GHz
MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB
256GB Crucial C300 Real SSD
16GB CORSAIR Vengeance DDR3
ASUS P8P67 PRO LGA1155
Seasonic SS-560KM Active PFC F3, 560W
LIAN LI PC-A05NB
Thermalright U120E-Rev.C CPU Cooler Heatsink
3x Nexus BASIC D12SL-12 @ 530 rpm