Fractal Design R5 build

Show off your quiet rig.

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Nepherte
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Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:13 pm
Location: Belgium

Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:40 pm

First time workstation build, using the components below:
  • Case: Fractal Design R5
  • Fans: 3x Noctua AF14 PWM fans (2 intake, 1 out)
  • PSU: Seasonic Platinum 660W
  • MB: Asus Z97-WS
  • CPU: Intel i7 4790
  • Cooler: Noctua U12S
  • RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury 2x 8GB
  • SSD: Samsung 850 Pro 256GB
  • Graphics: Asus 970GTX
The system is dead-silent. No whining of the sorts. Was a little worried about the noise of the graphics card at first. I need a heavy one for my profession, but at normal duty the fan doesn't even spin at all. What I really liked is that you can now configure the fan speeds in the UEFI. As a linux user, I was rather annoyed that until now everything was managed at OS level.They now spin at around 500, while keeping everything cool.

Image
Last edited by Nepherte on Sun Dec 28, 2014 3:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Abula
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Abula » Fri Dec 26, 2014 5:20 pm

Welcome to SPCR Nepherte =)

Nice clean build, good components, its hard to mess up with Fractal, solid cases for building quiet.

What motherboard headers are you connecting the 3x NF-A14 PWM?

Zenphic
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Zenphic » Fri Dec 26, 2014 8:47 pm

Superb build, pretty much the same that I would go for if I had the money.

ASUS is definitely my pick if you want to change fan profiles in the bios. Their UEFI bios makes the whole experience much easier. Their AI Suite 3 is pretty superb though, but I believe it is Windows only.

Is the Asus GTX 970 Strix semi-passive? I think the 750TI is but not the GTX 970.

Abula
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Abula » Fri Dec 26, 2014 9:36 pm

Zenphic wrote:Is the Asus GTX 970 Strix semi-passive? I think the 750TI is but not the GTX 970.
Yes it is semi passive, around 65C it starts the fans, i just bought 2 =)

Zenphic
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Zenphic » Sat Dec 27, 2014 8:38 am

Abula wrote:
Zenphic wrote:Is the Asus GTX 970 Strix semi-passive? I think the 750TI is but not the GTX 970.
Yes it is semi passive, around 65C it starts the fans, i just bought 2 =)
That good. A marvellous build with semi-passive components! And only the case/CPU fans running on idle.

khaakon
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Location: Oslo, Norway

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by khaakon » Sat Dec 27, 2014 8:39 am

Nepherte wrote: [*] MB: Antec Z97-WS
Antec motherboard? That'd be the day..

Wish i could come up with a good pun

Nepherte
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:13 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Sat Dec 27, 2014 12:58 pm

khaakon wrote:
Nepherte wrote: [*] MB: Antec Z97-WS
Antec motherboard? That'd be the day..

Wish i could come up with a good pun
Haven't you heard the latest news? They have an entire new line of motherboards, and they are named identical to the asus line up ;)

Nepherte
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:13 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Sat Dec 27, 2014 1:00 pm

Abula wrote: Nice clean build, good components, its hard to mess up with Fractal, solid cases for building quiet.
Aye. And the case provides plenty of space to work with.
Abula wrote: What motherboard headers are you connecting the 3x NF-A14 PWM?
They're plugged into fan headers 1 to 3, and set into pwm silent mode in the UEFI.

Nepherte
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Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:13 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Sun Dec 28, 2014 3:39 pm

Zenphic wrote:Their UEFI bios makes the whole experience much easier. Their AI Suite 3 is pretty superb though, but I believe it is Windows only.
Yes, it's Windows only. However, with their UEFI, I don't even need it in Linux...or Windows for that matter.
Last edited by Nepherte on Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

falcon26
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Location: ca

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by falcon26 » Wed Dec 31, 2014 10:09 am

Awesome build man :-) Very clean setup. I too just finished building my R5 and it is by fan the quietest build I've ever done. I'll throw up some pictures later. Well done very nice build indeed....

Snow
Posts: 47
Joined: Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:15 am

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Snow » Sun Mar 29, 2015 6:57 am

Another Belgian here with a new R5 case which replaced an old Antec SLK3000B.
As mentioned this case is dead silent with fans running on low and this time I didn't even had to bother suspending the drives. The case construction, padding and drive placement (bottom instead of top before) are probably to thank for that. Also the rubber grommets and adjusted screws seem to be effective this time. I'll probably add another 140 intake fan but not sure where to put it yet (front or bottom)
Good case!

Specs:

Case: Fractal Design R5 Titanium
Fans: 2x Fractal Design Dynamic GP-14 (in and out)
PSU: Seasonic M12II Bronze Evo Edition
MOBO: Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H
CPU: Intel i5 2500k
Cooler: Thermalright True Spirit 140
RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical
GFX: MSI Geforce GTX760 2GB Gaming
SSD: Samsung 830 128GB
HDD1: Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB
HDD2: Western Digital Red NAS 3TB
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Silencer56
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Silencer56 » Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:42 pm

Nepherte wrote: Case: Fractal Design R5
Fans: 3x Noctua AF14 PWM fans (2 intake, 1 out)
So you basically got the case with the best and most silent stock fans and replaced them by slightly better ones? Why pay the premium at all? You could just have gotten the cheaper R4, especially since you are not removing the HDD cages anyway (which is the R5's sole advantage aside of aesthetics).

Nepherte
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Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:13 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Sun Mar 29, 2015 11:54 pm

For the very simple reason that I retained those from my previous system.

Silencer56
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Silencer56 » Mon Mar 30, 2015 12:00 am

Nepherte wrote:For the very simple reason that I retained those from my previous system.
Have you measured a difference? I have about the same build, just with the stock fans and fanless Seasonic Platinum, 970 Gaming from MSI and i5 instead of i7. Do the case fans run more silent when plugged in the mobo instead of the built in fan control?
Snow wrote: RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical
GFX: MSI Geforce GTX760 2GB Gaming
>spending more money for RAM than for GPU or CPU

I doubt you do heavy video editing because otherwise an i7 and a decent GPU would have been the better investment. Do you run your entire system from RAM? Or several dozen nested VMs?

Snow
Posts: 47
Joined: Sun Jul 27, 2008 2:15 am

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Snow » Mon Mar 30, 2015 1:11 am

Silencer56 wrote:
Nepherte wrote:For the very simple reason that I retained those from my previous system.
Have you measured a difference? I have about the same build, just with the stock fans and fanless Seasonic Platinum, 970 Gaming from MSI and i5 instead of i7. Do the case fans run more silent when plugged in the mobo instead of the built in fan control?
Snow wrote: RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix Tactical
GFX: MSI Geforce GTX760 2GB Gaming
>spending more money for RAM than for GPU or CPU

I doubt you do heavy video editing because otherwise an i7 and a decent GPU would have been the better investment. Do you run your entire system from RAM? Or several dozen nested VMs?
I don't recall asking for a critique on my hardware but since you're wondering this is my workstation for pro photography and digital art and I will get into 4K in the near future.
You might have gotten the wrong idea that my rig is a new built, probably my own fault for posting in this thread. There's years between the CPU, RAM and GPU upgrade.
As for RAM, you can never have enough, especially when you work with large multilayered files in photoshop. If you do heavy editing you should have known that already because it should be the same for 3D and Video. Have you tried 32GB? It made a big difference for me coming from 16GB which was maxed out rapidly in my workflow. Same with GPU RAM these days, the 760GTX is decent enough btw. Of course the i7 is included in my next upgrade. The HyperThreading alone is worth it.

Thanks for the critique though :)

Matthew9226
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Location: Finland

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Matthew9226 » Tue Apr 14, 2015 11:25 pm

Rather not create yet another R5 thread so here's my build which transfer I completed from Lian Li PC-A05NB to this R5 on monday.

Image
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Case: Fractal Design R5 Black
Fans: 2x Fractal Design Dynamic GP-14 (in), Noctua NF-A14 PWM (out)
PSU: Seasonic 660XP2
MOBO: Asus Maximus IV Gene-Z
CPU: Intel i7 3770K (OC)
Cooler: Thermalright HR-02 Macho
RAM: 16GB DDR3
GFX: EVGA GTX 670 (reference)
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB
HDD1: WD Red 3TB

Future plans are
  1. Swap the TY-147 to NF-S12B Redux PWM (quite soon)
    Score a original Titan from somewhere (hopefully soon)
    X99 + 5820K + 32-64GB DDR4 (no idea when..)
Reason for the fan swap is that I don't like how the TY-147 sounds and because I'm nitpicky. Also that NF-A14 was not purchased specifically for this case, I purchased it for my Lian Li as top intake for the GPU (inverted ATX) to replace the X-Silent 140..

Nepherte
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Joined: Fri Dec 26, 2014 2:13 pm
Location: Belgium

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:10 pm

Silencer56 wrote:Have you measured a difference? I have about the same build, just with the stock fans and fanless Seasonic Platinum, 970 Gaming from MSI and i5 instead of i7. Do the case fans run more silent when plugged in the mobo instead of the built in fan control?
I couldn't be bothered trying out the built-in fan control. The system already runs dead silent, and, in my opinion, the motherboard fan headers bring more to the table (e.g. temperature-controlled fan speeds instead of running at fixed voltage levels).

Nepherte
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Location: Belgium

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Nepherte » Wed Apr 15, 2015 12:14 pm

Matthew9226 wrote:Rather not create yet another R5 thread so here's my build which transfer I completed from Lian Li PC-A05NB to this R5 on monday.
Sharp looking build you have there! How's the 670gtx, sound-wise? Aren't you worried that the Titan might increase the noise level? Or are you more concerned with the additional juice?

Matthew9226
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Location: Finland

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by Matthew9226 » Thu Apr 16, 2015 12:56 am

Nepherte wrote:
Matthew9226 wrote:Rather not create yet another R5 thread so here's my build which transfer I completed from Lian Li PC-A05NB to this R5 on monday.
Sharp looking build you have there! How's the 670gtx, sound-wise? Aren't you worried that the Titan might increase the noise level? Or are you more concerned with the additional juice?
Thanks.

Not great. At idle the blower makes a creak or a quibble or something like that. Fortunately it doesn't bother me much. Under load well, it's a cheap blower. Not as bad as nvidia's own ref 670 blower but still bad.

No I'm not worried since it's actually lower. From TPU, the reference 670 idle/load 29/40dBa and original Titan respectively 25/38dBa.
The blower on the Titan is far superior. And since my 670 is OC'd I'd make guess that it's a tad louder than those numbers..

Are you referring to power consumption or performance? I just need more double precision oomph.
And power consumption wise my OC'd (1202/7200) and custom BIOS 670 is probably on par with the stock Titan.

SGCSG1
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Location: Phoenix

Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by SGCSG1 » Thu Aug 18, 2016 5:22 pm

I'm leaning towards an R5 for my next build.

I'm wondering about SSD placement. I'm thinking I might rather have it in the drive cage than on the back of the case where the 'SSD' slot is. Better airflow, lower temperatures.

Any thoughts on that?

CA_Steve
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Re: Fractal Design R5 build

Post by CA_Steve » Thu Aug 18, 2016 8:08 pm

It probably doesn't matter for the 2.5" form factor - haven't seen one throttle (from high temps). If you have space in the lower cage, it can't hurt to place it/them there. That's what I did in my R4.

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