Building HTPC with Zalman HD-135

[BratWalnut]

Hi all,

Just finished building my second HTPC, a Zalman HD-135. I have chosen this one to go to the living room, mainly a gaming/video rig (dowloading from two other computers in other places in the house). It will not have any tv tuners (they will remain in the bedroom, inside a cramped Antec Fusion, with firewire recording, ATI 650, HD Homerun). The video and music server lies in yet another computer. After that, I will NEVER build a cramped case/matx HTPC board again. Yes, it is silent, but the amount of apendages/Usb devices/tuners coming out of it, not to mention to have to deal with special things that eat PCI slots like SPDIF Component boards...it was a nightmare. I ended up with a double slot silent graphic card and one turner only inside my tv server...

So I went for an full size ATX board. The HD-135 is a beauty, so I went for it. After calibrating Speedfan temp readings with this post (www toms dot hardware dot com/forum/197995-29-tomshardware) I got the following results:

First my config:

Ambient: 22/23C
Chipset: P35
CPU: Core 2 duo E6550
CPU Cooler: Thermalright SI-128 with Nexus 120mm fan on top
Frequency: 2.33 (stock)
Load: Prime 95 - SMALL FTT for 10min
stepping: G0
Vcore 1.325 (stock)
HD: 500 Gb Seagate Barracuda
Video card: Nvidia 8800 GTS 320
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R

With stock fans at 100%: (the stock 80mm CPU fan put on a the rear side vent)
Tcase/CPU: 23C idle & 48C load
Tjunction/hottest Core: 31C idle & 54 load

With Stock fans at 40% (the stock 80mm CPU fan on the front drive bay on the side of the power button) I have this:

Tcase/CPU: 24C idle & 48 load
Tjunction/hottes core: 31C idle & 54 load

This is bearable but still I hear a lot of wind woosh...it is indeed a superior solution because the temps are equal, but I want more.

Now I am planning to buy a noctua/nexus 120mm and put it on the drive cage, as it was done in the SilentPC review of this case. Since this is also a gaming rig (mostly flight simulator X/Oblivion on the living room, very demanding games), I think I need more fans to run with all the candy on.

So I'm thinking about ditching also the stock Zalmans 80mm exhaust fans and put another Noctua 80mm where.

The drive cage trasmits a lot of noise/vibration, i put some double sided tape around the screw hole, and it improved the situation a lot. I'll do the same with the DVD drive and see how far it goes.

My goal is 30dbA noise, I hope this is realistic for a gaming rig in such an open case. I am hoping the casing construction will help cooling it a bit, but I'm not holding my breath.

Keep in mind that the fins all around the case make a lot of turbulence. The stock fan mounted inside close to any side vent at 30% power will make much noise than the same stock fan mounted at 70% in the lower exhaust fan, can you believe that? It is a different noise (more of a woosh, than an engine) but it is louder and more aggravating.

So I don't think any noctua/nexus mounted on the side vents will be as silent as if they were mounted a little farther away from it. But how to deal with the ideal pressure, etc? Should I have an equal number of exhaust and intake fans? Should I try to use the 60mm fan in the back?

I don't think I'll have any problems cooling the CPU (I would be happy with 65C with these 65w/72C max capable G0 stepping processors, according to the site quoted above, so 54 gives me room to overclock a bit), it is the HD/DVD noise plus the heat generated by the videocard that worries me. I think the case temperature, getting hotter from the videocard, will then affect adversely my CPU cooling solutuion, and make the videocard fan start spinning more than it should.

At first I thought an all alumminum case with lots of vents would be the solution, but I guess it is more difficult that I first thought.

Any suggestions will be more than welcome.

[BratWalnut]

Here is a picture showing my first attempt, with the stock 80mm Zalman fans.



As you can see here, I put the fan on the rear side vent, the same fan that was supposed to go on the top case opening above the CPU:



In this location, the fan is noise as hell at any speed: as soon as it gets close to the fins, the turbulence noise overwhelms everything. Unusable even at 30% speed using Zalman's MHC Media Home Center software that controls the LCD and the fans. I suppose that 30% is around 5v, but I have no way to know this.

You can also see that this is a small case for a ATX full motherboard. I'm using this as a game machine for the living room, so I puit the 8800 GTS there. You can also see the Thermalright 128 + Nexus 120mm fan on top of it. I'm using the Antec Earthwatts 500. The other PCI slot has the wireless linksys wi-fi (WRX) connector.

I just finished building it with the new fans that just arrived, but now that I'm not a "newbie" on this forum I think I can post this on the "build" section of this forum.

Yes, here it is, with pics of my final build: viewtopic.php?p=373643#373643


As always, any suggestions or comments are appreciated.