SPCR

Hello i'm new to the forum, i'm also from Sweden so my english will be.. well not so good

To the point, i own 3 year old Gaming monster and i want it quiet down to a FullHD movie machine / Studio recording PC

what i have today is a Intel Q6600 Quad CPU
4gb Ram
2x8800GTS (only use one since i'v stopped gaming on PC)
A Passive cooled ATX Gigabyte moterboard.
And some Studio equipment of course.

I'm working on a budget so what i'v picked out so far is the following:

Samsung SpinPoint F3 HD103SJ 32MB 1TB 7200 RPM
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-U9B
GFX Cooling: Arctic Cooling Accelero S1 Rev. 2 (for existing 8800GTS)
Alt New GFX: XFX Radeon HD5450 HDMI 512MB
Chassi: Fractal Design Define R2
PSU: Nexus Value 430W

Will it be quiet enough. Like quiet like my PS3 slim or like a laptop. anything will be an upgrade because i cant record in the same room with my Current system, witch is a problem...

Any tips on diffrent even quieter parts is a plus, not to expensive tho.

I am going to upgrade to a SSD in the near future so the 1TB disk is for storage but it needs to be fast and quiet as possible since loading samples takes a long time on a slow disk.

thanks in advance
/Fredrik

Hi and welcome to SPCR!

Anything you can do to reduce power consumption will reduce the heat generated and the fans needed to remove the heat. So, less power, in a good case, means less noise.

1) Replace the 8800GTS with an HD5570. You'll reduce the idle and 2D power by 50W as well as have a video card compliant with current stds/video playback quality. There are a number of passive 5570's available for $70-100 (in US) and worth the extra $ over the 5450.

Case and PSU look good. You might be able to keep your power below the level where the PSU fan starts to spin up.

CPU: 105W TDP. You might consider underclocking and/or undervolting to lower it's power.

Thanks alot!

I will change it to a 5570,

However about the cpu, i'v alwase had it overklocked at 3+ ghz, atm 3.3ghz 27-30 idle and 40-50 load with a simular tower cpu cooling that is worse preformance than this noctua.

I don't really need it to run reason and record, but its faster. Think the PSU will be louder with it oced?

Assuming you aren't overvolting and the VRM efficiency stays the same, 37% higher clock speed = 37% more CPU power. This 3yr old Anandtech article reviews the G0 stepping of the Q6600. In their system, 2.4GHz yields 162W/205W idle/load power and at 3.3GHz; 193W/259W. There is an 8800GTX and some unknown PSU that probably isn't 80+ rated. This is probably close to what you have now

So we can make some guesses.
Xbit Labs says the 8800GTX draws 70W/131W idle/3D DC load. Replacing this with a 5570 lowers the DC draw by 63W/113W idle/load. If the PSU in the Anandtech article was ~70% efficient at idle and 75% at load, the AC power becomes 103W/108W idle/load with the 5570. If the PSU was 75%/80% eff at idle/load, then the power goes to 109W/118W idle/load.

The Nexus Value 430 fan doesn't ramp until somewhere between 150W and 200W, so you are golden.

One caveat: I did the math while drinking my first cup of coffee this am.

Also, since you are already getting such good temps with your current cooler, why not just keep it in place? Too noisy?

Could you give us a picture of the rig

The 8800 line stock coolers are actually quite quiet. I've got 2x 8800 GTX and at normal 60% speed I don't hear it.

I managed to quiet down my machine a lot and man it was a howler.
My rig now
viewtopic.php?t=58961&highlight=

Changing out the fans, getting a better cpu cooler and elastic mounting the hard drives really changed everything for me.

I actually had to tune up the noise of the Nexus fans I bought because I started noticing a buzz from my graphic card when I turned on my monitor, to blend and mask that more annoying noise

Wierd i replyed a long long post to you guys but it did not go throu.. so anyways.

Thanks for that crazy math mate it help me alot as of knowing how silent my PSU will be

asfor pictures i sadly don't own a camera, my mobile is outdated to say the least.

However i manage to find components i think is good for the job. The PSU is not available in Sweden so i had to change that to a Corsair CMPSU-450VX wich i hope is quiet aswell according to review. What do you think of it?

the Noctua NH-U9B ain't avalible either only the SE2 version, witch is the same but 2 fans. according to speccs its just as quiet but how can that be with 2 fans? What du you think

i'v found an alternative that maby the the best if the U9B SE2 isnot as quiet as the origional and thats the Noctua NH-C12P SE14 witch is a 140 mm fan, my rational thinking is bigger fan more cooling so it can run on lower speeds and therefor more quiet, they cost about the same so whats your thoughts on that

other then that i'm good to buy

thanks for the repleys

3 yrs ago, when Mike C's noise floor was around 18dBA., it was great. I'm not sure how it would compare today. According to the review, the fan is audible at low loads.

CA_Steve wrote:3 yrs ago, when Mike C's noise floor was around 18dBA., it was great. I'm not sure how it would compare today. According to the review, the fan is audible at low loads.

Yeah, maby that HX520 is a safer bet? Most of the stuff you guys reviews ar not available in Sweden :/ Hoewer if you know some good PSU's as the Nexus 430 please tell me so i can check the availability.

Becks83 wrote:

CA_Steve wrote:3 yrs ago, when Mike C's noise floor was around 18dBA., it was great. I'm not sure how it would compare today. According to the review, the fan is audible at low loads.

Yeah, maby that HX520 is a safer bet? Most of the stuff you guys reviews ar not available in Sweden :/ Hoewer if you know some good PSU's as the Nexus 430 please tell me so i can check the availability.

I've recommendedthis a couple of times here now - One of the highest ever scores on jonny guru. It's inaudible most of the time and virtually silent the rest of the time - at least it is for me as it's getting fresh air direct from outside the case (FT-01) and the Fractal Design case looks to be similar.
I also have a VX450 and it's way louder than the Seasonic and would not recommend it. You can get much better these days.

judge56988 wrote:

Becks83 wrote:

CA_Steve wrote:3 yrs ago, when Mike C's noise floor was around 18dBA., it was great. I'm not sure how it would compare today. According to the review, the fan is audible at low loads.

Yeah, maby that HX520 is a safer bet? Most of the stuff you guys reviews ar not available in Sweden :/ Hoewer if you know some good PSU's as the Nexus 430 please tell me so i can check the availability.

I've recommendedthis a couple of times here now - One of the highest ever scores on jonny guru. It's inaudible most of the time and virtually silent the rest of the time - at least it is for me as it's getting fresh air direct from outside the case (FT-01) and the Fractal Design case looks to be similar.
I also have a VX450 and it's way louder than the Seasonic and would not recommend it. You can get much better these days.

Thanks alot Judge the Seasonic is available in Sweden. i will look into the Review.

Any thoughts of the CPU cooler

Noctua reviewed at Techpowerup. Note the i5 650 has a 73W TDP vs your 105W Q6600.

Frostytech reviewed the 120mm fan version.

Here's a couple of top-down cooler threads:
1
2

SCPR comparison chart for a variety of top down and tower coolers.

Becks83 wrote: Thanks alot Judge the Seasonic is available in Sweden. i will look into the Review.

Any thoughts of the CPU cooler

I got the modular version of the Seasonic by the way. I don't think there's much difference otherwise.

As for coolers, I've used a Mugen 2 in both my recent builds and am very happy with it. I went for that mainly because it works well with AMD cpu's in terms of orientation i.e. you can line it up with the case rear exhaust, and it comes with a good quiet fan; the Noctua is probably pretty good too though and you've got intel cpu so...

Thanks alot for the replies, i'v ordered my parts now and i'll have to wait to see how quiet it is

without your help i would probobly had bought 1 or 2 parts not that quiet so thanks

Enjoy your build.