I'm going to build a new system from scratch that has to be as close to completely silent as possible. It's not screaming high end, so maybe there's hope

Here's what I have so far:

Case : FK-330

PSU : Seasonic Super Silencer 400 (whatever new revision comes out)
(if needed, I'll change the PSU fan or volt it down.)

Cpu and Vga cooling : Zalman Reserator 1 + vga adapters (water)

Harddrives : One or two Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 or similar.

Motherboard: Asus P4C800-D (passive northbridge cooling)
Cpu: 2.4C (sweet spot for my needs)
Ram: some Crucial 3200 sticks
Gfx: GF 5x00 series.

I'm planning on getting a good dust filter for the front of the FK-330 and covering all other holes and leaks except for the PSU.
My intention is to create an airflow that only sucks in air through the front, by way of the rear PSU fan. This I hope will minimize dust collection. (although realistically, I'd have to filter the output too, to avoid "backwash", but then I dont think I'd get much air moved)

Now, all that's moving here are the hd drives and the PSU fan. Should be fairly quiet.

I'm a bit worried it'll be too hot, since there's still heat from the drives, the northbridge, the ram, the cpu (cooled) and gfx card (cooled).

I'm hoping the water cooling can take care of most of the heat from cpu and gfx, without having it escape into the cabinet, so it's mostly the ram, drives and NB that get hot. The PSU fan should be able to handle that. I hope

Any suggestions ?

Dude, people on this forum have attacked hotter hardware with less. You should easily be alright with a Reserator unless you plan to overclock to hell.

As for quietness, the only thing I would worry about is the seek noise of your drives. 7200.7s are quiet at idle, but tend to be loud when seeking.

For dust, I would focus on a filtered positive pressured case. That would basically mean having a quiet fan on the front that blows more air in, than the PSU fan blows out. This may not be a terribly bad idea in order to keep you hard drives cool, since the Seagates do tend to run a little hot.

Otherwise though, I think your PSU fan should be able to handle it. They were designed to handle that level of heat output, IMHO.

I cool my 2.4C systems with a 5-7V L1A on the CPU (or a 5V Zalman 7000) and a 5V 120mm L1A as the single case fan. Temps aren't anything to worry about with that setup. You should have absolutely no problems using a Resorator in your setup.

Oh, and BTW - WELCOME TO SPCR!!!

Thanks for the advice, I feel reassured now. And thank you for the welcome!

Have you considered the P4P800 instead of the P4C800? I would be more inclided to get the P4P and with the money saved, go for a 2.8 GHz CPU. This combo will give you better performance I think. The Reserator will provide more than ample cooling for a 2.8Ghz P4C (and a regular heatsink/fan will also be sufficient).

Oh man, ditch that video card, whatever you do. nVidia REALLY fucked up with the 5x00 series. Badly.

Both the 9600pro and the 9500 pro DEMOLISH that card in terms of performance. Same price range, I'm assuming, so go with an ATI at that power level. If you wanna go big, come back to nVidia for their 68xx series. I read that the nVidia is taking back the high powered video processing throne.

Hang on a sec, Oneshot. If zzenn isn't a gamer, then a 5200 would be a perfectly fine card for under 1/2 a 9600Pro's price.

If he isn't a gamer, then he could go even cheaper. The 5 series is right in that niche of "I want to game", yet, its horrible for that.

For a nongamer, I recommend the MX440 series. Really cheap, awesome for non-gamers.

Thank you guys for the added feedback. A few replies are in order.

markjia,

I did consider it, but I found that canterwood suits me better. I like the idea of ECC memory, and from what I've seen, springdale seems to have inconsistent test results. Sometimes bad, sometimes really good, while canterwood consistently has gotten good results.

I should be able to overclock the 2.4 a bit, and thus save a few bucks, was my original idea. But, I think I'll follow your advice and get a 2.8 instead.

-

ONEshot,

I've been wanting an ati card for a long time, but I use Maya (the 3d program) and I see a lot of ati owners who have problems running it properly, or who take performance hits.

Also, like HammerSandwich guessed, I don't play a lot of games. It happens, but it's not what I live for Still, I wouldn't want an MX card. I like not being too crippled in various shaders and such.


Btw, could you guys elaborate on why the 5x00 series is bad for gaming?

Chancellor Martok,

I'm planning on getting 2 gigs of memory. I do a lot of memory intensive tasks, such as image manipulation and 3d, and I've lived with the restrictions of only 512 mb for far too long now.

As for your maya and radeon question:

Not having owned one myself, I cannot verify any of this. However, I reside in #maya channels on two major irc networks, and it's typically people with ati cards that have trouble.
Troubles usually include display artifacts and odd viewport performance.

It's also the general concensus among the irc 3d crowd (those using maya anyway) that nvidia has the upper hand with this particular application. Why? Could be any number of reasons, but there's usually not smoke without a fire

Errr, are those people talking about run of the mill Radeon gaming cards or FireGL cards? AFAIK, FireGL is considered to be among the best for such applications (no idea about Maya specifically though)

If they're about regular gaming cards, then %99 it's a driver issue. Gaming Radeon cards and FireGL cards are exactly the same in hardware except for a small signiture in the BIOS and dual DVI outputs. So you could just grab the FreeFireGL drivers, install them and get 120% performance increase. (performance increase as reported under 3DSMax/VIZ mark under specperfgl benchmarks)

The same USED to be true about nVidia but they've changed now. The current FX cards and Quadro cards are different in hardware.