How does this look for my first silent gaming PC?

Smithore · Post by **Smithore** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 10:27 am

I've spent the last couple of months cruising these forums and searching out information on building two silent PCs. One will be a gaming box (the one below) and one will be a media PC (will post later).

How does this look for a first attempt at a gaming PC? All prices are from Newegg, save the Nexus fans which I couldn't find there.

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$ 272.00  CPU:          AMD Venice 3500
$ 124.00  MOTHERBOARD:  ASUS A8V-E Deluxe
$ 181.98  MEMORY:       2x 1GB Gigaram PC3200 DDR (CAS 2.5, unbuffered)
$  50.00  CASE:         Antec SLK3000-B ATX Mid Tower
$  76.99  POWER:        SeaSonic S12-380
$  36.99  HEATSINK:     Thermalright XP-90
$  39.90  CASE FANS:    2x Nexus 120mm case fans (1 front, 1 back)
$  ??.??  CPU FAN:      1x Panaflo FBL09A12M (can't find this anywhere!)
$  90.00  HDD:          Samsung SpinPoint P 160GB SATA
$  45.99  DVD:          NEC 3520A DVD DL burner
$ 292.00  VIDEO:        Gigabyte Radeon X800XML 256MB PCIe
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$1227.85  (Subtotal)
$  65.60  (Shipping)
$1293.45  (Total)

My biggest concern is will the video card be too hot with this setup? The Antec has two 120mm fan spots in the front and back, but with no fan on the GPU or the CPU, will this run too hot?

Are there any other suggestions or red flags?

Thanks to the forum for all the advice. I can't wait until this research is over and I can start building!

IsaacKuo · Post by **IsaacKuo** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:13 pm

This system is waaaaaay overpowered. You can go solid state with a fanless Via and a Commodore 64 emulator on compact flash. Silent M.U.L.E. rig, baby!

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:28 pm

You're planning to run your CPU fanless? I'd say that's not a good idea. See Edward Ng's gallery post where he cools a 3000+ fanless. He did that by ducting practically all the intake over a XP-120. In your case you'll have another intake (with fan), so your XP-90 is not going to be cooled anywhere near as well. And your CPU generates more heat than his as well (2.2 GHz vs. 1.8 GHz).

I'd also advise against a VIA chipset motherboard. I have an Asus A8V Deluxe. So far, my list of annoyances include :

1. Must turn AGP Fast Write off (probably not applicable for PCI-e motherboard)

2. Buggy south bridge / drivers (cannot access SMART of 2nd SATA HDD).

I don't have a nForce3 / nForce4 chipset machine, but it seems to me that the VIA is just not as good a chipset as nVidia.

Smithore · Post by **Smithore** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 1:50 pm

Isaac - Nice M.U.L.E. reference. Not too many people get the old-school gaming reference of my handle.

Lenny -

You're planning to run your CPU fanless? I'd say that's not a good idea.

Hmmm. I guess I misread somewhere that the heatsink was enough without the fan. I'll edit the above post to include a 92mm Panaflo fan for the PSU. The recommended guide says to get the FBL09A12M, but I can't find it anywhere for sale. Any suggestions? Thanks for straightening me out on this one.

I'd also advise against a VIA chipset motherboard. I have an Asus A8V Deluxe.

The reason I chose the Asus A8V-E Deluxe is because I heard the nForce boards had a noisy fan, and I thought I'd just not worry about having to replace yet another component with a heatsink. I have an Asus board now (for an Intel) and was pretty happy with it. Do you think a board with nForce is worth the hassle of replacing the fan with a heatsink?

Thanks for the tips. Anyone else have any suggestions?

lenny · Post by **lenny** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:14 pm

Smithore wrote:Hmmm. I guess I misread somewhere that the heatsink was enough without the fan. I'll edit the above post to include a 92mm Panaflo fan for the PSU. The recommended guide says to get the FBL09A12M, but I can't find it anywhere for sale. Any suggestions?

The FBL fans is a LAC augmented fan (Ralf Hutter's description, not mine - see his Thermaltake CL-P2005 review). I recall some discussions about this fan and no one seemed terribly impressed with it. You'll probably be fine with a Panaflo FBA09A12L (last alphabet L = low, M = medium, H = high, U = ultra). I have a Panaflo and I'm not too impressed with the noise. Haven't been paying attention to 92mm fans - a quick forum search should suggest a few. Make sure you get the open corner types or there'll be a fair amount of sawing plastic in your immediate future.

The reason I chose the Asus A8V-E Deluxe is because I heard the nForce boards had a noisy fan, and I thought I'd just not worry about having to replace yet another component with a heatsink. I have an Asus board now (for an Intel) and was pretty happy with it. Do you think a board with nForce is worth the hassle of replacing the fan with a heatsink?

I have a few other Asus boards (for Intel) that I'm pretty happy with too, and I didn't want a north bridge fan, which is how I ended up with an A8V Deluxe. You might want to check the forums in VIA Arena to read up on the chipset first. I might be similarly disgusted with the nForce4 if I have one - grass is greener on other side and all that. There are a couple of heatpipe cooled nForce4 boards. Edward Ng has one complete with pictures (check his gallery post). There's also a huge thread regarding replacing the NB cooler on nForce boards.