Advice requested for seriously silencing a P182

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jeepescu
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 10:58 am
Location: montreal

Advice requested for seriously silencing a P182

Post by jeepescu » Fri Feb 22, 2008 3:50 pm

Here is my situation.

Patient: Antec 182, Gigabyte P35DS3R, Q6600 with Ninja rev b, Passive 8400GS.
HD1: WD250 Gb
HD2: Seagate 7200.10 320Gb
CPU Fan: Stock Scythe ( I read somewhere that it might be the slip stream , but mine does not look like that; speedfan reports is at 1000RPM )
Case: 1 Tricool in the back, 1 tricool in the lower chamber (both on low)

Symptoms: Patient is noisy. Seagate is humming like nuts. Tricools are noisy.
I am not generating much heat, CPU is not overclocked, GPU is passive and very low power.

To give you an idea where I'd like to go with this, I started unplugging everything, until I got to a level of noise that I deemed acceptable.
This happened with no fans, and only the WD drive.

In short, I would like to get it almost silent, as I mostly work at night and I just like it to be dead quiet.

I see two problems here:
1. Seagate hard disk.
There are two potential solutions:
a) scythe quiet drive; pro: quiet, inexpensive; cons: drive temperature could rise
b) get rid of it, get a 750gb WD GP; pros: quiet, more capacity; cons: expensive

2. Fans
Tricools must go. Again there are several solutions here:
a) Reserator 2. pros: quiet; cons:expensive
b) Slip streams or yate loons or noctuas (1xCPU, 1xCase, 1x HD): pros: inexpensive - cons: maybe not quiet enough for what I need
I thought b was the way to go (with some sort of controller) until I read about PWM noises on undervolted fans, so I am not sure anymore.

Questions:
1. If I go reserator, can I run with no case fans at all ? Or I should still have a fan to move some heat from RAM and GPU? Which fan would enough fo rthis task ? Slip stream 500 RPM?
2. Is it possible to attain a a VERY quiet box with air cooling ?
3. Any other thoughts, remarks, ideas ?

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
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Post by bonestonne » Fri Feb 22, 2008 4:43 pm

:roll:

b is the way to go.

1) did you cut out the fan grills? please say yes. (and if not, add that to your to-do list.
2) you're using a P182. did you take an x-acto knife to the covers that are over the fans? they're very restrictive.
3) is your ninja using a bolt-thru kit, or just the push pins?

a) replace the tri-cools, those are ridiculous. i'd suggest 500 or 800rpm S-Flex. Slipstreams are nice, but you said you were iffy on them. S-Flex is still good.
b) replacing your drives isn't entirely necessary unless its really loud and you don't like it. even with that, you could always put it in the bottom chamber with some insulation, it would stay cool, and have airflow, unless you're using a fanless PSU. that, and a 750gb drive isn't that expensive, i saw them for ~$150 on newegg, but lacking that much, i haven't bought it yet. another way to go is maybe samsung, they make excellent drives that are really quiet.
c) the fan you have on your ninja is most likely a 1000RPM S-Flex, slipstreams have a smaller central hub and more fins than most other 120mm fans. You could always buy two more 1000rpm fans and undervolt them to 7v, which would give you near silence, and good cooling.

i'd suggest setting up the fans like so (after undervolting to 7v):
1 exhaust fan, 1 CPU fan, the last fan should be mounted on the inner portion of the middle HDD cage, so it can blow directly over the GPU. leave both drives down by the power supply, and make sure you chop out the grill and mod the filter door. the PSU will easily manage 2 drives without a problem, and you'll have plenty of cooling in the upper chamber.

be sure to mod the other filter door as well, because restriction can cause some noise when the fan is right up against the grill, mainly from the backpressure. also, if your computer is near a wall, keep it so that the rear of the computer is not facing the wall, or too close to the wall, because unless you're next to a cooling duct (one that removes air from the room) you may just create a small dead spot of air that the computer will not benefit from.

use these for reference:
viewtopic.php?t=44219
viewtopic.php?t=44584
viewtopic.php?t=46419

those should help you out a little with figuring out your plan of attack.

and if you've really got some issues with noise, maybe you could spare $25 for some -30dB's:
http://www.boss-safety.com/shop/bilsom- ... -2971.html
Last edited by bonestonne on Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Calgarian
Posts: 45
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:17 pm
Location: Calgary, AB. Canada

Re: Advice requested for seriously silencing a P182

Post by Calgarian » Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:03 pm

jeepescu wrote:Symptoms: Patient is noisy. Seagate is humming like nuts. Tricools are noisy.
I am not generating much heat,.......

......I just like it to be dead quiet.
The key here is "dead quiet"

If you unplug almost everything, are you still generating little heat?

Replacing the HD seems to be a good move. It's probably the biggest benefit for the money spent.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article786-page1.html

I use and like the Noctua fans. I have them at full speed but they give you the two adapters for lowering the speed.

I have a P150 case. I find the sound soft, almost enjoyable. It's a massive improvement over my old case. Hmmm, It seems the P182's have an extra layer of quiet material on the side panels over the P150's. Plus you've got the top fan slot to let heat escape......

So, get the quietest HD you can, then you could experiment with fans, ie: minimum number at lowest speed up to the maximum number at slowest speed and see how you like the sound and temperatures.

Calgarian
Posts: 45
Joined: Mon Dec 18, 2006 4:17 pm
Location: Calgary, AB. Canada

Post by Calgarian » Fri Feb 22, 2008 5:12 pm

Plus a related topic for you to consider......

viewtopic.php?t=46466

jeepescu
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 10:58 am
Location: montreal

Post by jeepescu » Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:21 pm

Thanks for all the replies.

A few things that I forgot to mention:
- PS is a corsair 620W; it might not even have a fan, for what I can tell, I never heard it; no wonder the fan never starts, as my power usage at the wall is 85W idle and 135 watts peak. Why do I need a 620W PS, you tell me.
- the Q6600 (G0) is undervolted to 1.10v and rock stable; It idles at 31C, and peaks at 38C (with prime 95)
- during my "low noise tests" , I was able to run it indefinitely with no fans, and only the OS HD (WD 250GB) without the side cover. IIRC, the CPU was idling a tid bit higher but nothing to write home about.

About the fan grills: Why should I dremel them out, will this reduce my noise ?
The two front doors above the dust filters are gone. I did not notice any impact on the temps with or without them.
The ninja hangs on by the push pins, which I am very happy with. Will bolting it to the BM will reduce my noise ?

The hardest game my box will ever see is probably sudoku (during which my brain heats up more). My monitor surely puts out more heat than my PC.
This is why I said that I am not concerned by heat, only by sound reduction.

Bonestone, I laughed so hard at the headphone suggestion !!! Good one

jeepescu
Posts: 45
Joined: Tue Aug 15, 2006 10:58 am
Location: montreal

Post by jeepescu » Fri Feb 22, 2008 7:27 pm

Another thing, I already tried suspending the drives, my lower cage now looks like swiss cheese, thanks to some smart , 3AM, Alexander Keith fueled, multiple rounds of calculations for where to drill the elastic holes.
In the end the drives have been suspended, but the noise remained the same. I am about to get convinced that I probably have the worst sample of 7200.10 in the whole wide world.

Can anyone talk about PWM noise and how about comparing the slip streams with the Noctuas?

bonestonne
Posts: 1839
Joined: Mon Feb 05, 2007 2:10 pm
Location: Northern New Jersey
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Post by bonestonne » Fri Feb 22, 2008 9:14 pm

bluefront is the man to ask about PWM fan noise...

the doors by the filters only affect backpressure, and i don't think they would have much of an effect on cooling, but noise may have been reduced ever so slightly.

my case has a mesh front, so even tiny sounds come right out and bug me, like the seeking of my 160gb IDE drive...in a well soundproofed car, it would sound like wet brakes.

what you may try doing, is ducting the ninja to the exhaust fan, scrapping the idea of a CPU fan, and just run the whole rig with two fans, keeping the drives (my idea remains the same) at the bottom, cooled by the power supply.

i was only curious about the ninja, most people here have it bolt thru, only because of its weight (my reason for getting a rev. A).

Its widely accepted that if you have two identical fans running at the same speed, its just the sound of one fan, +3dB. this is correct because every 3dB a sound becomes twice as loud. so, say you go with a Scythe Slipstream, guessing, the 800RPM model. according to www.scytheusa.com the 800rpm model is 10.70 dBA at 12v. so, if you run two at 12v, it will in turn be approx. ~14dBA. now, generally, its hard to hear anything under 16dBA until you're in a dead quiet environment where everything seems louder than it is. so say you decide you wont run the fans at 12v, you'll be adventurous and go down to 7v. If you run the fans off a molex or 3 pin connector, at 7v, you're looking at <14dBA...hell of a silent rig there. go for PWM, and you'll have clicking to deal with.

stash the drives at the bottom with the power supple, two fans in the "upper chamber", one blowing on the 8500gs, the other being exhaust, ducted to the ninja.

you could also go for 3 fans, and stick a fan down by the power supply at hard drives, and use a fanmate on all of three of them (not unheard of), but the fans, well, if you use a zalman fanmate, you have a choice of fan, Nexus, Yate Loon, S-Flex, Slipstream...or you could just try to undervolt the Slipstream. running one PWM however, will give you clicking sound, but that's bluefronts' department, i don't have a slipstream [in fact i was thinking about those new Noctua fans for my rig].

viewtopic.php?t=45788
^thats plenty of good reading material on the subject, from the master himself.

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