Hi.

Obviously I'm building a new rig and would be grateful for another set of eyes.
Maybe I've missed something or made an unwise choice.

CPU: Intel i5-3450
MB: ASUS P8Z77-V LX
RAM: Corsair Vengeance Low Profile black 8GB PC3-12800U CL9-9-9-24
Cooler: Scythe Mugen 3 Rev. B
Video: Sapphire Radeon HD 6450, 1GB DDR3
CASE: Lian Li PC-8FIA
PSU: Corsair Enthusiast Series Modular TX650M
DVD: LG GH24NS
SSD: Corsair Force Series GT 60GB, SATA 6GB/s
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB, SATA 6GB/s, 2 older Samsung 1TB/2TB SATA 3GB/s
Thermal Paste: Prolimatech PK-1 or Arctic Cooling MX-2

While the Lian Li comes with 3 120mm fans, I'd like to replace them since the board supports 2 PWM fans.
However, I'm undecided.
1) Scythe Slip Stream PWM 1300rpm
2) Sharkoon SilentEagle SE 1200rpm
3) Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilentPRO PLPS 600-1500rpm

Considering price the Scythe clearly wins (6 vs 11-12 for the others). On the other hand the Sharkoon offers modular cables.
Then again, the NB has a 6 year warranty, 20cm/50cm cables and a silicone frame.
Same problem with the 3-pin. Either a Scythe Slip Stream 1200rpm or a Noiseblocker NB-BlackSilentPRO PL2 1400rpm.

Regarding the PSU I'm open to suggestions.
All it really needs is 8 SATA connectors since there'll be another two hdds once the prices are back to normal and preferably modular cables.
Other than that there's currently no plan to upgrade the video card.

Well, I hope you can help me make my decision.
pjeremy

First give the Lian Li fans a trial. They aren't bad in my opinion.

PWM fans don't have a reputation for being quiet.

Consider running 3 of these fans at a constant 5 volts
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article83 ... .html#SS-M
Buy one and try it.

If you don't like the result try running one of these at 7 volts (they start up at 5.5 volts)
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article69 ... html#nexus

Thanks for your reply. Nexus are currently not available at any shop I've looked at.

Why would you need a Radeon 6450 when the iGPU has roughly the same power.

The Western Digital Black is very noisy. You should consider slow-spinning HD's if you want quietness. Also, the Corsair TX650M is quite new and I have not heard anything about the noise level. Just make sure it's quiet enough for your needs.

You could also consider Arctic Cooling F12 PWM. They are cheaper than the others.

The Scythe Slip Stream PWM can give you fan speeds of 300-400 rpm at idle, if you set the Asus BIOS PWM fan profile to 'Silent' mode and set the CPU Fan Speed Low Limit setting to 'Ignore'. The Sharkoon Silent Eagle SE can do this too. And the Silent Eagle will run at slower speeds that the Scythe in the lower PWM duty cycle ranges. The problem I had with the Silent Eagle was that my samples had a slightly crackling bearing if you spun the fan manually. This did not seem to matter once the fans were in a system but the Scythe fan bearing was completely silent. The 12V, 9V and 7V modular cables of the Silent Eagle have the disadvantage that they have a four pin molex connector so cannot be plugged into a motherboard. And due to the molex connector you cannot monitor the fan speeds. But as a PWM fan the SE is one of the select few that can get down to the 300-400 rpm speed range under motherboard control. This motherboard control is thermally based so low speeds at idle can be combined with automatically increased fan speeds as the system load accelerates and/or the ambient temperature goes up.

As your motherboard has one CPU and two chassis fan headers I would suggest that if you do go the PWM fan route that you buy a PWM Y cable. This could be used to share the CPU fan header between the CPU fan and a PWM exhaust fan. The two front PWM intake fans could then be run from the two chassis fan headers. These chassis fan headers cannot be individually configured but potentially you could use the BIOS and/or the supplied Fan Xpert+ software to setup the chassis fans to run at lower speeds than the CPU/exhaust fan combination. Like the CPU header the chassis fan headers also have a Fan Speed Low Limit setting in the BIOS which needs to be set to 'Ignore'.

These are the figures for the PWM duty cycle ranges for the Scythe Slip Stream and the Silent Eagle SE as reported by the fan calibrator in Asus Fan Xpert. The first figure is the PWM duty cycle and the second figure is the fan rpm at that setting.

Scythe Slip Stream SY1225SL12LM-P

30% 292
40% 448
50% 659
60% 827
70% 1004
80% 1081
90% 1240
100% 1318

Sharkoon Silent Eagle SE

30% 351
40% 409
50% 540
60% 629
70% 827
80% 981
90% 1081
100% 1140

Hi kuzzia,
I have a 30" monitor and the 6450 does 2560x1600 whereas the iGPU only does 1920x1200.
The main reason I picked the WD is because of its 5 year warranty.
I looked at JonnyGuru's reviews of the TX550M and TX750M which are positive. And it's made by Seasonic.

Thank you for those numbers and input lodestar. Looks like the Scythe offers the best value.

Any insight regarding the Noiseblocker?

60 gb is quite small. Linux would fit on it if you don't have to much data-files, but Windows eats disk-space.

SSD's don't like to be filled totally, it will degrade their performance quite a bit when written often and will wear them out.
128gb ssd's are not that expensive and really worth the investment in my opinion.

Hi sjoukew.
The ssd is only for / and /home. I've considered the 90GB and 120GB versions, but considering / and /home are currently using less than 45GB I see no point in spending more, especially since I have the 500GB WD, a 1TB Samsung and another 2TB Samsung for storage as well as external backups.
I don't expect it to last forever and will replace it with a larger one in 1-2 years.

120GB SSDs are so cheap right now (definitely the SSD sweet spot) I think it's crazy not to go for one over a 60GB.

I have a 60GB drive with 9GB free btw. I've had it two years and when I bought it I was only using 30GB and I regularly do clean-ups, but the point is you never know how your usage will change in the future.

How about Noiseblockers? Where are you geographically located?

Hey ces,
the Noiseblockers are available. I'm from Germany.

Hey Jordan,
you're right, I don't know how my usage will change in the future.
But knowing my current usage, is it worth it spending 50EUR more on the 120GB version instead of waiting until I need more?
If I can't justify the extra 40EUR for an i5-3570K because I know I won't overclock or the extra 45 for 16GB RAM I don't see how I could justify 50 more for a very small increase in storage. On the other hand, 15 more for a 1TB Hitachi with a 3 year warranty seems reasonable.

Noiseblockers are good.

Yes the NoiseBlocker is a good fan but will not be as quiet as the Scythe.

PWM data (duty cycle/rpm) for this fan as supplied by NoiseBlocker:

NoiseBlocker BlackSilentPRO PL-PS

0% 600
25% 900
50% 1100
75% 1300
100% 1500

Even at 50% duty cycle the Scythe is only running at around 660 rpm.

Perhaps I've been a bit presumptuous and things might be a bit different in mainland Europe. In the UK 60GB drives are just under £60 and 120GBs about £80. There's some amazing deals on Crucial M4s over here at the moment. I also wouldn't buy SandForce personally, they seem to have a higher failure rate. Samsung 830 is probably the best drive to get at the moment.

I paid £120 for my 60GB at the time seeing 256GB drives for not that much more now.

Thanks guys, I'll go with the Scythe then.


Yea, that's how I look at it now. In two years time the cost-performance ratio will have improved significantly.
Thanks for the info on SandForce. A couple of mates have gone with SandForce SSDs and haven't had any problems yet,
but I'll rsync it every 3 weeks anyway, just in case.

The benefit of 128GB drives over 64GB is more than just capacity - read and write speeds are increased as there are more chips/memory channels used. Here's an example using the Crucial m4 via Anandbench...and also with the Samsung 830.

That's a tiny sample size, though... SandForce may have improved however.

CA_Steve makes another valid point.