SPCR

Hello all,

I really need your advice as I don't know how to proceed. I aimed at making a decent silent pc and for this I have used:
- Antec Solo II
- i5 3350p, AsRock B75 Pro3, 2x4 GB RAM, 1 SSD, Seasonic 360 Gold
- Thermalright True Spirit 120 Rev A for CPU cooling
- MSI Geforce 650ti - for video card

When I first started the system it was very noisy. So I just unplugged all the vents and started adding them one by one. The sound was:
- antec back fan - quite ok, on low setting
- Seasonic - basically can't hear it
- MSI card makes terrible noise for around 30 seconds (they have some anti-dust thing that makes the fan spin backward) and then is acceptable. Not extremly quiet
- CPU fan makes the most noise

Then I entered the bios and set the CPU fan to level 1. This made things a bit better but I saw that even on level 1 the vent on the cooler is at ~1050rpm while I was expecting it to be at 600.

My questions to you are:
- would the stock cooler be of same silent level as this TrueSpirit ? If this is the case, I would return TrueSpirit as it doesn't really seem quiet to me and as I don't OC the temperatues won't be a problem. 80% of time I use the PC for software development, so if stock cooler would be silent, it would be ok for me.
- I was thinking of getting Asus 650 Ti (This one percisly as the Direct CU II is too expensive for me: http://www.asus.com/Graphics_Cards/NVID ... 50_TI1GD5/ ) but then decided to go with MSI as from revies it seemed as silent as Asus's Direc CU II cooling system. The MSI stays at idle at 30% of speed fan (this is the bottom value) and to be honest, I think that the noise is more done by the air going thru the radiator. I can stil exchange my MSI for the Asus in the link. Unfortunatelly I can only find reviews for Asus with Direct CU II and I have no idea how noisy the regular Asus 650 ti is.
Anyone tried Asus ? Should I exchange my MSI with the Asus, or Asus might be even worse ?

Thank you.

What temps are you seeing at idle for case, CPU and GPU?

Have you tried using MSI Afterburner to set the gpu fan profile?

The 650Ti is a good candidate for a passive heatsink. 85W can easily be lost with an Arctic S1 Plus. This would silence the graphics card.

For the CPU cooler are you using the standard Thermalright fan? If your cooling numbers are good enough, swapping the fan for something that spins slower would be a good thing to try.

In the meanwhile I did some things. First updated the MB bios and I now have a new option for fan speed "Custom speed". This value is from 1 to 255 so I just set it on 1 and the cpu fan now goes around 660 rmp. Much much better.

After 10 minutes of prime95 the CPU temperature remained around 50 C. Also the GPU remains around 52 after using MSI test app. So I'd say temperatures are pretty ok.

The MSI card has the vent speed on Auto and it's at minimum (30%). Even on full load I can't hear it too much.

Since the CPU fan is quieter, the whole system feels way more silent. I don't think there is anything left to optimize. Too bad MSI didn't allow going until 20% for vent speed.