Quieting a Titan box

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lm
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1251
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2003 6:14 am
Location: Finland

Quieting a Titan box

Post by lm » Sun May 03, 2015 11:55 am

My previous PC just turned 7 years old and I had been looking for a particular set of components but postponing the purchase as it wasn't that urgent. This changed when I suddenly got a great second hand deal for a setup that was quite close to what I had been looking for. So now I have the following setup running 1 meter away from where I sit:

CPU: Intel Core i7 4770K 3.5GHz
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX Titan Black
RAM: Kingston HyperX Black 32GB (4x8) DDR3 1600MHz 1.5V 10-10-10-27 2T
MoBo: Asus Z87-A

SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 500GB
HDD: Toshiba DT01ACA300 3TB
DVD: Asus DRW-24F1ST

Case: Fractal Design Define R4 Black
Fans: 140mm exhaust at upper back, 140mm intake at lower front, model unknown (seems stock config of this case)
PSU: Fractal Design Integra M 750 W 80 PLUS Bronze
CPU cooler: Cooler Master tower cooler with 120mm fan, model unknown

OS: Windows 8.1

These I had already:
Display: HP LP3065 30" 2560x1600
Keyboard
Mouse: Logitech MX500
DAC/AMP: O2+ODAC
Headphones: Sennheiser HD800

Everything is running at stock settings. I'm drawing <75W from the wall while writing this and <300W while gaming according to my cheap power meter.

This PC is used for gaming, netflix, surfing and listening to music. While gaming, I want the best eye candy settings while staying at or close to 60fps.

Idle sound is a neutral hum, but I would prefer it to be quieter. While gaming, the system becomes much noisier and there is some coil whine as well. This would be nice to improve as well. As I don't want to be cleaning the insides often, I want to keep the dust filters on.

Since I haven't modified my previous PC at all in years, I'm pretty much out of the silencing game. I think my first step should be to establish monitoring of CPU, GPU, MB, SSD and HDD temperature. What's currently the preferred way to do it?

All other tips for quieting this thing down are of course also welcome, thanks in advance!
Last edited by lm on Mon May 04, 2015 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

mentawl
Posts: 285
Joined: Sat Feb 18, 2006 10:29 pm
Location: Glasgow, UK

Re: Quieting a Titan box

Post by mentawl » Sun May 03, 2015 1:44 pm

I don't see any mention of the fan configuration in the R4. Is there at least one intake fan pushing air to the GPU, and one fan exhausting? :)

lm
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1251
Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2003 6:14 am
Location: Finland

Re: Quieting a Titan box

Post by lm » Mon May 04, 2015 11:13 am

Hi mentawl, thanks for your comment.

I've updated the original post to state that it seems to be the stock fan config of Define R4 - one 140mm in the front, one 140mm in the back. This is not really customized at all yet, the first owner got it preassembled one year ago.

I don't dare to change their speed until I get temperature monitoring set up to verify that it is safe.

Based on your signature it looks like you have experience on similar level components as mine, the 780 is quite close in spec to my GPU. How do you quiet them?

quest_for_silence
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Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
Location: ITALY

Re: Quieting a Titan box

Post by quest_for_silence » Mon May 04, 2015 1:07 pm

lm wrote:I'm pretty much out of the silencing game.

IMVHO none of your quoted parts is among the quietest options available, so, to improve the overall outcome, IMHO you should swap all or some of them.

With the Titan blower, there's not a lot you can do: you may either swap the cooler with an Accelero Xtreme or some suitable AIO (Arctic again, or using adapter like the NZXT one), or swap the whole card with a GTX 980 like the ASUS Strix (much more straightforward, more effective, probably cheaper if you resell the Titan for a convenient amount of money). A custom fan curve may also help.

Then there's the PSU: it's a mid-performing unit and it also has a relatively conservative fan profile with a min speed around 1000rpm or just something below (depending of temperature), so a fan swap might be uneffective and however uncertain. Swapping it would require money (even if you can resell the Integra, but it may have less appeal than your Titan on the 2nd hand market): in case, something like an EVGA SuperNOVA G2 750 or an Enermax Platimax 600 could be a noticeable improvement, noise-wise, as well as some BeQuiet units.

lm wrote:I think my first step should be to establish monitoring of CPU, GPU, MB, SSD and HDD temperature. What's currently the preferred way to do it?

Under Windows some of the most preferred tools are Hardware Monitor, HWiNFO or SpeedFan (depending of the motherboard).

lm wrote:All other tips for quieting this thing down are of course also welcome, thanks in advance!
If you don't have (as I think) any overheating issue, swapping the case fans is the next bold move (after swapping the cooler/graphics and PSU): something like the Antec TruQuiet 140, the Noctua P14 or some Phanteks F140 are usually the preferred options. Cheaper options are the Prolimatech or the new Fractals.

Eventually the cheapest workaround is to set up with FanXpert 2 (or SpeedFan) a custom fan curve for the CPU cooler (and the case fans if you hook them up to the mobo, and not to the stock fan controller).

lm
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Joined: Wed Dec 17, 2003 6:14 am
Location: Finland

Re: Quieting a Titan box

Post by lm » Tue May 05, 2015 11:45 am

quest_for_silence wrote:
lm wrote:I'm pretty much out of the silencing game.

IMVHO none of your quoted parts is among the quietest options available, so, to improve the overall outcome, IMHO you should swap all or some of them.
I respect your evaluation of the components and I don't disagree with it, I knew it was a compromise as I could not pick every component separately. But I paid a bit less for the whole setup than what just an Asus 980 GTX Strix and an Intel 4770K together would cost new around here so I think this was still a very rare opportunity that was too good to pass on even if I have to do some additional work to quiet it down.

I assume you mean the parts that actually make noise or consume a lot of power or contribute to the cooling of the system instead of ALL parts.
quest_for_silence wrote: With the Titan blower, there's not a lot you can do: you may either swap the cooler with an Accelero Xtreme or some suitable AIO (Arctic again, or using adapter like the NZXT one), or swap the whole card with a GTX 980 like the ASUS Strix (much more straightforward, more effective, probably cheaper if you resell the Titan for a convenient amount of money). A custom fan curve may also help.
I'm kind of partial to the 6 GB RAM this GPU has, since I've always struggled with my 2560x1600 resolution. Otherwise it seems that a 980 GTX is a bit faster. In any case each of the options you suggest for tackling this card sounds reasonable and I need to do the math to pick the one best for me.

Would it make sense to build a funnel / shroud that channels fresh air directly to the blower from either the bottom, front or side of the case? It would seem to me that this would maybe allow significantly more flexibility with the fan curve.
quest_for_silence wrote: Then there's the PSU: it's a mid-performing unit and it also has a relatively conservative fan profile with a min speed around 1000rpm or just something below (depending of temperature), so a fan swap might be uneffective and however uncertain. Swapping it would require money (even if you can resell the Integra, but it may have less appeal than your Titan on the 2nd hand market): in case, something like an EVGA SuperNOVA G2 750 or an Enermax Platimax 600 could be a noticeable improvement, noise-wise, as well as some BeQuiet units.
The PSU is one of the cheapest components in my system, so swapping it is a much smaller financial hit than swapping the GPU, even if the market for the latter would be better.

Ambient is anything from 20 to 25 degrees celcius, except during the summer it sometimes can go closer to 30.

I definitely need to check which components currently contribute most to the noise level to see where my bottlenecks are. Will update when I know.
quest_for_silence wrote:
lm wrote:I think my first step should be to establish monitoring of CPU, GPU, MB, SSD and HDD temperature. What's currently the preferred way to do it?

Under Windows some of the most preferred tools are Hardware Monitor, HWiNFO or SpeedFan (depending of the motherboard).
Thanks, I will check which one of them works with my Asus Z87-A.
quest_for_silence wrote:
lm wrote:All other tips for quieting this thing down are of course also welcome, thanks in advance!
If you don't have (as I think) any overheating issue, swapping the case fans is the next bold move (after swapping the cooler/graphics and PSU): something like the Antec TruQuiet 140, the Noctua P14 or some Phanteks F140 are usually the preferred options. Cheaper options are the Prolimatech or the new Fractals.

Eventually the cheapest workaround is to set up with FanXpert 2 (or SpeedFan) a custom fan curve for the CPU cooler (and the case fans if you hook them up to the mobo, and not to the stock fan controller).
Thanks, I'm sure the solution is within these options.

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