Sorry about the delay in getting back to you.
CA_Steve wrote:Well, the CPU and GPU will instantly throttle when they hit specific temp thresholds. So, death is not likely from failed coolant or fan failure in an air cooler....and your BIOS can be set to trigger alarms for both temp and low fan rpm.
Well, I guess that’s true, but we are still left with stains on the floor. Be that as it may, I do prefer air cooling, for both cost and reliability; the only reason I was considering water cooling was because it seemed to be the only way to make a really powerful machine reasonably quiet.
CA_Steve wrote:Usually, we get a "help me select components for a quiet PC" request. With you, it's 'help me pick out an outrageously high power quiet PSU'...and then we spiraled out to some of the other components.
Maybe we can start over.
Yeah, I sort of highjacked my own thread, didn’t I? The thing is, all these issues ramify into each other. Initially, I thought I had it pretty much figured out: I would water cool the CPU and GPU, and I would run a PSU overrated by a fgactor of 2, resulting in a powerful but still quiet machine. Now that you’ve set me straight on power requirements, the changes in my thinking are rippling through all the major components.
CA_Steve wrote:Yes, you can build a pretty quiet PC with a GTX 680. Asus Direct CU II and MSI Twin Frozr IV solutions are pretty good. You could get a top shelf CPU cooler and it'll be pretty quiet. Get a mobo with decent fan controls or one that'll work with speedfan. Next, get a case with great airflow and quiet fans you are set. If you like, we can suggest some builds.
So far, your suggestions have been right on the money, so I would be very pleased to hear more of them!
I found a couple of reviews of the Asus GTX 680 DirectCU II. Frankly, the one here at
silentpcreview is much better than the one at
guru3d. The people at guru3d used a test system that put out 37dbA at idle, and gave a figure of 40dbA under load. In other words, only 50% of the noise being measured was coming from the GPU. By comparison, silentpcreview used a test system that put out 15dbA at idle and 28dbA under load, meaning that 95% of the measured noise came from the GPU, which is ten times more accurate than guru3d’s measurement. The end results are dramatically different: according to guru3d, the card puts out 37dbA under load, while silentpcreview measures it at just under 28dbA. The latter is a number I can certainly live with.
The MSI card with Twin Frozr IV cooling is the GTX 680 Lightning. Sadly, I found no review of this card on silentpcreview, though I did find one at
guru3d. The same caveat applies, with the test system putting out 36dbA at idle and 38dbA under load. This works out to just under 34dbA noise output from the card, but the measurement is so inaccurate that it isn’t trustworthy.
The only conclusion I can come to is that the MSI GTX 680 Lightning
may be slightly quieter than the Asus GTX 680 DirectCU II. The MSI card is 1.9" wide, while the Asus card is 2.3" wide, meaning both require 3 expansion slots, but the MSI card fits much more comfortably, leaving more room for air flow around the card. It’s difficult to say which card to choose. Around the web, no one seems able to argue decisively for one or the other – people usually recommend the card made by the manufacturer they like best.
Asus also makes a 4GB version of the GTX 680 DirectCU II (with a slightly slower clock frequency), which – oddly enough – is only 1.7" wide. I don’t understand the difference in width between the 2GB and the 4GB Asus cards. I lean towards this card because bigger memory means less PCIe bus traffic, which results in a performance boost for large numerical applications that much more than offsets the slight loss due to the clock frequency difference, and because it leaves the most room for airflow.
By the way, here’s 4GB a
fanless GTX 680 (!) by Colorful, called the iGame Kudan GTX 680. A few aditional details may be found
here and
here. Does anybody know anything about this company?
Anyway, I’m interested to know what other ideas you have for a blindingly fast, whisper quiet machine. I guess I should start another thread for that. Would the System Advice / Troubleshooting forum be a good place for it?