I've been tinkering with my new Sonata for about two weeks now and reading all the posts here. I'm glad to say that my experience with this case has been very positive.
Here's what's in the box;
Intel D845PEBT2 motherboard
Intel P4 2.4 533 w/ Zalman 6500B-Cu
Samsung 2700 DDR 512 x2
ATI Radeon 9000 128mb
Seagate ST360015A Barracuda V
WD 40 gig out of the old box (temporary)
It went together very well, it wasn't nearly as quiet as I had hoped though. I very quickly determined that the big noise culprit was the stock Intel heatsink/fan assy. It wasn't totally intolerable but the rather high pitched whine got the best of me in short order. This AM I installed a Zalman 6500B-Cu. I am the now owner of a very quiet box, As an added Zalman bonus, my CPU temps have also dropped both at idle and under full load testing with CPU Burn-in.
Using the Intel sink/fan the temps topped out at 47 core and 39 in both zones 1 and 2.
The Zalman set at it's lowest rpm setting topped out at 42 core and 35-36 respectively in zones 1 and 2
Both tests were done on the same day with the room temp at 70-71f.
HD temps are very stable, between 38-40c
This is my first attempt at a quiet PC... so far I'm very pleased with the Sonata and the 6500.
Has anyone tried moving the 120 fan from the back of the unit to the mount on the HD rack? Also, I do notice some sound coming from the "Antec" holes in the case. Anybody came up with a tidy way of muffling or blocking those? And no..... I ain't gonna duct tape them!
Thanks for the great forum
Sonata... The good news
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>>Anybody came up with a tidy way of muffling or blocking those?<<
I would look at Mike C.'s article here on SPCR reviewing case damping kits. He uses the Sonata as the test case, and you could install sheets of the damping over the "Antec" holes. Another possible mod is to open up the *inner* openings in the lower front to help lower the restriction of air flow through there. As for moving the stock fan, you could try, but I bet the case temps would go up. Maybe move the stock fan to behind the HD cage, and add a quiet 120mm (like a Panasonic L1A) on the case exhaust. Another easy improvement would be to use rubber grommits on the fan mounts or elastomer studs instead of screws.
I would look at Mike C.'s article here on SPCR reviewing case damping kits. He uses the Sonata as the test case, and you could install sheets of the damping over the "Antec" holes. Another possible mod is to open up the *inner* openings in the lower front to help lower the restriction of air flow through there. As for moving the stock fan, you could try, but I bet the case temps would go up. Maybe move the stock fan to behind the HD cage, and add a quiet 120mm (like a Panasonic L1A) on the case exhaust. Another easy improvement would be to use rubber grommits on the fan mounts or elastomer studs instead of screws.
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If this is your first attempt at making it quiet, I have a strong feeling you are using the Zalman 92mm fan too at the lowest setting using fanmate (which is 5v by the way). I also done this with my first experience and noise went down about half. Then I replaced it with a Panaflo 80mm L1A and also replaced my PSU stock fan with a Panaflo @ 7v. I changed all my fans to panaflo @5v and the system is not just quiet, its inaudible with a few other mods of fine tuning.
My tip for you is to replace the Zalman fan as they are much noisier than the Panaflo @ 5v. Even @7v the Panaflo is much quieter. The Intel stock fan is noisy at 12v (whines like crazy), but if you use the Zalman fanmate and set it at the lowest setting you will notice its much quieter than the Zalman fan @ 5v. But Panaflo fans are the quietest I have come across.
Any fan is fairly quiet @ 5v except, yes you guessed it the Zalman.. Well to me anyway.
As you do the above, the next source of noise is probably come from your stock fan in your PSU which is drowning out some of the other noises.
Good luck on future mods, you will notice silence is almost reachable.
Update: If you don't want to change any of your fans, your first step is to undervolt all your case fans to a low voltage (I recommend 5 volts). Just make sure the tempertures remain okay. Anyway you got a large 120mm fan which pushes a lot of cfm, so undervolting it won't be much of a problem with concerns of low airflow.
My tip for you is to replace the Zalman fan as they are much noisier than the Panaflo @ 5v. Even @7v the Panaflo is much quieter. The Intel stock fan is noisy at 12v (whines like crazy), but if you use the Zalman fanmate and set it at the lowest setting you will notice its much quieter than the Zalman fan @ 5v. But Panaflo fans are the quietest I have come across.
Any fan is fairly quiet @ 5v except, yes you guessed it the Zalman.. Well to me anyway.
As you do the above, the next source of noise is probably come from your stock fan in your PSU which is drowning out some of the other noises.
Good luck on future mods, you will notice silence is almost reachable.
Update: If you don't want to change any of your fans, your first step is to undervolt all your case fans to a low voltage (I recommend 5 volts). Just make sure the tempertures remain okay. Anyway you got a large 120mm fan which pushes a lot of cfm, so undervolting it won't be much of a problem with concerns of low airflow.