New here, can someone comment on my upgrades here.

[Wardemon]

Well, I made the mistake of finding SPCR before I bought my computer and not paying much attention to it. Now I've suffered the consequences. I have a about 2 month old system, and boy is it noisy. I can hear it when I walk into my room


CPU - Athlon 64 3000+
CPU Fan - Included
Ram - Kingston 512MB PC-3200 DDR400 SDRAM
Mainboard- Asus K8V Deluxe
Hard Drive - Western Digital 120 GB 7200RPM 8MB
Floppy- Sony 1.44MB FDD
Video Card- Sapphire Radeon 9600XT 128MB DDR DVI/TV-OUT
Sound Card- Sound Blaster Audigy
Case- Antec SLK3700MB ATX CASE
Keyboard- Logitech Cordless Access Duo
Mouse- Logitech Cordless OPtical MOuse
Speaker- Creative T5400 5.1 Speakers
Other- Linksys Wireless-G Router (WRT54G)
Other- Asus Wi-Fi E Adapter



Now, I'm on a pretty limited budget. I think the case is allright as it was reviewed as ok here, and the power supply that came with it, I can't really do much about it right now. the smartpower 350w.

So I guess this leaves me with cpu fan, hard drive, heatsink, motherboard fan I suppose. I have about $150-200 Canadian max to work with. I must spend money on a new hard drive since my 7 year old maxtor hard drive died and i need to replace it with a new hard drive on my 500mhz celron system. So I guess I'll do a nice little replace, although a different procedure might be better as I wouldn't have to start all over.


So here's what I'm thinking...

Vantec Stealth Case Fan 80mm (SF8025L) $13.99
Vantec Stealth Case Fan 80mm (SF8025L) $13.99

to replace the two stock slk3700amb fans

Seagate 200GB w/ 8MB cache (ST3200822A) $162

to replace the nosiy WD. although I much rather pick up a cheap 40gig maxtor for the celeron 500 (small sister computer) and work on shutting up the WD.

Zalman ZM-NB47J Northbridge Cooler more info $10

for the chipset fan.

So how does this look, I'm time pressed, and not very skilled with computer hardware, although I've done the basics, installed the ram, sound card etc.

Any alternative suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Most of the equipment I buy will probably be from
here

http://www.canadacomputers.com/quiet.html

[sthayashi]

The CPU fan has got to go along with the heatsink. The recommended section may help you pick out which to get

Don't get the Vantec Stealth. A Panaflo is much cheaper, even though it requires undervolting for true silence. I don't know how quiet the stock AMB fans are, but

The Seagate is an excellent choice, but if you can get by with less drive space, I would recommend looking at Samsung drives. They're much quieter when seeking.

The Northbridge cooler looks fine by me. Except, why do you need it if you have the Asus K8V? I thought they had a passive northbridge heatsink.

[MikeC]

Forget the Vantec fans. The stock Antec 120mm fan on the back panel is pretty quiet -- if you run it at 5V. I'd leave it and do a 4-pin plug switcheroo. See the recommended fan pages about this -- or the 12/5V switch article. Unless that PSU has a fan-only output, which should give a pretty low voltage (5V min).

Samsung is usually a better choice; their biggest is 160G.

For a cheap quiet CPU cooler replacement, look at Arctic Cooling. For a better one, it's hard to beat Zalman 7000alcu esp at the price.

[HammerSandwich]

If you do buy case fans, you want 120s. Those Vantecs you have listed are the wrong size.

[Wedge]

Wardemon,

Welcome to SPCR


Buy a Zalman CNPS7000AlCu for the CPU heatsink/fan combination. Very good at cooling and very quiet when the fan it turned down low. Also, easy to install, even for the less mechanically inclined.

Ditch the Vantec fan like MikeC advises. They are not very quiet when compared to Panaflo.

Also, your northbridge should already be passively cooled, as mentioned above. No need to spend money on that.

Seagate and Samsung: the most popular 2 drives that a true *silence* enthusiast goes for. Prefereably a single 80GB platter. Then you might want to decouple or suspend them in some fashion. That all depends on how quiet you truly want it to be.

Graphics card: Artic VGA Silencer for sure. It is also very easy to install. Click the fan on "low" setting and you will have to place your head next to the case in order to hear it work.

Edit: Try this ATI Silencer for your video card. It even has cooling for the RAM.

[Wardemon]

Allright thanks for all the help,

I'm having a hard time finding the samsung 8mb model in canada without having to order online.

I might instead just opt for this..

Seagate Barracuda 7200 Plus 160GB (3160023A) 7200RPM w/8MB CACHE ATA 100 HARD DISK (OEM) (HDSG000171)


Also, boy I can't find that cnps model anywhere, even off ncix. If anyone knows a Canadian retailer that sells it, that would be nice.


The artic cooling, I might give that a try after these two things.


I think I should have mentioned the degree of quietness I want. I'm not really aiming for pure quiet or even virtually inaudible,

If anyone has ever used DELL or sony vaio pc's, thats the degree of quietness I want,

-kind of a low sound of fans working I guess.




Also has anyone tried cool n' quiet? and how would you rank that in terms of making your pc quieter?

[markjia]

Where in Canada are you?

You know, ordering out of province is often cheaper. You play a bit for shipping, but you say on the PST, so you only pay 7% in taxes. When you order over a hundred dollar worth, this difference easily makes up for the shipping. Of course this discount doesn't apply if you live in Alberta. Plus, even shipping by ground only takes about a week within the country.

[Wardemon]

mississauga, ontario.

i've never really ordered online, do they deliver to your door?

[Straker]

well, it's just mail, usually by Purolator or Canada Post, Purolator seems more common now (CP's insurance is pretty lame, can't think of any other reasons though). so usually they'll wait until you're in the shower or out of the house or whatever and run up and leave a note on your door and peel out, then you have to go pick the package up yourself. luckily Purolator at least returns packages to the distribution center thingy in reasonable time so you can go get them the same afternoon, CP always takes until the next day.

there're Canadian vendors in the listings here of course, but i've personally used mocc.ca, bigfootcomputers.com and vibecomputers.com within the last month, all pretty good, mocc.ca generally best for drives, cpus, video cards etc (free shipping over $500 or 600, lots of new stuff, good prices, awesome service), vibe generally a bit of a ripoff but seems rather well established and probably has the best selection of anywhere except maybe atic.ca (that samsung's at http://www.vibecomputers.com/index.cfm? ... vID=192031 , didn't check average price on it though). bigfoot mostly has cooling stuff and accessories, pretty decent prices, and free shipping on $100+, they have both the 7000AlCu and Cu at http://www.bigfootcomputers.com/Merchan ... _Code=5.95 .

not sure what you meant by "can't find in canada without ordering online" though, unless you tried calling places long distance.

also, if you order from the US, anything worth $20CAN or less is not dutied or taxed at all (unless it's like liquor or tobacco or certain books i think) no matter what, and anything worth $60CAN or less is also duty/tax free if it's a gift. i think customs *may* be within their rights to still charge you the $5 handling if they decide to open a package, safest bet is probably still to just not declare anything and they'll probably have to skip it (time). anything over that is taxable + $5 handling but no duty if you can prove it was made in the USA, too bad almost no computer stuff is aside from waterblocks.