1.1A Celeron running at default speed/Vcore on an Asus Tusl2-C. Retail HSF with fan 7-volted,
ATI Radeon LE with passive HS,
Seagate 80GB Barracuda IV HDD,
Antec TruePower 380 PSU
Antec SLK3700AMB case with a 120mm 7-volted L1A on the back. Rear fan grill cut away for airflow and less noise,
Case wiring tidied up for good airflow.

Temps are: MoBo high 20C/low 30C at idle, high 30C at Prime95 load, CPU: mid 30C at idle, low 50C at Prime95 load. Ambient temps in here are mid/high 70F range lately.

System is extremely quiet. You can just barely hear the 7-volted Panaflo case fan from about 2 feet away. HS Fan is inaudible at 7-volts. Barracuda is, well, a Barracuda. It's dead silent at idle and almost inaudible during seeks. I'm real satified with this but I don't know if ther'll be enough cooling during the hot summer/fall here in Sunny SoCal.

oh thats antecs solution series case, they are pretty cool looking, and also have space for 1x120 in and 1x120 out.

Yes, it's the SLK3700. It comes with a regular Antec "Smart Power" 350W PSU. I pulled it and put in the TruePower 380W PSU. I have the one 7-volted 120mm L1A on the rear wall, sucking out. I have another to go in front but I don't need it now. Maybe in the summer/fall when temps are higher.

it may be an OEM variant to the Macase GALAXY II ATX case?

http://solidmercury.net/reviews/macase_ ... midi_1.php

Shonuff. I'm not suprised though, look at the SX6xx, 8xx and 10xx series. Just rebadged Cheiftec/Chenbro.

cool pictures...

it'll work fine during the summer. since your comp is pretty much stock except for the intake/exhaust fans.... my computer was in so cal for many years, in the second floor at my parents' place which do get pretty dang hot... and it has worked fine without any intake/exhaust fan.

my parents' system is almost like yours
piii 1ghz cooled with undervolted retail fan that came with the cpu with potentiometer--not sure about voltage but just enough so i couldn't hear it much with case closed--i say about 7v if not less.
asus cusl2
some cheap 300w power supply (i think maker was deer)
enlighten steal case with not much ventilation
hotter hard drive (ibm 75gxp 40gb)
radeon 32mb ddr w/ passive cooling...

hey ralf,

what are your 2.66GHz cpu temps? do you know what they are when the chip is not overclocked? thanks in advance!


System:
Palo Alto Products ATCX (Dell Dimension 4100 case)
300 Watt ZALMAN ZM300A-APF Power Supply
Intel Pentium 4 2.53 GHz
Gigabyte GA-8IHXP (Intel 850E)
256 MB Kingston PC1066 RDRAM (x2)
120 GB 7200 RPM Western Digital HD w/ 8 MB Cache
Gainward 750XP Ultra Geforce 4 Ti 4600 128 MB DDR Golden Sample
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP Sound Card
16X/48X Universal Buslink DVD Drive
40/12/40 Plextor PlexWriter CD-RW
Mitsumi 1.44 MB Floppy Drive

Cooling:
Alpha Novatech PAL8942T Pentium 4 Socket 478 Heatsink
Arctic Silver 3
80mm 12V Panasonic Panaflo L1A on CPU
92mm Dell Rear Exhaust Fan

Right now I'm running an L1A on the 8942
and my temps at 3.0Ghz are as follows:

Ambient: Low to high 70F range.
MoBo: Idle from high 20C to low 30C range, Load low to mid 30C.
CPU: Idle Mid 30C range, Prime95 load 48-49C

Temps at stock (2.66Ghz) speed are exactly the same except the CPU load temp is abot 1-2C cooler.

Great cabling job, incredibly tidy! Did you try undervolting the cpu? I guess you don't want to since you overclocked the cpu, but its always worth finding out just how little voltage it'll run on I swear that looks like a thermalright SK7 or a SLK800 though.

-Ken

Thanks, I try. I'm kind of a neat-freak.




Originally I was going to try and undervolt and cool passively, but it was so quiet and cool (42C max) with the retail HSF 7-volted I decided to leave it at default. Later on I checked it the BIOS (Asus Tusl2-C) and found that there is no setting to undervolt. Minimum Vcore is 1.475V, which is default. Maybe there's a Vid pin mod to undervolt??




Yeah, it's an SLK-800 with a 7-volted M1A on it. Since I posted those pics I decided to OC it and see what I would end up with. Bumped the FSB up to 133 @ default Vcore with the 7-volted retail HSF on it. Ran Prime95 for 24 hours and it was 100% stable but CPU temp maxed out at 52C. Bought the SLK-800 and tried again with the 7-volted M1A. 24hrs of Prime 95 with this got me 46C max, and silent CPU cooling.

So I got me a 1.475Ghz Tualeron with 512MB of PC133 RAM that runs so quiet you can't even hear it from over 3' away in a very quiet room. Noisiest thing in the case now is a tie between the True380 PSU and the 5-volted (changed from 7-volt to the Antec fan-only {a little over 5V}connector since I originally posted) 120mm L1A case fan.

must agree w gxcad. first thing i tohught when i looked at this is 'where the heck did all the cables go? are they even plugged in? sho nuff they are.

but where on earth is your bottom HD power cable routed? i see a little black snake loking thing disappear behind the motherboard... i havent been up on the new PSUs much but are the cables long enough to do that nowdays?

If you look closely you'll see that the black cable that looks like it's going under the mobo is actually an auxillary power cable that runs from behind the drive cage to the Firewire/USB 2.0 PCI card. The HDD power cable goes back underneath the drive and behind the drive cage also. Both of these cables are 9" extensions on the end of the regular PSU wiring. Both extension cables are covered in expandable cable sleeving, that's why they're black.

Since were talking about cable routing ect. have you noticed that some of the newer boards have the cable connectors at 90deg angles, so that when they are plugged in, they are flush with the mobo. I like this design alot better as the cable isnt stick up and disrupting airflow.

I've even seen that orientation on a few older boards too. Yeah it's cool, makes routing the cables just that much easier, plus there's less flexing force on the MoBo when you install/remove the cables.

So how did you get your IDE cables so neat and out of the way?

Practice, my son!

I just decided to do it. I had no pictures or tutorials. I just started folding until I got good results. I started doing cables like this about a year ago. There were two reasons. #1 was that I'd had some bad experiences with the relaibility of rounded cables and wasn't too thrilled about how they looked in the case. #2 was that I build systems as a side job and wanted to make the interiors look nice and clean (pride of workmanship, I guess). The more practice I get, the better results I get.

Hi Ralf,

I just found this site and based on your recommendation I've ordered an Antec SLK3700AMB to be the case for my first quiet computer.

I noticed you cut out the rear grill in your case for better airflow and I'm wondering, from looking at your photograph, why you didn't cut the front one as well?

Cheers,
George

Because originally I wasn't going to put a fan there. I ended up putting that 5-volted 92mm L1A there later, for cooling the HDD. If I was doing this again I'd do the same thing, unless I was going to run some pretty hot hardware. This case has such great ventilation that you really don't need two fans. Once, just for grins I transplanted my OCed P4 system into this case and got slightly cooler temps (with one 5-volted 120mm case fan) then when it was in my big Antec SX10x0 case with three 80mm case fans.

Oh man, that 120mm exhaust fan makes your 80mm hs fan look like a tiny joke. Frankly, this is an amazing display of (not so) common sense.

Are you limited to 512MB RAMM, like most PIII boards? Also, my board has 3 slots, but I am not suppose to have more than 2 DIMMS.

Did CAS 2 memory gain you much over CAS 3?

Thanks

Ok, please bear with my newbieness. Wouldn't cutting away the grill provide better airflow even without a fan there? Isn't better airflow always a good thing? (I've ordered a 2.4GHz P4 with a 6500B-AlCu and I'm curious to see if I can get away with not using a CPU fan).

Why did you use the 92mm instead of a 120mm?

he didnt even need a front fan, like he said. the only reason he put a 5 volted 92mm l1a in the front was to cool his hdd

Yes, I'm limited t 512MB of RAM just like all 815 chipsets. Note that my board also has three slots, but only two are filled.

CAS2 boosted my RAM scores in Sandra. Theoritically CAS2 vs. CAS 3 will make a more noticeable improvement at slower RAM speeds (133Mhz in this case) then it will at higher speeds (DDR333 and DDR400 types of speeds) becuase the cycle time at 133Mhz is so much slower than at 333 or 400Mhz. In other words, the difference (in time) of 3 vs. 2 clock cycles at 133Mhz is much greater than the difference between 3 vs. 2 cycles at 400Mhz. Follow?

Hi,

I'm planning on getting this case too. I'll cut away both holes (front and back for 120mm fans) before I install the motherboard though. I'll see what the temps are like, but I doubt I'll need the front fan, so will just leave the hole open.

Does anyone know how loud the stock PSU is? I can't seem to find it in the UK on sale without PSU (I'd like the Nexus 3000)...

System:
XP 1800+ (Akasa HSF)
Asus A7V8X
Seagate Barracuda IV 80Gb
Teac CDRW
ATI 8500LE
SB Live

Hopefully, I'll also pick up the SLK800/900 and an 80mm Panaflo - modded for 5v and mod the 120mm exhaust fan to 5v too. I'm hoping this will be enough cooling.

I think that'll only leave the GPU creating noise - maybe the Zalman heatpipe?

Um, thanks, but I don't see how this answers my questions. I didn't ask whether he needed a front fan; I asked why he didn't cut away the front grill. Furthermore, why not use a 120mm L1A in the front to cool his HDD, since the hole is 120mm? Isn't 120mm always quieter than 92mm? Or maybe Ralf just didn't have any more 120mm fans lying around?


Thanks, mjc, that's helpful to know. I'll do the same.


I don't know, but I'm not even going to bother with it. I ordered the Nexus 3000 along with my case.


I'm using the Zalman ZM80A-HP heatpipe now in my old case on my GeForce3 and it's working fine (though I haven't done any measurements). I'm going to move it over my SLK3700AMB when the case arrives.

Great thanks QuietMind, I'll continue searching for the PSUless version, hopefully in the UK, or with reasonable shipping costs if not.

Oh that's easy to see, 1 cpu cycle on a slow machine is a lot longer than a cpu cycle on a long machine. I knew this years ago when I looked at 2 AMI made motherboards:

1 was a 386/33 with an external cache, the other
1 was a 385/25 with no external cache.

I see OCZ made(past tense) CAS2 memory stable to 150MHz.

Wow Ralf, the bay cage where your HD is? I thought you added that, it came stock. Very impressive.

quietmind, isnt the zalman quieter than the nexus?

The reason I didn't cut away the front grill was that I wasn't planning on putting a fan there.

After I ran my case set up with no front fan for a while I wasn't too thrilled with my HDD temp. It (cuda IV) generally ran around 40°C which was about 6-10°C over the case temp. I wanted it cooler so I decided to put a very quiet, very low speed fan in front of it. I wanted to give it a little breath of fresh air to cool it down. I tested four fans before I settled on the 5-volted 92mm L1A. I tried a 120mm L1A, 92mm L1A, 80mm L1A and that 18cfm NMB fan. I tried them at 5 and 7 volts. The best combination of very low noise and just a little airflow was the 5-volted 92mm L1A. I'm glad I didn't cut out the grill because it gave me a place to mount the fan. Adding the fan dropped the HDD temp by 6°C, now it runs almost the same as the case temp.

The stock PSU (SmartPower 350SL) is noticeably louder than a TruePower PSU but a little quieter than an Enermax PSU. Depending on how noisey the rest of your components are, the stock PSU would probably be too noisey to be considered for a "quiet PC".

Ok, I'll keep that in mind I think, have to see how hot the Harddrive runs, as I could actually cope with 40c.



Have to be the Nexus or Zalman then - many thanks Ralf!