My quiet build after 3+ years on SPCR!

rei · Post by **rei** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:36 am

No, it's not silent. Yes, I've been through 15+ video cards, 4 PSUs, 4 cases, 5 mobos...but finally I'm back to ATX from messing around with Shuttles, XQpacks and mATX. This one is 99% stock:

ASUS P5W DH Deluxe BIOS Q-Fan on quiet
E6600 @ 333 FSB simple overclock from 2.4GHz to 3.0 GHz
4x 1GB Corsair XMS2 PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM
Zalman CPNS9500 cpu fan
HIS 256 MB (cry) Radeon X1950XT iceQ3
2x NF-S12-1200 120mm case fans
2x 500GB WD5000AAKS
1x 500 GB WD5000KS in Antec MX-1 eSATA enclosure
1x 500GB MyBook WD external
X-Fi Platinum with i/o bay
Pioneer SATA DVR-212D
Antec Sonata III case w/ EarthWatts 500w PSU

Idle temps 40C, load <60C

I had a 250 GB WD2500KS but it ran 10C hotter than the 500 drives.

The hard drive seeks are kind of noticeable since it's 1 foot away from my head to the right but it's liveable. Running XP/OSX/Ubuntu and soon Vista I hope.

thejamppa · Post by **thejamppa** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 10:52 am

Looks nice and pretty clean cabling. Nice. Zalman CNPS-9500 looks nice. Very nice. You would have nicely room to get Thermalright 120 Ultra, Noctua or similar tower cooler, get NCB fan or Scythe S-flex and you would have nice and very quiet cooling.

Have you thought trying to duct EarthWatts?

But very, very nice. That is excellent point to go further silencing if need.

croddie · Post by **croddie** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 11:07 am

Shows how ridiculous this business is. What we need is maybe three or four standard designs at any given time (sff general use, sff fast with discrete graphics, full size general use, full size fast).

rei · Post by **rei** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 1:21 pm

i paid the $40 shop assembly fee to put it together. they wrapped unused molex cords around the main psu wire. that's the only reason it's as neat as it is. the sata cables are a little scrunched behind there as well.

rei · Post by **rei** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 1:25 pm

the two cris-crossing cords are for the antec mx1 and remote receiver.

[F]bernZ · Post by **[F]bernZ** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 3:07 pm

The shop by any chance be NCIX? Anitec does the wrapping thing too, but they don't do Noctua products.

rei · Post by **rei** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 4:20 pm

www.memoryexpress.com are local. i ordered the noctuas and put them in myself. i fussed with the front bezel for 2 hours in figuring out how to take it off before i noticed the fan was attached not at the front of case behind bezel but behind drive cage.

they put everything in except hard drives and case fans.

rei · Post by **rei** » Wed Jul 04, 2007 4:21 pm

noctuas are ordered from ncix.com though.

i just saw that memoryexpress carries scythe fans now but the trouble of getting the drive bay fan out is too much for me to bother.

rjhythloday · Post by **rjhythloday** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 8:06 am

rei wrote: Running XP/OSX/Ubuntu and soon Vista I hope.

Is there really a use for all these OS?

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:56 am

easily there are uses, such as cross platform editing. can't do it with one, transfer it to another partition and continue

which OS-X are you running? i seem to have a problem with mine, but i don't want to waste another DVD on it...something about a config file missing.

is it worth another DVD or will it just not work?

rei · Post by **rei** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 12:31 pm

I run 10.4.8 JAS DVD OS-X.

I run XP to play my games, otherwise OS-X is my platform of choice (I have real Macs as well) and Ubuntu is only there on a 20gb partition for the Linux GRUB boot loader. If I didn't install the boot loader, I could press F8 each time on BIOS startup to select boot drive. The key to minimal fuss is to keep OSX on its own separate physical hard drive.

I started completely clean and booted from the OS-X DVD and partitioned it FIRST (before XP or any other OSes) to make the Mac partitions/drives first since those can't be made otherwise.

1st drive:
150gb xp primary
20gb linux partition primary
85gb fat32 partition logical
160 gb ntfs partition logical
50gb mac data partition primary

2nd drive:
150gb osx primary
5gb linux swap primary
5gb xp swap ntfs logical
150gb fat32 data partition logical
150gb ntfs data partition logical

rei · Post by **rei** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 12:35 pm

The only annoyance is sometimes upon startup OSX will complain about a disk it can't initialize, the 320kb "config disk" that appears as part of ASUS's EZ-BACKUP RAID SATA ports.

Wireless has unofficial drivers from Realtek but doesn't currently work that well so I don't use wireless. No support for remote, sleep, SpeedStep and I need to get a supported BT USB dongle is all.

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:06 pm

interesting..i have the same DVD, maybe it just didn't burn right.

when you browse the DVD are you only supposed to see the boot files? i can tell the entire mess is there, but can't see it.

i'd put it on an RW, but i know that it wont work like that.

rei · Post by **rei** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 2:30 pm

SATA HD have to be in AHCI mode in BIOS.

rei · Post by **rei** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:31 pm

Not sure why you can't boot up in yours. I'll have to check how it shows up in Windows for you later and let you know.

rei · Post by **rei** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:32 pm

I keep data partitions for each OS on the opposition drive for faster backup/imaging.

rei · Post by **rei** » Fri Jul 06, 2007 10:43 am

I got Vista going. Install was stuck completing for hours until I realized BIOS had an option to set HD Audio to "Vista" mode. After it installed I could turn it back to non-Vista.

rei · Post by **rei** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:09 am

Not even 2 months in, my Zalman 9500 has developed a nasty clicking, rattling sound.

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 9:31 pm

rei wrote:Not even 2 months in, my Zalman 9500 has developed a nasty clicking, rattling sound.

zalman is no good these days. :/ long live thermalright and scythe.

TMM · Post by **TMM** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:21 am

jaldridge6 wrote:
rei wrote:Not even 2 months in, my Zalman 9500 has developed a nasty clicking, rattling sound.
zalman is no good these days. :/ long live thermalright and scythe.

word to that. Zalman has gone a bit cheap lately.

rei · Post by **rei** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:53 pm

weather has gotten hot around here lately 30c, and i have had to turn on fans full blast. the sound characteristics are not entirely bad, except my 500w earthwatts has developed a coil buzz of some sort.

jaldridge6 · Post by **jaldridge6** » Tue Jul 24, 2007 5:31 am

all earthwatts have a buzz.

Ive had three to date and they all buzzed like bitches.

My quiet build after 3+ years on SPCR!

My quiet build after 3+ years on SPCR!

Re: My quiet build after 3+ years on SPCR!