Hi,

I have been going around in circles for weeks now, cannot find anyone who has a SFF pc that is near silent as the temps get in the way.

I want to build a small form factor PC in either:

1. Small desktop style to put monitor ontop no wider than 350mm or 200mm high.

or

2. Small mini tower case no higher then 420mm

Most importantly I want it to be near totally silent or very quiet even under load with the following inside:

1. Micro ATX board? (Recommendations)
2. 3 Sata drives
3. Gigabyte GTX285 with passive cooler
4. i7 920 with passiver cooler
5. PSU Slient?

I would REALLY appreciate any advice on case + CPU and GTX285 with passive cooling.

Cheers

I think I have narrowed down the cases to either:

Coolmaster Elite 340

or

Silvertek SG03

I want a near silent PC so want passive on i7 and GTX285 or GTX 280

Any advice if this will be too hot?

Will I need fans inside if so which are the quietest and most affective.

Really apprecaite help with this....

i don't believe it's going to be possible to passively-cool an i7 920 (or any i5/i7 cpu for that matter), especially not with a geforce 280/285 dumping heat around it.

furthermore with that much heat in a small box, i just don't think it can be done quietly.

you could try something like this chieftec case which is designed to have your lcd mounted onto it, thus hiding its size. other small/ventilated cases exist like this rosewill, this apevia (though it's a bit risky), or the silverstone sg02 or sg01. note that a couple of those cases require your 3rd hard drive to be mounted in a spare 5.25" bay.

at any rate, i would change your build to a p55 board + i7 860 cpu (much lower heat output) and lower your expectations for silence. you have too much stuff going on!

I really like the idea of the chieftec case that you can attach the monitor to, is there any other brands available? I live in Australia and Chieftec not available here.

What do they call this type of case where you can attach a monitor?

I have a silverstone sg02 cube case with a intel quad core and a 285 with an aftermarket heat sink on it (thermalright one, can't think of the part number off hand), but doing it passively is going to be next to impossible. I have a 120mm fan on the 285 heat sink, with a hole cut in the side panel to fit it on. The 285 side fan is an intake, there are two 80mm fans at the top to blow the hot air out. With all that air flow I can overclock the 285 pretty well, but without the fans it would just cook, even with the heatsink. But the real problem is the cpu heat sink, you have to have something on that, especially in a small case with less air movement. I actually traded my cpu down to a low power S version to keep the temps on it resonable. The sg02 has the power supply right over the cpu, so you have to use a short cooler, and that limits how much cooling you can get.

With the Apevia case, you have the opposite problem, I have one of those cases too. The power supply is right over the cards, so you can use a nice cpu cooler (as long as you cut some internal struts), but the gpu cooler height becomes limited. And the Apevia case has almost no ventilation on the sides, there's no way you can go passive in that thing. If you want to go passive in a micro-atx cube, look for the nzxt rouge or the qpac or something, they're bigger cube cases with decent airflow.

That cheiftec back of the monitor case looks interesting, although it does appear that space over the cards is limited. And it appears to be unavailable on newegg.com, so it's probably a hard case to find.

Now if you're thinking about a mini-tower, that might be more manageable, but you're going to loose space for an after-market cooler for the 285 if it's a pure micro-atx tower. You could fit a slightly taller cpu cooler though, so that would probably be worth it. I haven't seen a real mini-tower with a 120mm fan behind the cpu, though, so passive cooling probably won't work. You usually see one or two 80mm fans, and they're invariably noisier than a single 120mm fan. In general, making something small, powerful and quiet is very hard, it's more of a 'pick any two' situation.

I've got a i7 920 and dual GTX260 in a SG03

the i7 can be cooled by the corsair H50 with a slow spinning fan

for mine @3.2ghz, i used a artic PWM fan and it barely spins past 500rpm so its effectively silent

I would suggest a blowhole or slot cooler at the top of the case to prevent heat build up

its ok-ish on its own (warm) but if you want to get rid of that heat, some fan is needed

since you are using a single GPU, you can use the HR03 GTX or accelero GTX(without front fan) or the Trad2 with some slow spinning / PWM fans

i just turn my stock cooling fans @ 25% and its pretty quiet

The Coolermaster 340 is a good case, it fits two 120mm fans and a big cooler. Fitting three hard drives is going to be very tight.
The Corsair H50 is a good integrated watercooling solution, but no better than a high performance air cooler. I would recommend a Coolermaster Hyper 212+. Passive cooling for an i7 is impossible, but either the Corsair or the Coolermaster with a slow fan should work nicely.
I assume the main purpose of this rig is gaming. Unless your going for more than one graphics card, an i7 860 is equally fast in games than a i7 920 above a 1024x768 resolution and consumes less power. A s1156 mATX board is also cheaper than a s1366 board so you have more money for a faster graphics card.
Go for an i7 860 and a Gigabyte GA-P55M-UD2.
Cooling a high end graphics card silently is even more difficult. The Thermalright HR03 series is the best cooler, but it's too big for an mATX case. You can use the Thermalright TRad2, Scythe Musashi or Arctic Cooling S1 R2.
Another problem with high end cards besides cooling the GPU is cooling the VRMs. Thermalright makes VRM coolers, but it's only specified for the 4870 and 4890 series, which are slightly inferior to a GTX285. The Ati 57XX series has the same mounting holes next to the VRMs as the 4890, but I don't know if the VRM cooler actually fits, so I won't recommend it but feel free test for yourself and share your findings.
My recommendation for a high performace silent graphics card is the ATI 5850, just as fast as a GTX285, with an Arctic Cooling S1 and the black plate of the original cooler for the VRMs. You will have to bend some fins of the cooler so they don't hit the second DVI port and you need to use a fan. A slow 120mm fan will do fine, again passive cooling is out of the question. Here's a pic:
http://extreme.pcgameshardware.de/attachments/148213d1255129661-gpu-kuehler-5850-5870-gesucht-img_0322bzx6.jpg
Pick any 400+ watt PSU from the recommended list for your system.

crazyfrog
Unfortunately, there is no way of paasive cooling 4 GTX285 or GTX280. У may use the giant paasive cooler called Auras Fridge JES-988, but anyway you`ll need a case fans 2 vent it.
Bloomfield can be cooled by the IFX14 in passive mode, but only at the lower voltages,
Here`s an example of a self-made case for passivу cooling i7 + HD4890