Do you have photos or at least a description of your machine CES? I ask because the Blacks are considerably louder than the Blues, which are louder again than the greens.

I have my Blue suspended in an upper drive bay and surrounded on all sides by two layers of 3-layer Acousitpac and I can still hear is spinning, though I'd be hard pressed to be able to identify a seek.

I run it in an open dock with a cheap 80cm masscool fan near it (downvolted to 5 volts).

I think maybe my ambient noise is what makes it quiet.

But it works for me.

Describe your ambient noise please. What kind of case is it in? Is the case isolated with silicone feet? 20' away from your workstation?

It's unlikely that an open bay, hard mounted, WD Black is going to be acoustically acceptable to the majority of the membership of this forum.

Recommending a quiet hdd based on your subjective testing while, for example, you may be sitting next to a 12000KW diesel generator might be considered disingenuous.

so should i stick with that green WD 500gb hard disk? i think it's 7200rpm still.

There's the WD10EALS which is a WD Blue 1Tb drive also, and not that expensive

I am pleased to answer your questions but I am not certain that it will help.

I have two computers, two inkjets, a small room fan and an HP laser printer in an office. I probably don't have the worlds best hearing. That may be the biggest variable

The inkject printers make no noise when not in use. The laser printer has a loud fan, but it is often just turned off.

The room fan is only on in the summer when I am getting too much heat from the sun. It is usually not on.

I have two Lian Li cases. The A05 makes no discernible noise. It uses the stock fans at stock voltage. I have a noctua downdraft cooler set on low.

The v351 has fan noise, I have been putzing around with using some small fans to cool it. I currently have two 1200 rpm Slipstreams in it running at 7v, plus a 60mm fan on the NB and a 40mm fan on the SB. It is running a little shurekin cooler with stock fan. The board is running the shurekin PWM fan at 100%.

The shurekin generates about half the noise from the v351 - or more. I tried replacing the stock fan with a 140mm slow speed noiseblocker. That generated the same temps but with much less noise, easily a 50% reduction in noise.

I have two Black WD 1T hard drives running in eSata Docks. I don't notice them except when they are actively accessing files. And I mean active. If I am just getting a word file or somthing similar I don't notice any noise from them (though it might be because I am distracted).

I don't mind noise if I am in control of it. Like when I am scanning or printing.

There is something peculiar about my drives (and it includes my velociratpr boot drives as well as my WD 1T data drives) sometime they just start churning for no good reason and generate a lot of seek noise for a minute or so. I can understand that on the boot drive, but I really wonder what is going on when it does that on the data drive. When it is really churning away and I am not doing anything - that I don't like - but it doesn't happen more than maybe once a week or so.

so for a silent hard disk, anyone would recommend me one? (that exclude Seagate, i hate them, they don't have AAM and their seek noises are pretty loud if you ask me)

the 500gb WD5000AADS hard disk seem to run at 7200rpm even if it's a Green hard disk.

so there's no big difference between a i3 530 and a i5 650? i mean...good features worth switching from i3 530 to i5 650.

Do you think i should still take a case in my order? so they can just install everything in a case and it might be better for shipping means.

For example, a cheap but good-enough Antec Three Hundred. And if i do so, should i still transfer my stuff from the Three Hundred to the older Sonata 2? or the Three Hundred should be better for me?

1. The i5 650 costs a little more, but it has turbo and runs a little faster. I don't know what other subtle differences there are. I would get an i5 instead of an i3.

2. Ask to pay extra for extra packing. I forget what cooler you are using. But it might ship safer if it is flat mounted to a motherboard instead of side mounted inside a case.

3. If you pick the right components, the case decision is not important. If you don't pick the right components, the case decision is not relevant.

ok but i picked the installations and testings (50$) so i'll be sure it will work fine when i get everything. And that incluse installation of the heatsink and fan. Should i ask them to install the Nexus 120mm fan (black and white) on the Scythe Mugen 2 rev.B instead of the fan that come with it?

So should i pick a i5 650 instead of a i3 530? i might have a bit more budget now so i might pick the i5 650 instead.

Strangely, DirectCanada again ran out of Mugen 2 rev.B...i don't know when they will have more in stock...

How much is the price difference between the i5-650 and i3-530? Primary differences between the two are clock rate (200MHz, easily overcome by overclocking), TurboBoost (negligible, not really needed once you've overclocked), and VT-d (for directed I/O, not needed for Windows 7 XP Mode). Unless you've got a specific need for VT-d, I don't think it's worth paying extra for the i5-650 unless the price difference is really small (personal limit <=$30).

About $45 difference on newegg, $40 difference at Microcenter. If not overclocking the turbo is significant. I assume that the 530 chips are what is left over after the 650 chips have been picked (but I don't know that for certain - just superstition).

I don't know when you need VT-d or in what circumstances.

Does turbo stay enabled when you overclock or is it disenabled?

Yeah, it stays enabled. Turbo isn't really all that significant for Clarkdale. I think it's just 1/2 (133MHz dual, 266MHz single). Besides, the i3-530 already has a relatively high clock rate to begin with.

VT-d is for virtualization of devices. I think VMWare ESXi and Xen support it. Not sure about others.

The deal at MicroCenter ($140), I think is pretty good. That's just the price of a Core i3-540 so if you can get it for that price, I'd grab one. However, I don't think it's worth Intel's list price ($176) or higher (Newegg: $185), specially when you can get a Core i5-750 for around the same.

What I have recently discovered is that the i5 650 out performs the i5-750 for almost all applications other than video encoding.

There just aren't that many applications that take advantage of multiple cores.

Even if you overclock. The i5-650, with the same cooler, continues to out perform the i5-750. For most applications GHZ is more important than the number of cores.

That's true but after you reach a certain speed, you'd be hard pressed to notice the difference a few extra MHz adds.

I don't really know how Lynnfield compares to Clarkdale clock for clock on a single core so can't comment on the overclocking thing. However, if overclocking, then might as well get the cheaper i3-530.

By the way, I'm interested to know what applications the i5-650 would beat the i5-750 on.

It is noticeable improvement in the user experience going from a E8200 to a i5-650 with both running at stock speed. If you are talking overclocking, nothing overclocks like the Clarkdales. Nothing.

See
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1384.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1405.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1381.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1386.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2009 ... ,1400.html

That may be so, but a Lynnfield 2.66GHz is not the same as a Wolfdale 2.66GHz. Clock for clock, the Lynnfield would be faster.


True, but a lot of people would probably settle for a 4.0GHz overclock. I just checked the benchmarks you quoted and I didn't see the i5-650 in that list. There was the i5-660/661 and i3-530 but no i5-650.

Extrapolating the values from the i5-660 results, the i5-650 should have expected performance as follows:
Lame 3.98: 132s
iTunes 8.1.0.52: 92s
AVG 8.5.287: 244s
Adobe Acrobat 9: 93s
WinZIP12 (8252): 311s

The Core i5-750 had the following results:
Lame 3.98: 142s
iTunes 8.1.0.52: 98s
AVG 8.5.287: 235s
Adobe Acrobat 9: 97s
WinZIP12 (8252): 301s

Assuming TurboBoost was disabled and the applications don't take advantage of more than 2-cores, clock for clock Lynnfield is a bit faster than Clarkdale. If TurboBoost was enabled, then that just shows how much better Lynnfield is clock for clock. You're essentially comparing something clocked at 3.46GHz vs 2.66GHz.

If you have a Lynnfield and Clarkdale and overclocked both to 4.0GHz, the Lynnfield would run faster than the Clarkdale. The only area Clarkdale beats it is power consumption.

Ugh. Ignore the TurboBoost comment. For some reason, I was thinking it got cut from the i5-750 but then I remembered it was just hyperthreading that was removed.

@ces: do you still suggest me the i5 650 instead the i3 530/540?

is it easy and safe to use the TurboBoost feature? (as safe as pushing that "Turbo" button on those old Intel 486 computers?)

TurboBoost is safe. The processor checks whether you're within the thermal and power envelope and if it determines you are, it will automatically overclock itself. However, on a Clarkdale, you'll be getting a maximum 266MHz increase and that's only when running in single-core mode.

My suggestion, compare the prices of the i3-530, i5-650 and i5-750. If the i5-650 is too close in price to the i5-750, get the i5-750 instead.

As for the i3-530 vs i5-650 debate, at best, the i5-650 is only faster than the i3-530 by ~20% taking TurboBoost into account (of course, barring special applications that might take advantage of AES-NI). If the price of the i5-650 is only 20% higher (or just a little bit more) than the i3-530, then by all means, get the i5-650. If it's considerably more than that, it's up to you to decide whether the slight increase in performance is worth the big jump in price. The i3-540, I really don't see any point as it's only 5% faster than the i3-530 and normally costs ~20% more.

By the way, on a single video card set-up, right now all you'll need is a Core i3-530. You'll be GPU-bound for the most part.

yes but for CPU-oriented softwares and operations, such as Flash animations, Photoshop, and other things that won't ask GPU processings, and the fact i could upgrade my video card later on quite easily also...

there's a 15.57$ difference between the i5 650 and i5 750: 190.05$ for the 650 and 205.62$ for the 750.

And also with the launch price of the GTX 400 series being about 500-600$, i bet this price will drop dramatically next year. I plan to have this computer for about 5 years, so the video card might change by then.

in this Athlon 64, i switched video cards a lot: from a X1300Pro, X1600Pro, Geforce 7600GT, 8600GTS (only for less than a month), 9600GT and then my 250 GTS.

It's amazing how much performance i got from a 7600GT to a 9600GT with the same CPU still, and peoples told me i would be in a bottleneck, i've seen a huge performance difference in most games, most notably in Unreal Tournament 3 where i was able to put all effects without the game being slow on me.

What i think is in GPU-hungry games, the priority is set on the GPU first, and then the CPU if the video card can't provide enough processing. I remember a lot of peoples said they would buy a powerful dual-core CPU for their games so they won't need a PhysX card at all.

But still...should i be better with a i5 650 or a i5 750? can Intel release updates or something about their CPUs to improve performances for end-users?

Also i think it's always a bit better to be ahead of your time, so in time, softwares and games will be improved to use all CPU cores. I think Dragon Age Origins do.

Then definitely get the i5-750 Lynnfield. It's a true quad-core. Yes, not all applications can take advantage right now, but there's more now than a couple years before. Photoshop seems to like quads a lot. Heck, even WinRAR and 7-zip seem to benefit. Besides, it's not as if it's lagging badly behind Clarkdales on applications that don't use more than dual-cores.

By the way, here's some benchmarks from Anandtech comparing the i5-750 and the i5-650.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/109?vs=144

Aside from power consumption, there were only two tests where the i5-650 beat the i5-750 and it was a synthetic benchmark (SYSMark 2007 - E-Learning + Crysis Warhead).

The Core 2 Quad Kentsfield and Phenom X4 Agena were released more than 3 years ago. The only applications that can make use of all four cores back then were video encoding and 3D rendering. Nowadays, the landscape has changed and we're seeing more mainstream applications and even games optimized for quads (e.g. Dragon Age). Someone mentioned it's a 5-year process but I reckon we're already 2 years give or take into the process.

do you think the Megahalems rev.B would be a cooling job as good as the Venomous X? or maybe better also. i would use the Nexus 1000rpm fan (black & white) on it, is that good enough?

Do you think even the 750 would stay cooler than my actual Athlon 64 3700+? (which is always between 44-47 Celcius when idle.)

i have to admit my actual main board don't have MOSFET cooler nor a South Bridge cooler on it...and i used a ThermalRight HR-05 North Bridge cooler on it because i noticed its temperatures was going rather high...too high for my tastes, which was around 53-54 Celcius... when loaded.

Measurements-wise, the Megahalems rev.B is about 158mm tall when my Ninja Plus rev.B is 150mm tall (around 155-160mm tall with the fan on). So i think it will fit in my Sonata 2 case after all, now it's just a question of IF the heatsink fit on the main board...

Also...if the Megahalems or the Venomous X is too expensive for me and i would like to save money while having a very good cooling (while the Mugen 2 rev.B is not available often here...), do the ThermalRight MUX-120 will do a great job?

i asked the question to NCIX and i HAVE to buy a new case so they can put all the fully-assembled parts in it for shipping.

So i think a Three Hundred would be nice...along with a Noctua NF-P14FLX fan for the top exhaust, and i might use my Noctua NF-S12B FLX for the rear exhaust.

But then i worry a little about the hard disk vibrations...i discovered that if i screw the hard disk tightly and on all 4 points, it won't create as much vibrations.

would you recommend me to get the Samsung Spinpoint HD103UJ (1Tb) instead of a Western Digital Green WD5000AADS (500gb)?

is the Samsung drive quieter than the Western Digital one? the Samsung's 750gb version of this dirve is in the recommended list, but the 1Tb drive wasn't available at the time it was tested.

But the WD5000AADS seem to be good too.

ok here is what i (finally!) ordered:

Case: Antec Three Hundred (with default 120mm and 140mm case fans)
Board: Asus P7P55D-E LX
CPU: Intel Core i5 750
RAM: OCZ OCZ3G1333LV4GK (2 x 2gb DDR3-1333)
Hard Disk: Western Digital WD5000AADS (Green but still 7200rpm)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium 64bits French (i'm french canadian)
CPU cooler: Prolimatech Megahalems

other new cooling fans:
-Noctua NF-P14 FLX (for 140mm fan exhaust on the case)
-Noctua NF-S12B FLX (for 120mm fan exhaust on the case)
-Nexus Silent 120mm fan (for the Megahalems)


Stuff i will move from my previous computer to the new one:
-Corsair TX650W power supply
-eVGA Geforce GTS 250 512mb
-Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeGamer PCI
-LG DVD-Writer (SATA)
-Noctua NF-S12B FLX(will probably be used on one of the two front intakes slots that will also cool hard disk(s) on the front)

Stuff i'll still be using on this one:
-Logitech G51 speakers
-Logitech LX710 keyboard
-Logitech MX610 left-hand mouse
-Samsung SyncMaster 730b (yes it's an old LCD monitor, 1280x1024, 8ms...but i don't have the money to get a brand-spanking-new one yet, so it'll do for now)

Now i just hope everything will be fine and won't have any kind of stupid whining/coil noise when the PC is on a load...

i'll probably get this PC next week, or at the beginning of the week after

Opps never mind year old thread.

i changed the RAM since then, as you can see in my signature, it SUCKED badly, never trust OCZ memory, and never go cheap with this, or you might have to reinstall everything because the RAM is corrupted and screw-up all your files.

At the time, the dumb tech at NCIX did a 3DMark test as a final check if all go well, yeah...it's to test the graphics and on-board video RAM, not the system RAM!

I run my data on a WD 1T sitting in a dock. The only time I really notice it is when it is doing some heavy seeking. That is either because I am doing something or the OS is doing something. I don't mind that type of sound for some reason. It is actually sort of comforting. It is informing what it is doing as it does it. Sort of like an auto exhaust noise that is loud to others.... but not to the driver who is in control of the vehicle.

when i created this topic, the "Sandy Bridge" didn't exist.

So now i have a Core i5 750 slightly overclocked with the XMP so my RAM run at the advertized speed (DDR3-1600, 1.6V, 7-8-7-24 timings).