Hello,
I'm in search of a good case (and also good fans) that could limit the noise but keeping the temperature under control of a config like this: 2600k, gtx 570 (gainward phantom), 2 hdd at 7200rpm or 1 ssd + 1 hdd.

Anyone could give me some help?

Two 7200 suffers from pretty bad vibration. Choose Antec Solo II.

How many GB/TB (and why)?

Go with the SSD like Crucial M4 and a 5400rpm HDD, like Hitachi 5k3000 or WD Caviar Green.

I thinked about having a Crucial M4 128gb + 1TB Caviar Green Intellipower (don't know how many rpms is) + 1TB Caviar Black 7200rpm.
Is this foolish?

(128gb is a bit small, that's why I thinked about a caviar black)

Its up to you, i used to own a 1tb Black Caviar (btw failed out of nothing, no warning, clicks or sounds), but it was noisy hdd, personally i won't go back to 7200rpm drives, specially blacks, but mine was hard mounted, maybe hanging it or with silencer it can work fine. I also found that 120gb was getting too close to my need, so i just bought M4 256gb, but there are ways to save some space if you are tight, like doping hibernation (around 6gb), system restore (8-10gb). Good luck.

Yeah, why? Do you have games stored on your harddrives or what do you intend to use your harddrives for?

(With reference to the Black) No (IME/IMO).

I decided to change to a Crucial M4 128gb + 1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3 7200rpm + 1TB Caviar Green.

Do you think that having a Spinpoint it will be a good improvment or it's also too noise because it's a 7200rpm?

It's still too much louder than the very best sub-6000 drive.

But again, at first sight there's no reason to have 1 SSD + 1 5400 rpm + 1 7200 rpm: it looks like illogical.

I'm afraid that SSD are too new and too insecure... so I want to test them, but having a parachute

I want to use the Caviar Green just as location to backup my internal and external servers and all the rest of my job at the end of the day.

I want to use the fast HDD for installing software that doesn't fit inside just 128gb and the OS folders that, for saving SSD health, doesn't have to be on the SSD like the temp dir (is it quite "responsive" just a Caviar Green to store a windows temp or a Battlefield 3? I know that job and games are 2 separate worlds... but I want to use just 1 PC )

By the way, if every 7200 (also the samsung) it's too noise I think I'll go for a different solution

Against unsafety just back up regularly: I'm quite satisfied at desktop level by my Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex USB 3.0.
There's nothing more or better you can do. IMHO.


In the last 80 days (with a powe-on state of just less than 35 days, 656GB written and 141 power-cycling), SSDLife says that my SSD "Estimated Life" is reduced by... 80 days (from 8 years, 3 months and 10 days to 8 years and 20 days), while I have temp and swap on the SSD itself. So don't get foolish.
About responsiveness: I have more than some firm doubts that you'll be able to notice any performance difference between a 7200 or sub-6000 data drive, but it's just my opinion/experience. Take also note that you may go RAID, if in case, or short stroke a larger green disk to have a smaller but more performing one (banking on the same quietness).
About storage space: may you take a screenshot of actual occupied space on your current drives?


If you currently have a standard peecee, a quiet PC with a 7200rpm drive would turn out to be.. a lot quieter.
But then, with a much more lower baseline noise, you won't quickly stand anymore the drive's noise. IME.

I agree that 7200rpm drives are difficult to run silent, been there, done that. I'd get a single 3TB WD 3TB disk with 750GB platters and do regular clones of your SSD to a partition of the same size on the very beggining of the HDD where the performance is higher should you need to fall back on it. At least thats how I would do it FWIW

I think it might be a challenge to keep the system quiet with a GTX 570 -- the anandtech review shows their test setup ( though with a less efficient CPU than you'll be using ) drawing 361W when playing Crysis.

I'm not sure how many people on this board have experience building systems with that kind of power draw. I certainly don't. I imagine you'll want to have case fans that you can control automatically based on the temperature, either with the BIOS, or using something like SpeedFan, so you can ramp up the fans under load. You'll probably need to read up in the manual of a mobo to find out what its fan control options are.

Someone on this board who has successfully built something like this, using a P183: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=62962
but note that their graphics card, a GTX 460, came in 80W lower under Crysis at anandtech.

For more airflow, you could go with one of the inwin cases with huge side fans:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1208-page8.html
http://www.silentpcreview.com/inwin-maelstrom

On my systems I typically use a simple hardware fan controller like a Scythe Kaze Master, and change the settings only according to the season. But I haven't built anything > 200W before, and my main system is something more like 50W.

As for fans, Scythe Slipstreams have good performance for noise, and are widely available.