Hello,

Finally time to buy a new PC which I am really trying to make quiet. I was hoping the experts on this forum might be able to help with getting together a good parts list to meet this goal. I'm intending to buy as soon as the 3770K becomes available where I live (which should be real soon now).

My last PC was purchased in 2003 (yes!), and my new PC will try to address the problems I had. Goals (in order of priority) are to be quiet, to allow high performance from multiple apps, some gaming, some video processing, minimise requirement to upgrade for at least the next 5-8 years. Budget is not a big consideration.

Problems with my old PC:

The PC became very loud, even when idle. So this time I want quiet components. Also, this time I am going to build it myself so that I know what I am doing when I need to replace parts that have become noisy.
I had to upgrade the memory as it was constantly paging. This time I am going to max out the memory.
The power supply blew. This time I will get a high quality power supply.
The power supply couldn't support the new parts I added as it wasn't powerful enough.

So this is what I am proposing:

Ivy Bridge 3770K
Prolimatech Genesis
GELID PWM Y-Cable
Either
2 x Noctua NF-F12 PWM 120mm Fan
or 2 x Thermalright TY-140 ( but cant find these on the web now?).

ASUS P8Z77-V PRO Motherboard
Fractal Design Define R3 Black USB 3.0
Corsair Vengeance CML16GX3M4A1600C9 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3
Crucial M4 SSD 256GB
Sapphire Radeon HD7950 3GB OC Edition
Corsair AX850 Gold Power Supply
Nexus Real Silent PWM 120mm Case Fan x 4 (2 front, 1 rear and maybe 1 bottom),


Reasoning:
* Get the 3770K for video performance. Puts out less heat than Sandy. Budget is not a real factor.
* Prolimatech supposed to be very good performer on low rpm fans, which is what I am hoping for. Also may provide some cooling to video card. Also looks less bulky than similar performers (e.g. DH14).
* Fractal Design is one of the quieter case and looks good. Would be nice if the drive bay could be removed to allow better airflow.
* I will have a separate NAS in the garage so no need for hdd. I've already done the 2 x CAT 5E runs for 2 Gbps of throughput.
* AX850 is a very quiet power supply and fan not likely to run up for this rig.
* According to Anandtech Sapphire Radeon HD7950 is very quiet and makes no noise at idle (fans stop) and very quiet at load.

Can I improve this rig, given the goals I have?



Pinky

Then get a professionally built PC from one of SPCR's sponsors. It'd be better (meaning less noisy) than what you could build.

I'm not sure why you select a CPU for its graphics when your're planning to use a separate video card.

An oversized PSU is going to waste not only your money but also electricity. Lessons from 10 years ago are not necessarily applicable today...

That's no fun

1. Kingwin Lazer Platinum 550W Power Supply
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Kingwin_L ... um_LZP-550
see:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_PSUs
If you really want more power, consider the Seasonic_X650
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Seasonic_X650

Power demands are trending down not up. Either of these should supply you plenty of power for anything plausible coming down the pike. You probably really need 300-350 watts even running an abusive benchmark, even though Sapphire might say otherwise.

2. CPU cooler

Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme Rev. C
Prolima Megahalems
or if you want to maintain the ability to have a low height case
Noctua NH-C14 or NH-L12 (Noctua provides free new mountings as CPU mountings change... just keep your receipts)

see:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/Recommended_Heatsinks

3. Fans

You have too many fans

4. CPU

You might want to stay with the Sandy Bridge. The new Ivy Bridge seems to be having some teething problems and the IB will be about as fast except for the the graphics unit, which you won't be using.

5. "some gaming" Sapphire Radeon HD7950 3GB OC Edition? This is going to be your greatest source of noise... even if Anandtech says it is quiet for a video card. Get the largest passive Powercolor card available. Make sure the video card has some good air circulation.

6. Motherboard / Case

ATX size is becoming old fashioned. Consider a Micro-ATX. Consider a Langear Micro-ATX. It is built about as tough as they come, and its size makes it about as flexible of a case as you can get.
http://www.lan-gear.eu/langear-home
It has room for a dedicated 120mm fan to supply cool external air to your video card.

7. Whatever you get, make sure you have a displayport connection. It is the only thing that can really handle upcoming high resolution displays. Without that, it will be a PITA in a few years when you want to get a nice 27 inch high DPI monitor.

8. Quiet cases no long matter so much. You want quiet components.

9. If you want something long lived, get an Intel SSD. Get their Enterprise industrial strength model, alleged designed for heavy duty use. Get the Intel 710 Series (Lyndonville). It will likely last for 10 years of civilian use. It uses single-level cell (SLC) NAND. It also uses capacitors to protect writes in the event of a disruption or power failure.

It seems like all the other SSDs are built to a low price with the expectation that they don't need to last to long before they will get replaced anyway.

I would store your data on a mechanical hard drive. You might want to use a higher level RAID meant for data safety and redundancy (as opposed to Raid 0 meant for speed)

As defined, your max power with cpu and gpu fully stressed (but no overclocking) will be in the 270W range. I think the Kingwin LZP-550 is an excellent choice.

I'm guessing you are looking at the i7-3770K because your video processing apps will make use of the larger cache and hyperthreading and perhaps you want to OC?

fans: that's a lot of fans to dissipate <300W of heat.

I'd wait a month or 2...just to let the early release bios/firmware bugs shake out.

Well, I built this system on Friday. I swapped the prolimatech genesis with a noctua nh-d14 2011 and bought a 1155 mounting kit ( that way I get the noctua pwm fans). I would have liked to get the kingwin power supply but they don't sell it in AU. I also kept all the fans as I figured I could just turn them off in software if they were too noisy.
I am using the asus fan xpert 2 software and the silent profile, modified so that I start the rear chassis fan a bit earlier than the others.
The silent profile doesn't start the CPU fans and the chassis fans until the CPU gets to about 42 degrees Celsius. Which means most of the time I don't have any fans running (except the gpu fans, running at 20%, which I can't hear). Even when I run prime95 torture test the CPU gets to about 45 and the fans are running very slowly and I can't hear them either!
Is there any problem with running the system without the fans running?
Also, there is a bug in fan xpert2 whereby you can't get your profile to load after a reboot automatically. You have to go and set it manually, which is annoying. Anyone got a fix for this?

Monitor your other component temps (SSD, motherboard sensor, northbridge, etc). If they are within reason, then no problems.

Ok, interesting. My fans, including my CPU and chassis fans will most likely be powered off 99% of the time, and my gpu fans will most likely be powered off 90% of the time. They should last a while i guess!