Hi,
Looking to make this system silent -
(1) COOLER MASTER Sileo 500 RC-500-KKR3-GP Black Computer Case
w/ stock PSU: Cooler Master 500 RS-500-PCAR-A3, ATX 12V V2.3
(1) ASUS M4A78T-E ATX AMD Motherboard | MB ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 790GX/SB750
(1) AMD HDT45TWFGRBOX Phenom II X6 1045T Processor - Six Core, 6MB L3 Cache, 3MB L2 Cache, 2.70GHz, Socket AM3, 95W
(4) Crucial(4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
(2) Western Digital WD Blue WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" |WD 7K 16M SATA2 WD5000AAKS
(1) Noctua NH-U9B SE2 92mm SSO CPU Cooler
Removed front case fan. Replaced rear case fan with:
(1) Noiseblocker NB-Multiframe M12-S1 120mmx25mm Ultra Silent Fan
No dedicated GPU. Running Linux. Sits in an office nook off the dining room, adjacent to the living room.
Currently too loud to leave on.
It sounds like most of the noise is coming from the (2) WD HDD. These are in RAID1 configuration and idle rather loudly. Is it vibrations? They are mounted in the provided mounting brackets and sit in the front bottom of the Cooler Master.
The second sound source at this point is the PSU fan.
I'd be open to replacing the both the HDD's and PSU and go with SSDs and fanless PSU.
I am currently only using about 120GB of the RAID array, so I would be fine with 2 x 250GB.
Thoughts on next steps? Anything obvious I'm missing?
Thanks,
Thomas
remaining sound sources HDDs and PSU
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Re: remaining sound sources HDDs and PSU
What you're missing is how efficient Intel parts have become.
~250G SSDs aren't all that expensive nowadays, especially if you look at auction sites.
But if that's still too expensive, there are HDs which make very little noise (see SPCR reviews). You could buy a new mobo and CPU with that kind of money after all. If you stay with HDs, you might want to buy single-platter versions (if possible, WD in particular makes that hard) and short-stroke the drives.
Once you've tried quiet drives, you'll know if you need to bother with a less noisy way of mounting them. I don't know your case so I don't know how practical that would be.
A compromise solution might be to get a single SSDs and mirror it very regularly to a single HD. You could keep a bunch of hardlinked mirrors and your data would likely to be safer that way (it depends on your application), the HD would only make noise when you backup or access the extra storage available on it. Also, more storage for less money. RAID isn't as useful as it's sometimes made out to be.
A fanless PSU may be overkill... or not. It depends on availability and prices in your locale but a PSU whose fan spins only at high loads might be a better choice. Even PSUs whose fan spins all the time aren't necessarily all that noisy. Again, check the reviews.
~250G SSDs aren't all that expensive nowadays, especially if you look at auction sites.
But if that's still too expensive, there are HDs which make very little noise (see SPCR reviews). You could buy a new mobo and CPU with that kind of money after all. If you stay with HDs, you might want to buy single-platter versions (if possible, WD in particular makes that hard) and short-stroke the drives.
Once you've tried quiet drives, you'll know if you need to bother with a less noisy way of mounting them. I don't know your case so I don't know how practical that would be.
A compromise solution might be to get a single SSDs and mirror it very regularly to a single HD. You could keep a bunch of hardlinked mirrors and your data would likely to be safer that way (it depends on your application), the HD would only make noise when you backup or access the extra storage available on it. Also, more storage for less money. RAID isn't as useful as it's sometimes made out to be.
A fanless PSU may be overkill... or not. It depends on availability and prices in your locale but a PSU whose fan spins only at high loads might be a better choice. Even PSUs whose fan spins all the time aren't necessarily all that noisy. Again, check the reviews.
-
quest_for_silence
- Posts: 5275
- Joined: Wed Jun 13, 2007 10:12 am
- Location: ITALY
Re: remaining sound sources HDDs and PSU
thomasb wrote:Thoughts on next steps? Anything obvious I'm missing?
As you've plenty of 5,25 bays, 2 NoiseMagic NoVibes (about 9 euros each) for your disks: then, re-evaluate the whole scenario (even if HFat first advice is also sound: just for example, a couple of Sandisk G25 are usually pretty cheap, and so it goes for the Intel 335 or Kingston 300-series).
At any rate, the CM PSU is about crap: something like a 400W SuperFlower HX or beQuiet E9 would be better suited, a Corsair RM450 would be probably perfect (noise wise).