Heh. I picked up an Antec True Quiet 140 to play with...and my neighbor has decided today is the day to power wash his patio and fence.

What RPMs you getting with the CHA_FAN header at 50%?

Didn't bother to install it with all the racket going on outside. Tomorow's project.

Had some time to play with the build. I took out the gfx card, turned the fans off and set the HDD to idle after a minute. Here's some subjective data (HDD is idled unless otherwise noted). Also, while I might come across as picky, this is a very quiet build and I'm happy with the results.

MSI CPU Fan 2 header: Doesn't work with 2-pin Fractal fans, nor with 3-pin Antec True Quiet 140. (defaults to max rpm for True Quiet).

Active cooling: Mugen 4 fan only, hooked up to CPU fan control:
12.5% 450 rpm. Silent at 1m. Silent with ear to case.
25% 450 rpm. Silent at 1m. Silent with ear to case.
37.5% 600 rpm. Silent at 1m. Can barely hear it with ear to case.

Active cooling: Mugen @ 450 rpm, lower front and rear Fractal case fans @ 5V. Very quiet, but not silent. Low whoosh, hint of growl.
- turned off rear fan: Quieter, but still a low growl. Wouldn't notice with other sound in room. Had to turn off CFL room light as I could hear buzz from one of them.
- turned on rear fan and turned off front fan: A tad louder.

Antec True Quiet 140 as rear fan: I love the sound of this fan. No growl or other oddities in my measurement range. Just fan whoosh.
- Hooked up to system fan header (high fan switch setting), Mugen @ 450 rpm.
50% 460 rpm Pretty darn quiet, but not silent. Definately quieter than Fractal and with better signature.
60% 530 rpm
70% 610 rpm
80% 685 rpm
90% 760 rpm

- same set up except fan switch set to low.
50% 275 rpm. Dead silent. Unfortunately, fan needs somewhere between 400 and 460 rpm to start. This contradicts what Lawrence saw in his review (192 rpm start up).
60% 340 rpm. Dead silent. Unfortunately, fan needs somewhere between 400 and 460 rpm to start.
70% 400 rpm. Dead silent. Unfortunately, fan needs somewhere between 400 and 460 rpm to start.
80% 465 rpm.
90% 520 rpm.

MSI GTX 760 Gaming. Mugen @ 450 rpm. Gfx card idles at ~1000rpm.
- gfx card fans are audible but very quiet. I need to bother MSI to see if there's a workaround to get Afterburner to run them below this speed.
- Adding Antec rear fan @ 460 rpm doesn't add noticable noise.
- Adding Fractal lower front fan @ 5V adds a little growl.

WD Red 2TB: Quiet whoosh when spinning. Very quiet seek noise. When the HDD idles, the system goes from a subjective pretty quiet to really quiet.

I think I'll pick up a second True Quiet and just run the two of them instead of the Fractals. The gfx card is the dominant source at present (with HDD idled) and it's a very quiet system. If it turns out I can get the 760's fans to a lower rpm, I'll revisit the case fans.

The discrepancy could be due to your MSI BIOS/UEFI vs Asus Fan Xpert 2 readings. Is it safe to say BIOS/UEFI is more accurate?

Not really. Asus runs thru a little test to see what voltage will start the fan. The only possible wrench is if their algorithm doesn't wait for the fan to stop before applying the new start voltage...a spinning fan is a lot easier to keep spinning than a stopped fan is to start.

Here's a little comparison between my old e8400 + HD 5770 rig's power use and this one. Both are using the same X-560 PSU.

Here's a comparision of the box cooler vs the Mugen 4.


- The box cooler can't handle Prime 95 and is thermally throttled.
- The GPU is thermally throttled in Furmark.

- The Mugen 4 cruises along with 58C under Prime 95 and 66C under Prime95+Furmark. The max case ambient is 27C at the bottom beside the PSU and 32C at the rear exhaust. Notice the CPU is clocking at +200MHz Turbo on four cores while under stress and VID drops when temps rise. The latter was new to me

Here's the same thing with streaming media and a few games.


Where the CPU with box cooler maxes out at 64C with Rift, Mugen 4 drops it to 45C. The Gfx card maxes out at 61C and the fan is still down around 1050 rpm. This is a really quiet game machine

Also, take a look at the low GPU core and mem clocks for streaming media as well as low impact games.

Note: I frame limited Guild Wars and WoW. No reason to have useless >60fps at the video card when the displays can't make use of it. (Rift doesn't offer frame rate limiting).

Thanks for the tests, specially the Asus Quiet 140, really seems like a great fan overall, you should buy two more and drop the Fractal fans, personally i like at least 2 in, just thinking into how restictive the R4 is on the front with the filter + internal door + external door, this is the main reason i went with 3 in and 1 out, thinking that between the filters and doors you getting restricted more than 1/2 the airflow of the fans (pure speculation from my part).

Well on ASUS motherboards, until windows is loaded, the fan speed is what the bios is set to, in my experience much higher then what FanXpert2 has, so this could be the way that on Asus motherboards can have this fans running at 192rpms that lawrance got, although its more like they are being spin up over 500rpm on startup and once windows loads they are drop to 192rpms (or so, fanXpert2 doesnt idle the same as the lowest on graphs, sometimes is like 50-100rpms more), that for us on pure bios is not possible as we dont change our settings, while Asus does between bios and software.

Glad to see you signature updated! Which is noisier, WD Red HDD or GTX 760? Isn't it tempting to tread onto the darker path of aftermarket GFX cooler? Two 120mm fans of my GTX 660 run at 300rpm in idle and ramp up to 500rpm in full load at which point the GPU temperature is about 70-75 Celsius. It is utterly completely quite.

There is a noticable drop in noise level (from very quiet to really quiet) when the WD Red spins down. That said, the Red idle and seek is much quieter than the Blue 640GB in my Solo.

If I wanted to pursue the hobby aspect to go from awesomely quiet to dead silent, then I'd consider an aftermarket gfx cooler. My track record with them has been less than stellar. I retrofitted a couple of Radeon cards maybe 7-8 years ago with early Arctic Cooling kits. Both cards died 6 months later within a month of each other (they were in separate PCs). I have a stack of collected (L2 Pro's) RAM and VRM heatsinks that have dropped off of my HD 5770 over the last year.

does a WD Red / seagate SV35 quieter and more reliable than its barracuda / blue counterparts?

btw, if you don't mind checking out my thread about my pc build... i hv zero knowledge but wanting to learn abt building a quiet pc... it'd be appreciated ^_^

The WD Red 2TB is quieter than the WD Blue 640GB I have in my Solo.

If this is true, then my AsRock board choice is good to great. Just depends on quality.

I'm looking at the Z87E-ITX board with a Xeon 1225 (HD4600). If I can now under clock this, I'll be very happy as it means a quieter system (recently transcoded 210 videos using handbrake and the fan keep spinning up/down - annoying enough that I ended up pausing the effort when I went to bed. Would have been nice to at least set the fan at 75 percent (all it needed) as it would have been steady then but no, HP didn't see fit to allow us any control over it.

Only issue is now I've got to convince the S.O that the $1400 is a needed expense and that's going to take some doing.

Where are the naked pics.... im joking, when ever you want its fine, just i feel its a pretty good build for new comers to show, mostly all of your components is what i would recommend to anyone seeking advice into a quiet pc.

Btw from your sig, Antec True quiet front and rear, did you went 2/1 or just 1/1?

Regarding the video card noise...

If you're not up for buying an aftermarket cooler, I've had great success with removing the fans and shroud on the MSI GTX760 and adding my own fan. It's a little bit finicky, but definitely not any worse than removing and installing a completely new cooler.

I've made a post about it in another thread (which you've also commented in, so maybe you've already seen it).
viewtopic.php?f=23&t=66507

Yeah - I've been off working on other projects (debugging my wifi, etc). Heck, the meat thermometer is still attached to the case

Two more TQ140's are patiently sitting on the floor waiting to be installed (signature = foreshadowing). Might get around to that today.

No e-noise from my gfx card. Once I install the two case fans, I'll start messing with fan profiles a bit and see if I can lower the 760's load fan ramp. As for idle/30% fan, I still need to bug MSI about that and see if there is a solution with Afterburner.

I have a msi gtx-760 as well and can't get it to go lower than 34% fan or 1000rpm. Anyway to get these to idle less?

copy that, i'll keep my post there, thank you very much for your help

You have a thread for your build posting these same questions. Let's keep it there.

quick question, is your wd red noisy when you use it for gaming / seeking files / making new folders / watching videos...?

i have a couple wd mybook 3.5" external which i assume is green, and im aware with it's seeking sound. and the sound the WD red makes is like a drum compare to the green seeking sound.

i just noticed 2-3 days back that whenever i access the wd red drive, it's clicking so loud. i tried crystaldisk info and it reported good. im doing extended test with WD data lifeguard diagnostics at the moment.

is yours behaving the same way?
it's very quiet when its not being accessed though.

Mine's pretty quiet. It would be quieter if I suspended it in the R4. In any case, it's certainly quieter than the WD Blue 640GB I had in my Solo build.

I have a few questions if you don't mind.

I am moving my gaming system from a Corsair AIR 540 to a R4 due to a need of more mechanical HD space and to tinker a bit with new hardware. Getting the case tomorrow.

1. From Hardwareheavens video review of the R4, one of the differences pointed out from R3 (which strangely enough wasn't picked up by any other review I saw) was an option to use the thumbscrews on the HD trays to reduce hd vibration. Seems logical, considering the HD is secured and rests on rubber grommits securing the tray should reduce movements. Did you do any tests with that?

2. Front fan mounts looks like they are put into a plastic casing with no options to decouple the fans. I thought about putting Noctua NF-A14's there due to the silicon edges that comes with the fans. Have you noticed much fan vibration noise from the casing?

That's how I mounted the HDD - it sits on the grommets in the tray and the thumbscrews attach through the grommets. I haven't messed around with it to see if the seek noise is amplified by this mounting and/or if suspension would reduce it. It's fairly quiet as is. The main use of the HDD is for media storage and backups...and I'm considering pulling an SSD from another build to use for my music library - just to remove 90% of the HDD "on" time.


I didn't notice any vibration noise from the Fractal fans and don't have any with the Antecs. I had some growling from the Fractals, but that was from the fan itself, not coupled vibration.

Thanks. I was more thinking about the trays themselves though. In the Hardware heaven review, she speaks a bit about the vibration from the hard drives on the R3 cabinet about 5:35 here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asc9YA32rBc

About 10:05 in the same review, she points out that the issue is fixed in R4, by securing the hard drive trays with thumbscrews. The R3 had holes along the 3 1/2 hd cage for thumbscrews, but they didn't have corresponding holes in the trays as the R4 have. Look at the trays left side on these images:

R3 tray from Fractal Design:
http://www.fractal-design.com/media/676 ... 8b329f/200
http://www.fractal-design.com/home/prod ... lack-pearl

R4 tray from techpowerup review:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Frac ... sthdd2.jpg
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Frac ... _R4/5.html


Great! I was a bit worried about the plastic casing for the front fans. Fans can be changed, but the casing would have made it a bit more of a challange.

I got the case and have migrated the components. Great case for gaming components. It redirects noise pretty well, so I can run the fans at higher RPM (I used Noctua for front fans). Fan controller had a crap connection though. I can't hear the WD RED I currently have in the case and didn't secure the tray. Will try later with a hard drive I have that vibrates much more and see if the method of securing the tray reduces the vibration as the reviewer said, but I'll not hi-jack your thread with this.

Enjoy your build. If you do start a thread on altenative HDD mounting, be sure to post a link here.

After some contemplation and a nice sale price, I added a 256GB Crucial MX100 SSD to the system. Reasons are twofold:
- My music library was on the WD Red and it would spin down on long songs leading to dead time before the next song queued up in iTunes. As an aside, here's a bitch slap to Apple - for the love of everything holy, please update this decrepit piece of s/w...at the least, let the user define the size of the look-ahead cache.
- Steam only likes their games in one location and it was taking over my Samsung C drive space I was moving the unplayed games to the HDD as an archive...not too painful, but takes time and Stam kept wanting to re-download the games.

So, the $100 price tag conviced me to get another SSD for music and Steam game storage. Now, the WD Red is solely used for daily backups and other media storage. In other words, no HDD spin except at boot and am backup time. woo!

Adding the SSD lead to some cablegami redo and dust check. Three cheers for positive pressure. Virtually zero dust accumulated in the case or on fans after ~ 9 months. None on the bottom filter - all of it was collected by the front filter

....and since the batteries in my digital camera were charged, here's the belated build photos. Hopefully, Abula won't drop from sudden cardiac arrest.

I mentioned during the build that the stock cooler gave crappy results. Here's the reason: Even with well locked mounting pins there is poor contact with the CPU.

Here's two pic's of the build. The case was lying on a throw rug - hence the fluffy white showing through the case's hole.



Here's the backside: