I've been reading and posting over at ArsTechnica for a long, long time and I was trying to put together something like a muted version of their Hotrod. Most of the part I am using were housed inside of a Dell Poweredge 400sc case. It's very similar internally to their Optiplex and Dimension towers. Basically no airflow and high temps are the measure of the day.
Suffice to say, I was sick of the noise due to the temp controlled fan (I run Seti so it was always running fast/loud). So I took most of the parts directly out of the 400sc and dropped them into a new case. This is what I have:
Antec SLK3700-BQE
Nexus NX-3500 PSU
2x Nexus 120mm fans
Asus P4P800 Deluxe
Intel P4 2.8C
Thermalright SLK-947U w/Panaflo 92mm M1BX
2x512MB Kingston HyperX PC3200
Seagate 40GB 7200.7
Seagate 200GB 7200.7
Plextor PX-708A
Samsung SD-616E
Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro modded w/Artice Cooling VGA Silencer
M-Audio Revolution 7.1
Anyway, on to the picks:
Here is the back of the case with a good shot of the matching orange fans. They kind of stick out like that, but it's nice because those fans are dead silent, even at 12v.
Now the front. Another orange fan, another step closer to silence. This, like the one on the back are currently hard-mounted. I've holding off for a bit on using some sort fo fan isolation as I'll explain next.
See that nice Panaflo on the SLK-947U? Yeah, it's an M1BX. Nice fan, but a bit too loud for me. It's L1BX replacement is already ordered so I'll be able to update you on the noise then. So far it's a lot quieter than the 400sc, but not "silent" yet. Otherwise these parts went together very well, I'm happy with them.
Cablegami is certainly an art! I was able to get the data cables all nice and neatly folded down, and I was able to use an IDE cable as a cable holder by flipping it under the slot for the HDDs to hold the LED, speaker, and power stiches cables into place, it worked well that way. The cable moving up to the optical drives is also in a nice place and folded down pretty well.
Overall I'm happier with this system than my 400sc, it's quieter already and that's with a M1A at 12v. Once that gets replaced it will certainly be quiet enough for me. The most amazing thing to me was the dramatic temperature drop between the two systems:
Temps while running Seti
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400sc New
CPU 53C 39C
Case 44C 37C
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400sc New
CPU 42C 37C
Case 38C 36C
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CPU 43C
Case 41C
I've been running it overclocked for 8 hours now without a single issue, including playing games. I haven't pushed the CPU any further than 3.36GHz as that's a very good overclock and I don't want to have problems later with heat.