Here’s a couple shots of my main pc, most of the hardware is old news now. But I just gave it an upgrade just recently, in the form of a sythe ninja, so i desided to take a few pictures and share.

the heart of my system:
Intel d75pbz refference board
Intel P4 3.2ghz Extreme Edition (800fsb 512kb l2 2meg l3 cache)
2x512mb (1gig) DDR400-PC3200 generic MT chips 3-3-3-8 timing
ATI X800XT AIW
2x Seagate 300gig SATA 7200.8 series harddrives
Soundblaster Audigy 2ZS
Sony floppy
Pioneer a08 dvd-rw w/gradious 1.20 RPC-1 Rip-lock free firmware
Windows XP Pro OEM SP2

cooling and power specs:
Antec 3000b case
Seasonic Super Tornado 400watt power supply w/Yate-Loon d12sl-12 fan swap
2 Yate-Loon d12sl-12 fans in front and rear (motherboard controlled) idle around 800-850rpm
Scythe Ninja heatsink
Zalman vf-700cu w/Nexus 80mm fan swap
Artic Silver 5 on GPU and CPU
suspended harddrive cage
multi-layer acoustical foam dampening
Vantec silicone power supply gasket (which i doubt did anything)
case fan screw holes tapped out to 1/4" IIRC and installed rubber grommets from sears hardware
custom cardboard air tunnel for Scythe Ninja (made one hell of a difference in system temps)
front honeycomb fan grill cut out
bottom of front face cover sealed, only filtered air enters this case
accrilic cutout covering TEC-II hole, on side panel
air conditioning filter cut to fit over lower side panel vent
all unused case holes sealed with clear tape, to keep out the dust

lol never watched macross, probably should, but don't have enough time with the school and work and many other series to watch...

PS it would help if your temps were in celsius...

looks good simular to my system cooling wise....What kind of sound dampening is that and did it help you any ? Also I see both of your side vents are blocked......Were did u get that sound dampening from and what is it called...Am trying to get some for my 3000B but dont wanna spend like 80$ for that high quality one

i like the subtleness of the 2 cardboard-ducts.

dude, is that a porno video on your desktop?

Macros DYRL was a pretty good retelling on the TV series. But it’s not available in English. If you look up the almost exact file I have it named on emule you can get a good quality version and combine them, then contact me as I retimed subs for it. But I did it with both files joined.

As for temps, well I’m a little too used to f* over c*. :p

temp adjustments:
idle processor 95f / 35c
idle mb temp sensor 1&2 91f / 33c

system under full cpu load for around 6 hours
idle processor 133f / 56c
mb temp sensor 1&2 106f / 41c
mb temp sensor 1&2 104f / 40c

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the sound deafening foam came from work, our scientific side deals in laboratory research. And one of their products uses a sound dampened chamber for research. I got mine free, as they were scrap sheets. But whole sheets are not cheap, I believe they pay around 70USD a sheet around 3.5’x5’. That costs too high for my blood. But if your still interested, the company which manufactures it is located in NJ, Granite Packaging Company. Maybe you can get them to send you a sample sheet.

as for the effectiveness, it did indeed help around the front hard drive area and took away any ‘tingy’ noises on the side panels, but that’s about it. If you were running something like say a Spinpoint drive or a notebook drive I doubt it would do much.


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Thanks for your comment on the cardboard duct, it really made a difference. My temp passed the safe level without any airflow on the processor. IIRC temps shot up to 65c, right into the redzone on Intel’s desktop temp monitoring software. That’s not good. So I used double sided thermal tape to stick the one cardboard piece to my rear case fan and the other one I uses clear tape to stick it strait to the power supply. The one by the power supply rests right on the heatsink retention clip, if you look closely.

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porno video? You mean the ‘twogirls’ file? Nope not a porn, but it does have two barely legal girls shaking their assets.

Just curious...did u use that Lysol (1st pic) when u first fired up the system & quickly realized u forgot to plug in the CPU fan...or is the system close to the littler box?

Cheers

I use that (and blow off) to kill stink bugs. Honestly, I don’t know where the little shits keep coming from.

ok, loaned out the db tester from work today and did some tests.

with side panel removed and prode right next to hard drive cage, fan speed 850rpm = 38.8db

with side panel installed and prode directly in front of the 'intake slots', case fan speed@850rpm = 36.3db
with side panel installed and prode directly in front of the 'intake slots', case fan speed@600rpm = 34.7db
with side panel installed and prode directly in front of the 'intake slots', case fans 0ff = 33.9db

with side panel installed and prode by rear fan grill, case fan speed 850rpm = 35.6db
with side panel installed and prode by rear fan grill, case fan speed 600rpm = 35.2db
with side panel installed and prode by rear fan grill, case fans off = 34db

case fan speed@850rpm for all these tests:
prode about 6 inches from case = 33.1db
prode 3 foot from case = 29.9db
prode 11 foor from case = 29.8db
no change durring file fransfer could be detected.


xbox360 idle rear of system = 48.3db
xbox360 idle bottom air vent = 44.4sb
gamecube 1 inch from input fan = 44.8db
playstation2 with 80gig seagate hdd = 49.2
xbox with 40gig wd hdd = 44.2 & over 50db durring seek

microsoft wireless multimedia keyboard 1.0a & wireless optical mouse 2.0:
dragging mouse over mouse pad causes bewteen 40-45db from 3" above
mouse 'click' from 3" above 40db
keyboard typing ranged between 45-50+db from 3" above
(i'm finding this db meter to be rather amusing)

Hi! Looks good, but just one question. Why did you snip out the fan grill in the front, but not in the back?

-sun.moon

Nice rig but why did you block the intake at the bottom of the front panel? I enlarged mine for increased airflow but without a noticeable increase in noise.

Sun.moon - I snipped out the front because I figured that the dust filter was enough of a restriction itself so at the very least it couldn’t hurt. But comparing the two, with just the fans running I noticed no difference it sound tone or at least that my own ears could distinguish. Since there was noticeable no change, I left the rear alone. Plus I kinda like the honeycomb look, especially over most cheap-looking non-restrictive fan grills.


Firetech - Dust my man, I can’t stand dust clogging up my heatsinks. So I blocked it off. This way most of the air entering the front face panel passes through the washable filter. Personally I did not notice much of a difference in air pressure after eliminating the hole, but with the cover on it does dampen system noise slightly. Last night, when I was playing with the sound meter, I confirmed it too. So widening the bottom hole to further reduce system noise cannot do much, if anything, on a low cfm fan setup. Because if it did the sound meter would have read that with the panel off, the system was quieter. In short, it’s really not unnecessary to widen the bottom hole, unless you have a higher cfm fan which causes a noticeable difference if sound with the cover on and off.

UPDATE:
I undid my suspended hard drive cage, which I’ve had suspended for about 3 months after a noticed a new vibration coming from the pop riveted floppy hold-down panel. Apparently my bungee cord was slowly breaking under the weight of my drives, because of this it begun to carry a notice able num to that tray panel. I could eliminate it by messing around with the cords positioning, but it would come back after a bit of time. Eventually I tried relieving some of the weight by using a 2nd piece of bungee cord at the middle, this definitely helped but was not enough as the vibration would come back. The only real solution I could think of was to remove that tray and my floppy drive altogether, but I like having a working floppy for small personal files such as tax information.

So I decided to try something different, I sandwiched two interlocking foam insert together and rested my hard drives on them. But the uneven weight of the drives caused it to sag. Which I suspected would happen, after my suspension alignment fiasco. I next cut two more peaces and tried again, this time over sizing it slightly so the rear lip sits higher. It helped some, but the cage still slightly sagged down. The next attempt was simple, sandwich the cage both top and bottom. Bingo, the top foam peace fit snug in place. I was even able to push the cage closer to the front fan. For someone who hates how much heat modern videocards can throw at a hard drive, this made me very very happy.

The end result, the noise is either equal to or less that the suspended drive solution. No case vibration carried over, period. In fact, I would go as far to say that it is actually quieter than before because the pervious setup allowed some air to wrap around the cage, creating a noticeable amount of turbulence noise. to me, that’s bad. Now little, if any air can pass around the cage and my hard drives carry a noticeable drop in temperature, based off touch. As for actual temp changes, I’m not sure as the IDCC software does not monitor that stuff and in my experience Speedfan does not like most Intel motherboards.

Other interesting notes:
The first piece of sandwiched foam carries over a minor vibration to the touch, but the second piece carries none, that I can notice. So others two try similar with just two solid sheets may not have the same outcome as mine.

And for those who are wondering how I got my original suspended cage to stay so level, here’s how. The trick is to use the cord closest to the middle as a load bearer. The outer cord is nothing more than a leveler. Unfortunately, I’m almost positive that setting my suspended cage like that is what caused the cord to eventually loose it’s elastic properties, which is why I had gained a minor case vibration after a couple months.

Also, took the time to rewire my case, mainboard power supply cable snakes around the 5.25 drive bay. Much more needed room to work in there now. Damn that Ninja really hogs up space.


EDIT: HDD Health lists harddrive temps as follows.
harddrive 1 35c
harddrive 2 33c

That's exactly what I was looking for! I've been looking for a way to solidly suspend my Maxtor w/o having to remove the cage completely (the case I've got from ABS doesn't really have any easy way to suspend with cord). This way works better and I can still secure the cage with some cord or something to the front (plenty of holes to loop through).

good luck with that.

Just wanted to say thanks for the foam idea and pics. I successfully copied it today. I even had some of that same foam around, probably from a hard drive delivery. Simple and quick.

Thanks,
LB