I want to Build a Really quiet System

Im really enamored with this new little Bitfenix Prodigy
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811345016&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-_-pla-_-Computer+Cases-_-N82E16811345016&gclid=CP_w6sTQv7kCFeI1QgodmRYAMQ

And want to put in a really nice LOW WATTAGE core I7

http://ark.intel.com/products/65525 (3770T)

and use a Pico PSU

And Passive Cool the thing with the biggest radiator i can find
that will fit.

With a Silent Pci_e Card that does not draw a lot.



It does not to be All-powerful, but Im thinking with a Pico 150w, i can easily Fill all the drive bays and still run this on a brick.


IF NOT, The other build i am seriously considering is a FANLESS full Silent PSU like the 4 demoed on this site.

The PSU sits right under the mobo tray. One of the four is supposed to mount vent up. But in the prodigy case the vent is on the bottom. for the three that dont say is there any big deal mounting a Fanless 400w or 500w with the
board inverted, so that the heatsink is at the bottom of the case, ratehr than just below the mobo tray?

Thanks for any advice. If I have to go with it which of the full size silent ATX PSUs do you all use?

My Current Build is a Zalman HD 160 with a Q6600 Core 2 Quad 2.4 Ghz with 2 Gb Ram, and Win XP 32/bit /Win 7 Dual Boot, with Dual Geforce 8600GTS on an Asus P5k Deluxe Fifi/AP.

ATM its running a Zalman Performa CPNS10x Performa and is about 18 Db, with 2 WD 2Tb Greenpowers and a CoolerMaster 650 PSU.

I also have a NeXT Cube that has a AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 6" LCD and DVD-RW in the old Optical Slot, has a single vantec 80 MM stealth fan pumping the cpu with air, It Runs on a Pico Psu and is about 22 Db with a mech. HD


and a Mac Se/30 with a 9" Color Monitor, and Slot Load DVD where the Floppy is Its a P III 800 Mhz,
Ill Show pics if people want to see the builds, It is NOT Quiet however This is my first Post here

As Abula pointed out before in some other threads, choosing any "T" CPU just costs you money for something that is downclocked from factory. You could downclock a standard i7 and probably achieve comparable or better results.

Fanless PSU is ok. But fanless CPU cooling? No special need for that, because if you use a suited tower cooler and a slow spinning fan in addition to slow spinning case fans, you'd still have a quiet-to-silent system.

On the other hand, completly passive would be doable, but it's way more complex for a marginal better result.

I haven't seen any reports from a closed loop water cooling system functional to be run without any fans on the radiator.

I selected that CPU entirely because of TDP @ 45 its the lowest TDP of the of any i7.

Ill put the largest heatsink I can, Just want NO FANS.

Any advice on Brand if I do want a fanless PSU and anyone ever mount them heatsink DOWN?

If you are set on the Prodigy (i like it also), i would first check OCN Bitfenix Prodigy Owner's Club it has a ton of build there from simple stock cooling, to very complex water cooling, but really very impressive builds, the case is very flexible into what you can fit into it, that said is not that small, its close to the size of micro atx builds since it fits normal atx psu, 200mm fans, etc, but cerntanly a case that has its appeal.

As Pappnaas already said, T CPUs are just downclock versions, no special binning or low voltage, no cherry pick CPUs, i own a i3 2100T and really the only reason to pick them are its factory low profile cooler that's its smaller than the standard. I would recommend a 4770 or the upcoming 4771, at idle all the Haswell CPUs (as it was the same case in my experience with sandy bridge) downclock to the same idle clocks, 800mhz, this will be true for T series also, the only ones that i had my doubts were some Xeon L series, and were extremely expensive CPUs, only OEM for server builders, i almost bought one on ebay.... but almost $300 for dual core, and i had a good offer on my xeon 1230 so i passed. But dont go with T, go with the standard it should be fine, specially if you go with good tower cooler, i have my 4770K at stock clocks and it idles at 30C on 650rpm noiseblocker PLPS, and even under load i reach 70C on 850rpm, and this is 120mm fan, i bet a better fan will allow even lower temps.

For CPU cooler, i would avoid water cooling (unless you willing to spend lots of money), i would ask in the thread above if you can do passive watercooling, personally i doubt it, the water will slowly go up and up, and with no direct airflow on them it will overheat. In most scenearios air will end up quieter, there are very good air coolers available now days. If you can wait some for Scythe USA to reopen, i would try to wait for Scythe Mugen 4, was recently reviewed by SPCR and got the editor choice, i own Scythe Mugen 3 that imo very similar, and great cooler, great fan, if you motherboard can control PWM fans it will be able drop the fan around 400rpm where it will virtually inaudible at idle, and even under load should be very quiet. If you wish to read more check SPCR Scythe Mugen 4 CPU Cooler: Scythe Strikes Back. As a second recommendation, i would go with Noctua NH-U14S, the NF-A15 PWM is a very good fan IMO, it can be drop down to 240rpm with fanXpert on CPU_Fan header, the only downside is much more expensive than Mugen 4, but its available right now. As a third recommendation check Thermalright HR-02 Macho Quiet/Fanless Cooler, the issue here is that im not sure it will 100% fit with the back fan because of its asymmetrical design growing flush from the CPU to the back of the case, i think it will fit without the back fan that should be fine also, but will limit what you can test, etc, for this i would go with the Mugen 4 or Noctua NH-U14S. Twin tower coolers are also an option, check the thread above you will find tons of Phantek PH14, Noctua NH-D14, Silver Arrows, etc.

Now for motherboard, im going to recommend to go with ASUS, FanXpert imo is too good to pass up, it will give you great control over pwm fans on CPU_header and very good control on 3pin fans on voltage controled headers like CHA_FAN 1/2. The second reason and very important for Prodigy build for fitting a big Tower cooler is the postion of the CPU socket, on the Asus is a little more centered than the usual boards (asrock also has more oposite orientation to the PCIe socket). On Haswell there are 4 options, check them out see what fits your budget and connection needs, link, both the ASUS H87I-PLUS and ASUS H81I-PLUS, seem very nice cheap options if you are not overclocking, on a side note they seem to have FanXpert but dont specify if its 2 or the old one, regardless either seems like a very good choice.

For memory, specially for a mini ITX builds, i would suggest to go with very low profile and low voltage, Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Low Profile Desktop Memory Model BLS2K8G3D1609ES2LX0 is what i would recommend (cheaper atm on amazon), this would even allow you to upgrade to a twin tower cooler later on, the memory is working great on my GENE VI, but its not on QVList, so its you call, but i had a good experience with it, so i continue to recommend it. There is cheaper 8gb version if you dont need that much memory, Crucial Ballistix Sport Very Low Profile 8GB Kit (4GBx2) DDR3-1600 1.35V UDIMM 240-Pin Memory Modules BLS2C4G3D1609ES2LX0

For PSU i think you should be fine with picoPSU if thats what you want, picoPSU-160-XT + 192W Adapter Power Kit is what i would recommend, but there might be an issue with the memory as in all the Haswell mini ITX mobos that i seen the 24pin is right in front of the memory, even with ultra low profile memory the caps on the front might touch or even prevent it to be installed, this is something you need to research, if you trully want to go with picoPSU, then i would probably go with i7 3770 + Intel DH77DF, but the cpu socket is right next to PCIe slot so this will limit a lot of what coolers you can use, and intel hasnt released mini ITX Haswell motherboards, maybe when they release the dual cores they might. For the before, i would also consider a standard ATX PSU, specially since the Prodigy can fit it, consider SeaSonic SSR-360GP, reviewed by SPCR Seasonic G360 PSU: High efficiency & performance, low price, kinda ideal for the Prodigy in terms that its always on sucking from the bottom, the Watts are more than enough for it, its cheap and its smaller than the 160mm standard (i think its 140mm) so it should fit very easily on the bottom chamber (some 160/170 do have a harder time to fit and with the cables).

When i was considering doing a Prodigy build, i had the BitFenix Spectre Pro 200mm Fan - All White BFF-SPRO-20025WW-RP on my list, read some decent comments on it, i bet with fanXpert it can be brought down to inaudible levels and great to cool all the case, maybe even fansless on the cpu cooler, this is more to test upon building.

If you build it, try to post some pics, i always like Prodigy builds, and your experience in terms of noise and temps. Good luck with the build.

Im New so replies are taking a long tome, Apologies I am Moderated at this time

Thanks so much for the replies. The CPU again is because of the TDP (45 watts)

Under clocking I can save a little money, but I want to run it stock. Bone Stock with the LEAST power draw possible.

Its going to be a Little Nas/Gaming Station, I will Occasionally play on my Plasma, I really just want to be able to Passive Cool it and run a OLD game on it for reference DX8 Game made in 2003.

And I want it more as a long lasting NAS with some rudimentary Gaming capability.

Silent everything, PSU (brick or ATX) SSD for Boot Drive, Might Raid - For cost I eventually want to have 8 TB + in the thing, just sa little Mini Powerhouse Put Id sacrifice performance for NO FANS, thats really critical I can deal with Mech HDs for the bulk of the storage..

But IDK if Underclocking will drop the TDP to a guaranteed 45 Watts or not. Im totally willing to spend on the one that comes that way and is rated for that. I find clocking gives you wierd errors, and I want this thing STABLE - the K is something like 77 Watts

45 watts is the least heat to dissapate so I wanna lock in that CPU and then find the best Heatsink I can. Im using CPU Power Management now an the Zalman with the Zalman CPNS performa, Its pretty whisper quiet. I get kinda Obsessed when im building Computers, thes seems like a fun technical challenge.

I used to use BOINC and before that the command line version of Seti @ Home, for Burn in tests. Whats best method to Task CPU which utilities are best?

Do you have some other applications that will make use of the i7's 8 threads? Gaming and NAS won't. You could easily drop down to an i5 and save $100.

Regarding the T CPU. @ 2.5GHz base/3.7GHz turbo, it'll be fine for most older games. If, however, they use four cores, then the most they'll see is the 2.5GHz base. So, CPU intensive, modern games may suffer on fps.

Also, you might consider a Haswell CPU. Lower power use at idle and low cpu use tasks than Ivy.

you shold also consider Fractal Design Node 304, really verstile small little box, probably smaller than Prodidy and fittong almost the same, without a dedicated GPU you can fit 6x3.5 and with a dedicated GPU you can fit 4x3.5, the Podigy will also depend on the dedicated gpu to fit a lot of hdds. Personally for media/gaming/tv center, i like more the NODE than the prodigy, i like more the prodigy for a main pc or even for moving constantly to lans, etc. The node should also be fine for fitting the brick inside if you feel like its better for you, as it also fits full atx psu.

TPD cant be taken directly to a consumption standpoint. Any quad , should idle the same or extremly close, none hyperthreaded should a idle a little lower, still very very close. All haswell will downclock themselves on power management balanced to 800mhz on idle, no matter if its a T, an S, or a K or no letter, the hole line of CPU are design like this, so the cpus will be consuming similar W at idle, where the K or the none T will consume more is on load, where they also wreck a T version in performance, but here consumption is relative, the K and none letter versions will end up the task much earlier than the T version, so in essence they consume the same, they just do it faster. But its up to you, its your money, if you feel your getting something more than what i explained, then go with T.

Thanks so much for your exhaustive comments

My NextCube Build that has an MATX inside and the Lo-Power Athlon is using a PICO PSU

The goal really is to have the ONLY moving parts inside this new build be the Storage Drives

No PSU Fans, No Case Fans, everything PASSIVE cooled.

To that end I THINK i can add a SSD and say 2 Mehanical 3.5" discs and a LOW Draw PCI-E and keep it under the Pico PSUS wattage range.

The four full size ATX supplies reviewed here, anyone know if they (besides the ONE) that says you cant, Be mounted
Heatsink DOWN?

I do have some tasks that can utilize more cores, Mostly Adobe CS6 - Photoshop

Thanks so much for your detailed replies all

If you really want fully passive, go with something like the HDPLEX H3.SODD Fanless Mini-ITX HTPC Case, got the editor choice, for the mechanical hdd go with external NAS, something like a Synology Diskstation DS413j or Qnap/Thecus/etc and place it elsewhere in your home and just via network access it, they idle very low as well.

Seasonic X series fully passive, ask for the grill/holes to be facing up, i own one and has a clear marking of it. I believe its the same case fro the Kingwin and Rosewill, but i don't own either to confirm it. Regardless these PSUs do need air to cool themselves, you shouldn't go fully passive on this PSU, you need at least a case fan to help them cool off.

As an alternative, you could go with Seasonic X gold/platinum, the 560/660/760/860 all are 160mm and all are semi passive, until certain temp the fan wont start, and even then its wisper quiet when the PSU are close to that threshold.

I put a build into a Bitfenix prodigy a while ago, it's a nice little case. It has a lot of space for drives, and that's useful. I built it to be a machine for general use and to backup my file server, so it's good for that. One thing to consider for NAS type applications is to get a mini-itx board with enough sata ports. Most have 4, but if you want have a boot drive, an optical drive and 4 disks, you'll need 6 ports. Something to consider. Also, if you really want to go completely fanless, and you're going with a big cpu cooler, make sure you have spacing around your cpu socket. The sockets on recent mini-itx boards have been all over the place, you'll want to make sure the cooler doesn't hit the back of the case or an optical drive if you're using one. That's also a consideration with using a pico psu, if the power connector is too near the cpu socket, you may have trouble with clearance. You could get an extension, but it's something to keep in mind.