Quiet Blue LED Madness

[Interitus]

My first completely SPCR inspired build.

System:

Antec SLK3700BQE w/ cutout grills, 120mm Yate Loon fans
Seasonic Super Silencer 460w PCI-E ready version
A8N-SLI Deluxe (Bios 1004 final) w/ NB47J
Athlon 64 "Winchester" 3200+ @ 2.3ghz (230x10)
Thermalright XP-120 w/ Yate Loon 120mm
2x512 OCZ Platinum Rev. 2 TCCD (230FSB - 2.5-3-3-7)
PNY 6600GT w/ Zalman ZM80D-HP, 120mm Yate Loon attached
Zalman ZM-MFC1 Fan controller
NEC 3500A DVD RW
Sony 16x DVD-Rom
Logitech MX Elite Duo
Logitech Z640 5.1 Speakers
Dell 2001FP 20" LCD


Not installed yet -

Leadtek TV2000 XP Deluxe TV/FM Tuner
CrystalFontz 2x24 Character LCD for drive bay

As mentioned, this is my first truly fully quiet and powerful rig. I would like to thank everyone here for your inspiration as well as your ideas and comments. This forum has truly changed how I view computing from a power-to-noise respect. Not to mention the people here are among the most informed and polite of all I have encountered in numerous forums. Again a big thank you.

First off I would like to mention that although this machine has 5 fans, it is just as quiet as my XP setup with only 3 fans. I'm sure some of your systems are more quiet, but I'm very happy with my results. Temperatures are incredible. The 4 Yate Loon D12SM-12 LED fans are run @ 5v via the Zalman controller. They run around 900 RPM. The only other fan in the system is the PSU fan. I haven't had any issues with the SuperRed fan in the Seasonic, so I've left it for now. It has an audible clicking, but only when my head is right next to the PSU exhaust or inside the case. For now it's fine.

Temps:

CPU: 37C idle, 44C Prime95 load (Cool n' Quiet disabled)
Motherboard/System: 36C Idle (load may increase 1-2C)
GPU: 39C idle, 49C 3dmark load
HDD: 30C idle, 34C highest measured load so far

A few quick benches:

3dmark2003: 8255 3dmarks
Sandra RAM Unbuffered: 6621/6492
SuperPI 1M: 37s

System is Prime stable for 12 hours @ 2.3 ghz, 230x10, HT at 5x = 1150 HT

Now for the pics....will add comments later, short on free time.


Zalman NB47J mounted on the chipset



XP-120 mounted, went ahead and installed DIMM1 to avoid issues later...



Cut out the rear and front fan grills and lined with U-channel from our very own kind Ralf Hutter who included it with a recent fan purchase I made from him



Motherboard and PSU mounted in the case



6600GT mounted w/ ZM80D-HP.


Final assembly of the inside of the case. I could probably do a bit better on the cablegami, but I will probably pull most of it soon to do a little more work to the case. The Spinpoint sits on the stock HDD tray rubber grommets, but I used longer shoulder bolts and put 2 layers of electrical outlet insulation between the drive and the grommet, and between the grommet and the bolt head. It's pretty quiet when seeking, but not as good as suspension obviously. Most of the leftover vibration is from the shoulder bolt shaft against the inner part of the grommet. I'm going to work on this a bit over the next few weeks. I don't really want to use suspension because of things I've heard about drive shifting during seeks, so I'll have to engineer something a little more to my taste.




Front before the panel is attached. A lot of my fan wires and IDE cable are bunched behind the empty drive bay. It's a tad messy, but it's out of airflow's way and is going to be hidden by the CrystalFontz LCD once I get it mounted. I don't have a drill bit right now small enough for the mounting screws to attach the LCD to the drive bay cover, so it'll be awhile before I get it in. The area behind the fan controller will be used to mount the LCD's control and power PCB so it'll pretty much be open space for wires to hide.



This is the CrystalFontz LCD. The contrast looks a lil dim because of my camera, but you get the idea. The temps reflected here are from my old XP rig, so they're not the same as my new rig. It's a neat little accessory. At just under $40 it was a steal too vs. the price of some of the Matrox and LIS modules. Since MBM5 won't work with my A64 rig, I'm going to have a buddy of mine write some plugins for LCDStudio so it can read temps from the SMBus or maybe through another monitoring program. That's another reason I haven't installed it yet.



A pic of my desktop. Forgive the dust. Long hours at work have kept me from cleaning I should probably move all the extra junk on it but oh well. Maybe clean up the cablegami on my stack of fans at the top right too


A few findings while building the system...

First, if you have a BQE and want to use the ziptie mounting system for the fans, be sure you use a VERY thin piece of rubber or whatever you prefer for isolation. The pieces of vaccuum hose that I used on the front fan were a tad too thick and it causes the front panel of the case to protrude a bit on the left side due to the fan frame protruding a tad too much on the left side. End result is a small gap between the front panel and the side panel. Not a big problem, but possibly a dust issue. Also in my case, it makes the blue fans' LED's emit a bit of blue light out of the gap. Looks a little tacky. I'm going to take it apart and fix it soon. I imagine mounting the fan with less thick hose pieces will remedy the problem.

Secondly, if you are an overclocker, be aware of the A8N-SLI's bug with memory not being able to run over 240FSB with a command rate of 1T. Going 2T remedies the problem, but is a performance hit. This is supposed to be addressed in upcoming BIOS release 1007 final, however if it works remains to be seen. 1007 final is also supposed to remedy issues with SATA ROMs being extra sensitive to overclocked settings.

Finally, the Zalman ZM-MFC1 fan controller will not fit behind the front door when mounted in the standard screw positions. I will have to fix this as well, but it should be as simple as enlarging the holes on the snap-in drive rail. As is, the door will not close 100%. The top does, and the door will "pop" closed but the bottom of the door bows out about 1/16" or so.


Thanks again to everyone at SPCR, this build has been very satisfying and again I'm very pleased with my results. This was intended to be an all around machine, capable of a decent overclock as well as playing the most recent games with a moderate performance level from graphics. All of your suggestions and comments are welcome as always

-edit for more pics below-


Finished front panel. Still no Crystalfontz LCD as I still don't have the plugins finished for accurate temp info.


Lights out pic of the inside.


Hard drive area lit up by front intake fan.


Pic of the screws used to mount the Yate Loon 120mm to the Zalman graphics card heatsink.

I've resolved all the issues with the door closing correctly and the gap in the front panel. I still have to get the plugins working for the Crystalfontz LCD, but once I do that, I'll have it mounted, up and running. Will get pics of that as well. Sorry for the late update, been very busy.

[Interitus]

Post updated with working pics

[daba]

Sweet!

[meglamaniac]

Nice!
How did you attach the fan to the zalman btw? Does it come with mounting equipment or did you knock something up?

[Interitus]

Nice!
How did you attach the fan to the zalman btw? Does it come with mounting equipment or did you knock something up?

I should probably have included this in the original post. I went to my local hardware store and bought some 4-40 1 1/4" sheet metal screws that came with included nuts. I also found some grommets similar to the ones on the hard drive sleds in the BQE and Sonata. I used an Xacto or hobby knife to cut the grommet in half. Once I cut them in half I used one half on each screw between the fan and the vga heatsink to alleviate any vibration issues, then just slid the screws into the groove on the heatsink. The fan that zalman includes slides onto the heatsink in a similar method to the mounting screws on their chipset coolers. The 4-40 size screws have a similar sized head to the ZM-OP1 fan mounts, so I just slid them into the channel and tightened up the nuts on the sheet metal screws. 1 1/2" screws would be perfect and leave more room for thicker isolation methods. The 1 1/4" screws are JUST long enough. If you look at the pic you can probably tell that the nuts are barely on there enough to hold the fan onto the heatsink. If you use a fan with open screw holes it would be easier to do, but since I haven't really tried to hack up the closed holes on the LED fans, I figured a longer screw would be less of a hassle. The brittleness of the clear fan frame plastic just doesn't take kindly to cutting.

[toNka]

Where can we get those fans?

[Tibors]

Where can we get those fans?

2) Some information is very localized & if others know where you are (at least roughly), they can be much more helpful. For example, ssking about the availability of a product without reference to where you are is... silly. But this happens often.

[akwok]

Nice!
How did you attach the fan to the zalman btw? Does it come with mounting equipment or did you knock something up?

I should probably have included this in the original post. I went to my local hardware store and bought some 4-40 1 1/4" sheet metal screws that came with included nuts. I also found some grommets similar to the ones on the hard drive sleds in the BQE and Sonata. I used an Xacto or hobby knife to cut the grommet in half. Once I cut them in half I used one half on each screw between the fan and the vga heatsink to alleviate any vibration issues, then just slid the screws into the groove on the heatsink. The fan that zalman includes slides onto the heatsink in a similar method to the mounting screws on their chipset coolers. The 4-40 size screws have a similar sized head to the ZM-OP1 fan mounts, so I just slid them into the channel and tightened up the nuts on the sheet metal screws. 1 1/2" screws would be perfect and leave more room for thicker isolation methods. The 1 1/4" screws are JUST long enough. If you look at the pic you can probably tell that the nuts are barely on there enough to hold the fan onto the heatsink. If you use a fan with open screw holes it would be easier to do, but since I haven't really tried to hack up the closed holes on the LED fans, I figured a longer screw would be less of a hassle. The brittleness of the clear fan frame plastic just doesn't take kindly to cutting.

Is there any way you can take some pictures of these screws? It would be greatly appreciated, as I am building a similar setup!

Very nice work too, love the 120mm madness!

[Interitus]

In Why your LOCATION is really useful! MikeC wrote:
2) Some information is very localized & if others know where you are (at least roughly), they can be much more helpful. For example, ssking about the availability of a product without reference to where you are is... silly. But this happens often.

Whoops. Thought I had it added in my profile. For those of you that are needing the info, I'm in the U.S. near St. Louis, Missouri.

Where can we get those fans?

I got my from Computergeeks.com, but not sure where you can get them now. I believe they're sold out. There was a thread here about the Yate Loon low speed orange fans in the Fans & Control section. There are a few links in there you may be able to find them.

Is there any way you can take some pictures of these screws? It would be greatly appreciated, as I am building a similar setup!

Very nice work too, love the 120mm madness!

Thanks

I purchased the screws from Lowe's hardware. You can find them with all the rest of the screws and bolts. They're 4-40 head/shaft 1 1/4" length. They come with their own nuts. They're Hillman #4-40 x 1 1/4" , Round slotted Phillips Zinc plated Machine screws. The package part # is 491278. I'll try to get some pics later.

[vapb400]

think you could take a lights out picture?

looks good!

[Interitus]

I'll try to get one of those too. Only problem I had with those is that my camera does not like the LED lights. It makes the autofocus mess up pretty bad so all I wind up getting is a blue ball in the middle of a black background. I'll give it another whirl though

[skj]

OK. Enough lurking for me.

Any idea whether the ZM80D-HP will preclude you from an SLI setup in the future? I'm running the same board, and while I by no means need two GPUs right now, I was thinking it might give me a nice lower cost graphics upgrade in the future.

Nice setup by the way. Thanks for posting the pics.

[Interitus]

Any idea whether the ZM80D-HP will preclude you from an SLI setup in the future? I'm running the same board, and while I by no means need two GPUs right now, I was thinking it might give me a nice lower cost graphics upgrade in the future

From what I can tell, you can add a second card in right now no problem, but you would have to use the VF700 or some other type of quiet cooler as there's no way 2 ZM80D's would fit. Other than that it doesn't look like it would cause any issues. Wish Zalman would come out with a 2 sink SLI card passive cooler hehe.

I'll get some more pics up soon. I've been very busy this week and have been out of town.

[akwok]

Hiya

Might I ask where you bought those sweet LED Yate Loons?

[Green Shoes]

see Tibors post, 7th in this thread. it helps to read the entire topic

[Interitus]

updated original post with requested pics