Well Here's My Newly Built SLK3000B...lots of pics

Show off your quiet rig.

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dawgpound6985
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:58 am
Location: California

Well Here's My Newly Built SLK3000B...lots of pics

Post by dawgpound6985 » Tue Aug 30, 2005 1:23 pm

Here are the specs of my old PC:

Case: Thermaltake Xaser III (very heavy but very solid case)
PSU: Thermaltake Silent Pure Power 480W (its not silent at akk)
Motherboard: Asus A8N-E
CPU: Athlon 64 3200+ Venice Core
Heatsink: Coolermaster Hyper 48
Storage: 200GB Seagate and 80GB Maxtor
RAM: 1 GB PQI PC3200 Dual Channel Ram (2-3-3-5)
Video Card: Geforce 6800GT OC'd to Ultra Speeds
Sound Card: Sound Blaster Audigy using Audigy 2 drivers


It's dusty I know. :lol: wiring was a pain to do on this case as it was huge. It was noisy mostly because of the PSU and that's why I replaced it.

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Here's the newly built case (Antec SLK3000B) with all same components except a few new stuff:

PSU: Seasonic S12 430W (cables are very short and almost didn't have enough connectors for all my stuff)
Fan Controller: Sunbeam Rheobus
Heatsink: Coolermaster Hyper 48 modded with a 92mm to 120mm duct with 120mm Yate Loon fan on it. (less noisier this way. it was really hard trying to find screws to fit the duct though.)
Fans: 120mm Orange Yate Loons from TekGems

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My Ghetto HD Suspension. :lol: Cheap but it works! (i can't hear my maxtor drive and my seagate is barely noisy compared to when I mounted them. when I mounted them there was some kind of whirring noise which seemed to disappear once I mounted the drives.)

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Not sure about this yet but still monitoring temps. (By the way the Blue stuff is Painter's Tape. Less sticky when taking it out and it looks cool. 8) )

EDIT: Well I began monitoring the temps and when I covered the holes I was actually 4C higher with the tape on than without the tape. Noise wise there is a difference but not that much that I can live without the tape.

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After a lot of fixing wires here and there here is the FINAL build and I am finally pleased with it all:

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As you can see, I put an Xtreme Gear Blue Cathode on the top and the bottom of the case. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. Also, I attached it to my Sunbeam Rheobus and so I can dim it or make it brighter. The pics were taken in daylight but it does get very bright at night. :D

Speaking of temps. At the moment I'm running all fans at 7V that includes the video card and I'm at 35C surfing the web and doing the basic stuff which is about equal to my last case but VERY QUIET. Room temp is higher than 25C. I can't hear my computer running when I open the window in my room.

Some of the cons of this case was that it was easily breakable. I broke off the front door clips when I first got it and the USB in the front was off centered by UPS. So I superglued the clips back together and enforced them with some melted glue and I'm hoping it holds for a while. The USB connections I just bent back into place. Overall, I'm impressed with this case with its quietness and fairly good airflow.

Thanks to everyone who gave me input in this great forum and feel free to comment on what I could do to improve the newly built one. (Maybe a Damping Noise Kit or the Scythe Ninja next.)

Gxcad
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Location: San Francisco, CA
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Post by Gxcad » Sat Sep 10, 2005 12:35 pm

This is odd, I could have sworn the 3000B has straight HDD slots, not sideways like the BQE? Ah well, nice build!

-Ken

dawgpound6985
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:58 am
Location: California

Post by dawgpound6985 » Sat Sep 10, 2005 1:45 pm

Gxcad wrote:This is odd, I could have sworn the 3000B has straight HDD slots, not sideways like the BQE? Ah well, nice build!

-Ken
You're correct, but I decided to suspend them sideways. I did try suspending them straight but my top hard drive would have very little gap between it and the graphics card. So I decided for better air flow I should move it sideways which worked even better and lesser cable mess to see.

By the way I've since moved the front fan to the outside of the case to make more room for my hard drives and now theres a little bit more space in between the suspended drives and the graphics card. I also clean up a lot of the wires and the blue tapes. I'll update my pics once I finish with finals this week. Thanks for the comment by the way!

I am currently idling at 31C after replacing the AS 5 on my heatsink with all fans now at 5V. 8)

Gxcad
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Posts: 429
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Post by Gxcad » Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:14 am

sorry, I didn't read very carefully. I saw your old case and thought it was the 3000B you were talking about and the HDD cage was sideways...anyway its all clear now and I am all for the suspending, I think suspending with good "chewey" material is superior to rubber grommets (though the soft P180 grommets I admit are very good). How do you like the sunbeam rheobus? I bought it because it goes below 5v but I'm not so sure I like it. Infact, I ditched it even though I still have it when I moved my hardware to my P180.

-Ken

dawgpound6985
Posts: 13
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2005 10:58 am
Location: California

Post by dawgpound6985 » Sun Sep 11, 2005 1:48 pm

Gxcad wrote:sorry, I didn't read very carefully. I saw your old case and thought it was the 3000B you were talking about and the HDD cage was sideways...anyway its all clear now and I am all for the suspending, I think suspending with good "chewey" material is superior to rubber grommets (though the soft P180 grommets I admit are very good). How do you like the sunbeam rheobus? I bought it because it goes below 5v but I'm not so sure I like it. Infact, I ditched it even though I still have it when I moved my hardware to my P180.

-Ken

The sunbeam rheobus is great. Although, like everyone says, the LEDs are very bright. I just popped them inwards so that they produce less light like most others. In comparison to my old Hardcano, which was very cluttered with wires and didn't change fan speeds, the sunbeam is straight to the point and does what it does which is to change the speed of the fans with little or no wire clutter.

Currently, I'm using a couple 3 pin Y-splitters to connect 2 fans per slot and it works great with 3 pin extensions which I was able to route to the back of my case. I also have my cathode connected to one of the controllers so that I can dim it when I watch movies or want to sleep with the computer on. The only difference I can notice from connecting the cathode straight to the PSU instead of the rheobus is the fact that its a little dimmer. That's to be understood as the rheobus can only run whats connected to it at 11.5V max per slot. Its not much of a difference but I noticed it when I first connected it and I thought maybe my cathodes were defective cause it got dimmer. But if you look at reviews and specifications of the rheobus, 11.5V seems to be the norm for the sunbeam, which is quite efficient compared to other rheobus out there which lose a quite a few more.

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